Contact Jacalyn C. Spoon
Jacalyn C. Spoon
February 27, 2001
Art History - Maya
Prof. N. Neaher-Maas
The Writing of the Maya
In this paper I will briefly explore the topic of Mayan writing, as well as writing in the lives of the Maya people. In most instances the writing I refer to has been executed during the Maya Classic period unless otherwise described.
The Mayan language is a living language “spoken by five or six million surviving Maya” (Coe and Kerr:1998 p. 27). Classic Mayan inscriptions are believed to be written in Cholti an extinct language and combined with the local language for specific names. Today there are 31 distinct Mayan languages, with several more extinct. The ancient hieroglyphics of Maya lowlands are rooted in the Yucatecan and Cholan language subgroups (fig. 1 ).
According to Michael Coe, Mayan has been a relatively stable language for the past. The Mayan that we see in classic hieroglyphics has not changed as much as English has over the past 1500 years. This does not negate the existence of regional and state differences in technique, style or phrasing. Each Mayan site has it’s own specific writing style, and languages did differ between them.
All treatise on understanding Mayan refer to the book ‘Account of the things of Yucatan’ written by Franciscan Bishop Diego de Landa. Diego de Landa provides in his book an alphabet which proved eventually (200 years after it was written) “to be one of the keys to decipherment” of Mayan (Houston: 1989 p.8). De Landa had made a few errors in his alphabet. He had “recorded syllables rather than letters”, consonant vowel pairs with their Spanish alphabet equivalents (Houston: 1989 p15) (fig. 2 ). All but four of the Mayan texts have been lost to the fires of the Spanish conquest and those remaining are incomplete.
All of the “surviving books are written on paper made from the inner bark of the fig tree” (Houston: 1989 p.29). After “being pounded with grooved mallets and shaped into long sheets” the paper was coated with lime paint, giving it a smooth writing surface (Houston: 1989 p.29). These sheets of paper were then folded. The Madrid Codex is the longest screen-fold book at 7 meters in length. It is believed that during the late Classic, and into the Post-Classic and colonial periods writing was almost exclusively in books. Because of the warm humid climate these books would not have lasted. Paper and wood require cool dry conditions for preservation.
The codex writing style is repeated on ceramic vessels the most extensive and encompassing of all surviving writing medium. Ceramic vessels often appear as funerary offerings. Extensive examples of writing is also present in caves and rooms where hieroglyphics serve to caption the paintings as at Bonampak, naming people, events and providing dates.
Ceramic vessels contain a band of writing usually across the top, but always somewhere on the vessel. This band, the Primary Standard Sequence (fig. 3 ) contains a standard sequence of glyphs indicating the owners identity and title, a dedication of the vessel, the naming of the vessel (her drinking vessel), and the product drank from it, usually cocoa, and often the name of the artist. Ceramics first appeared in the Maya lowlands beginning in approximately 9000BCE.
Stelae and other major monuments including pyramids and alters represent the corporate communication of the Maya. The earliest stelae (stela 29) found at Tikal was carved with historical records in about 250CE, the early classic period, by that time the position of the scribe was well secured.
Literacy is not believe to have been widespread in the Mayan world although bricks with graffiti have been found (fig. 4 ). These could simply represent the apprentices practice work. Vessels with poor renditions of similar scenes portrayed on higher quality vessels have been found, indicating that there was a market for copies and that there were artists who were less accomplished at writing.
Literacy is believed to have begun at the end of the Preclassic period approximately 1500BCE. During this early period the majority of glyphic writing appears on portable objects and no Stelae or other monuments have been found.
The person who performed the writing tasks, the scribe, had a special elite status among the Maya and these artists were from the royal lineage’s. The scribe wore a special “distinctive costume and headdress, in which were prominently displayed the tools of their profession - their brush pens and their carving tools” (Coe and Kerr: 1998, p.25). The royalty themselves are often portrayed with a brush pen or a stick bundle in their hair, indicating literacy. These scribes included women. Scribes are believed to have had their own deities. Both the monkey twins and the Maize God have been described as the scribe’s patron deities.
Mayan is a logosyllabic language resembling other hieroglyphic languages such as Egyptian, Summarian and Chinese. One sign can represent a whole word, a logograph (fig. 5 ), or an understood idea, ideograph. A single sign can also be a morpheme the smallest part of a word, with phonetic signs expressing syllables. A single vowel can also be expressed as a sign (see U on fig. 6 ). Interestingly, as in Egyptian, the representation of a face looks in the opposite direction that the text reads. In Mayan the face looks to the left and the reader reads left to right. The glyph blocks are usually set in pairs and read top to bottom.
Mayan uses the principle of synharmony. A word ends with the same vowel as the one before it. This vowel may not be actually pronounced. There are exceptions to this rule, as there are exceptions to many of the rules of the Mayan language.
Many sounds have different symbols (fig. 6 ). Symbols have different meanings (they are polyvalent) or are associated with different ideas or uses. Houston describes this as a sensitivity to homophones, words that sound almost the same with slight variations. His example is the rebus of I, and the sign of an eyeball. Of the many ways to write a sound, one may be associated with religious use and another with depicting a lineage. If a sound or logo is to be repeated, as in Nana 2 dots may appear in front of the symbol for Na, simplifying the glyph.
Glyph signs are combined in a standard order (fig. 7 ) and used in a standardized glyph block to create a word, phrase, or to express a thought. These glyph blocks are then combined in a standard pattern to create sentences. The Mayan sentence is structured as verb, subject or verb, object, subject.
Mayan titles have gender signifiers before them. The Moon Goddess head appears before female titles. The logo for Ah appears before male titles. Mayan scribes, both men and women, signed their work.
currently only about 60% of Mayan hieroglyphics are translated. Many glyphs exist that are still not understood. While writing was reserved for the elite caste in Maya culture, logographic writing systems do not impeded literacy. In Japan, which uses a logographic writing system, 99% of the population age 15 and over can read. We will probably never know what percentage of the Maya population could actually read.
Bibliography
Coe, Michael D. The Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999.
Coe, Michael D., and Justin Kerr., The art of the Maya scribe. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.
Henderson, John. The world of the ancient Maya. Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Houston, Stephen D., Maya Glyphs. Berkeley, CA: U. of California Press, 1989.
Miller, Mary Ellen., The art of Mesoamerica, from Olmec to Aztec. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
McNelly, Nancy A. F.. Rabbit in the moon: Mayan glyphs and architecture. 5/10/99 <www.halfmoon.org.> site last visited 2/26/01.