Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
Introduction
following four glyphs) was still fairly flexible and inconsistent. This carving, along with the Dumbarton Oaks jade
pectoral, represents the events that were to be most frequently documented on subsequent Maya monuments,
namely bloodletting and royal accession. From the beginning of the Classic Period (ca. AD 250) the Maya script
developed into a more consistent and more rigid system that is explained in the following chapters.
3. LANGUAGE(S) OF THE HIEROGLYPHS
Until very recently the study of Maya hieroglyphs was a linguistic oddity. Most scholars in the field worked with
their respective languages when translating Maya hieroglyphs, and did not realize that the key to understanding
Maya hieroglyphs is a basic working knowledge of (at least one) Maya language. Obviously until the work of
Knorozov and Proskouriakoff 24 , there were few tools to work with in the first place. However, most scholars at
the time suffered from a type of scientific myopia, as none tried to apply any of the modern Maya languages to
the ancient script. Nowadays it is well established that the languages of the glyphs are very similar to several
modern Maya languages.
Today there are approximately 30 Maya languages spoken in Southern Mexico, Yucatan, Belize, Guatemala, and
Honduras constituting a population of approximately six million speakers. These languages are vaguely
distinguished between the highland and lowland Maya languages. Most likely the highland Maya languages, or
linguistic subgroups, i.e. Q’anjobalan, Q’eqchi’an, Mamean, K’iche’an, and Tojolabalan, had little or nothing to do
with the hieroglyphic texts that have preserved to this day. On the other hand, the lowland subgroups, Ch’olan,
Tzeltalan, and Yukatekan, are more intimately related to the ancient script.
Nowadays there is substantial evidence that nearly all of the Maya hieroglyphic texts were written in an Eastern
Ch’olan language, which has been labeled as “Classic Maya”, “Classic Mayan” or “Classic Ch’olti’an” (Houston,
Robertson, and Stuart 2000) by the linguists. The closest modern relative of this language is Ch’orti’, which is
spoken in a relatively small area in Eastern Guatemala and Western Honduras (near the ruins of Copan). Besides
the Classic Maya language there is some evidence of the influence of other lowland languages in the Maya
hieroglyphic corpus: Tzeltalan in a few texts at Tonina, Yukatekan at various sites in the northern part of the
Yucatan peninsula, and isolated Nahua words that appear in various texts 25 . Moreover, evidence of the influence
of Highland Maya language(s) in Chama and Nebaj style ceramics has recently been asserted by a number of
scholars (see Beliaev 2005).
24
Proskouriakoff herself never accepted Knorozov’s phonetic approach but, on the other hand, she established the structural methodology to the
study of Maya glyphs still used today. This structural approach requires no assumption about the character of the language under investigation.
25
Lacadena and Wichmann 2000, 2002b and Alfonso Lacadena, personal communication 2010.
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