Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
The Writing System
ya-YAXUN?-BALAM
Yaxuun? Ba[h]lam
(Yaxchilan, Lintel 21: D7)
ba-ka-ba
ba[ah]kab
(K2914: O5)
ya-YAXUN?-BALAM-ma
Yaxuun? Ba[h]lam
(Yaxchilan, Lintel 30: G2)
ba-ka-ba
ba[ah]kab
(Yaxchilan, Lintel 2: Q1)
ya-YAXUN?-BALAM
Yaxuun? Ba[h]lam
(Yaxchilan, Hieroglyphic
Stairway, Step VII: Q6)
ba-ka-ba
ba[ah]kab
(Yaxchilan, Lintel 46: J1)
ya-YAXUN?-BALAM
Yaxuun? Ba[h]lam
(Yaxchilan, Lintel 43: B2)
ba-ka-KAB
ba[ah]kab
(K7146: A6)
ya-xu?-nu BALAM-ma
Yaxun? Ba[h]lam
(Najtunich, Drawing 69:
A1-A2)
ba/BAH-ka-ba
ba[ah]kab / ba[a]hkab
(Denver Panel: pA6b)
ya-xu?-ni BALAM
Yaxuun? Ba[h]lam
(Yaxchilan, Stela 12: D4-C5)
ba-ka-ba/BAH
ba[ah]kab
(Ek Balam, Mural of
the 96 Glyphs: M1)
Patterns like these stumped early efforts at decipherment and are thus important to understand. Consequently,
such patterns are explored in the following section.
7. LOGOGRAMS
The Maya writing system is a mixed, or logosyllabic, system, utilizing both logograms, and phonetic signs.
Logograms are signs representing meanings and sounds of complete words. In the two examples below, the word
for mountain, or witz, is written in two different ways, but both of them read witz. The one on the left is a (head
variant) logogram, and the one to the right is a logogram with a phonetic complement (see the chapters below)
attached to it.
WITZ
witz
“mountain”
wi-WITZ
witz
“mountain”
As a rule, the more frequently a given word is present in the hieroglyphic corpus, the more variations it appears
to have. A revealing case is that of the word ajaw or “lord” which offers dozens of different variations, including:
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