Mayan writing Hieroglyphs

The Maya developed a complete complex writing system, 1 of only 5 in the history of the world. It is composed of over 800 symbols called hieroglyphs They wrote on paper made from the inner bark of the fig tree covered with lime plaster, using lime based pigments. They could reach up to 22 feet long, and were folded accordion style, making pages. In the 16th century, the Spanish burned every codex they could find, along with anyone who could read or write. By the 18th century, all knowledge of the script was lost. Of the polifc output of the ancient Maya scribes, only 3 examples survive to the present day. Today's Maya are completely cut off from the written words of their ancestors, since all 3 are held captive in Europe. All are in poor condition as they have not been well cared for.

Fortunately, Maya writing is also found carved in stone. One of the best examples was found by Jose Calderon when he stumbled on the jungle city of Palenque, Mexico in 1746. He found the 3 carved panels in the Temple of the Inscriptions, which contain a total of 640 glyphs. John Lloyd Stevens found, and bought, Copan, Honduras, in 1839. That fifty dollar purchase included the Hieroglyphic Stairway, where its 2200 glyphs make it the longest pre-Colombian stone inscription in all the Americas.

The tale of decipherment began in 1721 when the librarian of the Royal Saxon library traveled to Vienna and bought what is now known as the Dresden codex. It sat on a shelf, collecting dust, until 1810 when a Parisian publisher reproduced 5 of its pages in a volume on the Americas. That volume led to Constantine Rafenesque's (sp) discovery of the bar and dot number system. This was the beginning of the decipherment.

In 1832, a French artist, Jean Fredrick Valdec, traveled to Palenque. Believing that Phoenicians, Hindus, or Babylonians must have created the beautiful city (rather than native Americans), he drew Indian elephants in his hieroglyphs. Artists that followed were equally hampered by their preconceived notions, until the 1880's when Alfred Mosley's photographs appeared.

Ernst Thursturman found the Dresden codex on the dusty shelves and studied it extensively. Much of what is now known about Maya astronomy comes from his studies. He found the Maya calendars, including the Long Count calendar, where the ancient Maya measured the days since 4 ahau 8 cumku, the first day of the Maya world. When this Maya date was correlated to August 13, 3114 BC on our calendar, archaeologists were able to date stone monuments in the field.

J. Eric Thompson was most respected Mayanist from 1930's until the 1960's. He created a meticulous classification system of over 800 Maya signs, and assigned a number to each. He believed that the figures carved in stone depicted Maya gods and the the symbols were a mystic exercise for the Maya to get in touch with those gods. Tatanya Proscuriokoff would prove him wrong. After 20 years of field work at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and other sites, she found the glyphs for birth, coronation and death, and demonstrated that the monuments told the history of human beings.

Uri Valenovich Konorokoff, the lone mayanist in Stalin's Soviet Union theorized that the glyphs represented the sound of the spoken Mayan language. In the hysteria of the Cold War, his priceless insight was dismissed as Soviet propaganda. Subsequent events would prove that he was right.

Linda Shele and Peter Matthews discovered the royal sun sign and decoded the dynastic history of Palenque in 1973.

In the late 1970's fewer than 30 of the 800 signs could be read with confidence.

In the 1980's, 18 year old David Stewart took on the task of completing Konorokoff's phoenitic translation. He learned that many of the glyphs were combinations of other glyphs, merged or overlapping one another, and that as many as 15 different glyphs could represent the same sound. The pace of discovery quickened. Today, we can read about 80% of the glyphs, and work continues.

The decipherment of the hieroglyphs gives today's Maya 1500 years of history written in the words of their ancestors, not in the words of white people from Europe. It gives us a window into the history, science and literature of a vanished world. From Chitzen Itza, Palenque, Copan, and dozens of sites scattered in between, the ancient Maya now speak for themselves.