ᠮᠠᠶᠠ ᠳᠦᠷᠰᠦᠲᠦ ᠦᠰᠦᠭ ᠤᠨ ᠲᠠᠨᠢᠯᠴᠠᠭᠤᠯᠭ᠎ᠠ | ᠰᠤᠷᠤᠯᠴᠠᠯᠭ᠎ᠠ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠭᠠᠷ ᠠᠪᠤᠯᠭ᠎ᠠ （ᠠᠩᠭ᠍ᠯᠢ ᠬᠡᠯᠡ ᠪᠠᠷ） Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs.pdf

Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs Workshop Handbook Harri Kettunen (2) Maya words that are considered to be somewhat constant in the terminology of the Maya studies (such as day and month names [derived from colonial Yukatek]); (3) Place and proper names (4) Names of languages and ethnic groups On the other end of the “scale” are scholars, who use new alphabets for the words in Maya languages but retain the custom of using old (colonial) alphabets for the cases #2-4; in the middle of the scale are scholars with various solutions: some are applying the new alphabet for the Guatemalan Maya languages only (case #1), and old alphabets for the others; both of these might use either old or new orthography in the case #2. The Maya name for a so-called ‘day’ may be particularly revealing in this regard: e.g. Cauac/Kawak (see the section on Day Names, below). On the other end of the “scale” are scholars, who employ the new alphabets not only in the cases #1-2, but also in the cases #3-4 thus using Yukatan instead of Yucatan, Waxaktun instead of Uaxactun, and K’iche’ instead of Quiche or Quiché. Also, most scholars who have started employing the new orthography in all of the cases stated above, still maintain the convention of using traditional orthography for languages and ethnic groups outside the Maya realm, thus using words such as Q’eqchi’, Kaqchikel, and Wastek in the same text with Mixe, Zoque, and Nahuatl instead of using either one of the following sets: (a) Q’eqchi’, Kaqchikel, Wastek, Mihe, Soke, and Nawatl (b) Kekchi, Cakchiquel, Huastec, Mixe, Zoque, and Nahuatl Our position in this medley is that of finding a closely argued, consistent, and coherent standpoint. We have chosen to follow the sequent logic: when it comes to the Maya words, whether in the form of the above stated cases #1 or #2, we have chosen to follow the “new alphabet”. In the case of the place names we have chosen not to follow the usage of the “new alphabet” since most place names are well established in the geographical vocabulary, including maps and road signs, and, furthermore, reflect a world-wide custom of natural “frozenness” of place names (on the same grounds the cities of Leicester and Gloucester in England retain their old orthographies, and their spellings are not revised to *Lester and *Gloster, respectively). Thus we are inclined to hold back to the traditional orthography in the case of such place names as Yucatan (not *Yukatan), Edzna (not *Etz’na or *Ets’na), Coba (not *Koba), and Uaxactun (instead of *Waxaktun or *Waxaktuun). Also, the accents represented on Maya words are redundant since all words of Maya origin are pronounced with the stress placed on their last syllable. Thus, the use of Spanish-derived accents is eliminated: thus e.g. Tonina instead of *Toniná 4 . However, in the case of the names of the Maya languages and “nations” we have chosen to follow the “new” orthography on the ground of practicality and rationality: practicality in the sense that the new forms of the languages and nations have been accepted (with some exceptions) by most scholars whether they live in Central America, Mexico, the United States or Europe (regardless of the respective languages they employ); rationality in the sense that the new orthographies reflect the names of the languages and nations far better than the older somewhat inconsistent names. This reasoning is not, however, accepted by some scholars who – with an understandable and well- grounded argumentation – rationalize that the names of the Maya languages and nations in the English language are English words, i.e. it is not reasonable to assume that the change of the orthography of a given language outside of English speaking world affects English orthography. According to the same reasoning, English speaking people use words such as German (not *Deutsch), visit countries and places such as Brittany (not *Bretagne), Saxony (not *Sachsen), and Finland (not *Suomi), talk about languages such as French (not *français), Swedish (not *svenska), and Spanish (not *español), etc. From our viewpoint, names of the Maya languages and nations do not fall into a same type of category as the previous examples. They are less well known and less used in common spoken or written language, and are, therefore, more easily to be “revised” if needed. In this handbook we will follow the new alphabet and new orthography when dealing with Maya names and terminology, but we shall continue using the old orthography when employing names of Maya origin that have been incorporated into English. The ‘old’ or so- called ‘Colonial’ orthography is thus used here to render place names (i.e. toponyms). The only adjustment to the orthography used for modern Maya languages in Guatemala (see above) is the elimination of the redundant apostrophe marking the glottal stop of the bilabial sound /b/ – as there is no opposition (/b/ ~ /b’/) in Maya languages (except for Spanish loanwords). 4 On the same grounds, for example, all words in Finnish (including place names) are not marked with accents due to the fact that in Finnish the stress is always on the first syllable; thus: Helsinki, not *Hélsinki (asterisks are used here to indicate incorrect spellings). Kettunen whether it fell by the sword, or famine, or pestilence. The trees which shroud it may have sprung from the blood of its slaughtered inhabitants; they may have perished howling with hunger; or pestilence, like the cholera, may have piled its streets with dead, and driven forever the feeble remnants from their homes; of which dire calamities to other cities we have authentic accounts, in eras both prior and subsequent to the discovery of the country by the Spaniards. One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monuments. Who shall read them? (Stephens 1993 [1841]: 59). This challenge was probably put forward by Stephens in view of the fact that the Egyptian script had been cracked (by Jean-François Champollion) just decades prior to the publication of his book. However, during Stephen’s times there was no Rosetta stone 9 available for the still nascent Maya studies. After the discovery of Landa’s Relación by Brasseur de Bourbourg, the scholars thought they had the Rosetta stone of Maya studies at their disposal. In one of the pages Landa describes what he thought were Maya alphabetic characters. The so-called Landa alphabet (see Figure 26) was just about instantly condemned to be a misunderstanding by this Spanish clergyman (which it was – to a certain point at least). Thus, it was assumed that this ‘alphabet’ was useless. Consequently, no correlation or academic examination worthy of consideration were completed during the following hundred years. One of the problems was that both Landa and the scholars of the late 19 th century, up to those of the 1950’s, failed to understand that the Maya script was not alphabetic or solely phonetic (or merely logographic for that matter) 10 . At first scholars tried to apply the Landa 9 The Rosetta stone was discovered in 1798 during the intrusion of the Napoleonic army in Egypt. It contained three parallel texts in Greek, demotic Egyptian, and hieroglyphic Egyptian. The proper names in the parallel texts were the basis for cracking the Egyptian hieroglyphs. 10 In 1915 Sylvanus Morley wrote in his An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs: “It is apparent at the outset that the first of these theories [that the glyphs are phonetic, each representing some sound, and entirely dissociated from the representation of any thought or idea] can not be accepted in its entirety; for although there are undeniable traces of phoneticism among the Maya glyphs, all attempts to reduce them to a phonetic system or alphabet, which will interpret the writing, have signally failed”. (Morley 1975: 26-27 [our italics]). alphabet directly (but, time and again, unsuccessfully) to the Maya script. On the other hand – at around the same time – the logograms for calendrical signs depicted in the Relación were successfully applied to Maya texts. Based on the success of logographic signs and the failure of so-called alphabetic ones, it was deemed that Maya writing on the whole could not be phonetic 11 . The study of Maya hieroglyphs advanced towards the 1950’s steadily in stages, especially as relates to the glyphs forming the calendrical parts of texts 12 . Perhaps as a direct consequence, the idea was developed that the Maya script was purely logographic. In the same vein, it was presumed that the content of the inscriptions dealt almost exclusively with astronomical and non-historical matters, an idea that prevailed in the academic circles of the time. Attempts to read Maya hieroglyphs (or parts of the hieroglyphs) phonetically were doomed to failure or, conversely, neglected by the leading scholars of the time. However, beginning already in the 19th century, several prolific interpretations were made by a handful of researchers. Nevertheless, all of these scholars failed to find a systematic method to fully clarify their ideas. In 1876, a French academic by the name of Léon Louis Lucien Prunol de Rosny proposed in his study Déchiffrement de l’Écriture Hiératique de l’Amérique Centrale that Maya hieroglyphic writing was partly based on phonetic signs. His work on the Maya 11 Largely due to unsuccessful attempts by linguists like Benjamin Lee Whorf to prove that the Maya script had phonetic signs as well as logographic, Eric Thompson wrote the following in 1950 in his Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Intro- duction: “It had been my intention to ignore Whorf’s (1933, 1942) attempts to read the Maya hieroglyphic writing, supposing that all students of the subject would by now have consigned them to that limbo which already holds the discredited inter- pretations of Brasseur de Bourbourg (1869-70), de Rosny (1876), Charency (1876), Le Plongeon, Cresson (1894), and Cyrus Thomas (1886) [.] Whorf’s writings are a direful warning to those with a similary uncritical approach to the hieroglyphic problems.” 12 Towards the end of the 19th century, a Saxon librarian by the name of Ernst Förstemann studied the calendrical part of Landa’s Relación together with the Dresden Codex and other Maya texts. He discovered that the Maya used a vigesimal, or base twenty, system in their calculations, and that they employed the concept of zero in their mathematical system. Förstemann also worked out the Venus tables, the Tzolk’in calendar, and the lunar tables in the Dresden codex, and discovered the Long Count system in Maya monumental texts. Early 20th century saw other discoveries, as the identification of head variants for Maya numerals, and the correlation between the Maya Long Count dates and Gregorian dates by Joseph T. Goodman, and American journalist. Kettunen also used by Knorozov; hence the words below are written in the old orthography to avoid anachronisms). Knorozov reasoned that the first sign might represent the syllable cu, also represented in the “Landa Alphabet”, while the second, ought to be tzu (assuming that the last vowel was dropped since most 13 Kettunen 1998a keys to codes and simple explanations of complex matters have strange powers to allure. I know of only one serious student of the subject who supports the Knorozov system, and he with reservations.” (Thompson 1972: 31). 18 Berlin 1958: 111-119. 19 Proskouriakoff 1960: 454-475. Around the same time the “great names” in the field of Maya studies, J. Eric S. Thompson and Sylvanus G. Morley, declared that the Maya hieroglyphic corpus merely contained dates without any historical information. They also argued that the texts on ceramic vessels were crude copies of monumental inscriptions without any meaning or any linguistic value. 2. ORIGINS OF THE MAYA SCRIPT The Maya were not the first or last to develop writing systems in Mesoamerica. Before the emergence of the first known Maya hieroglyphs (in the third century BC) – or possibly around the same time 20 – writing systems already existed in at least three cultural areas in the region: in the so-called Olmec heartland in the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in the Oaxaca Valley, and in the highland valleys of Alta Verapaz in Southern Guatemala. Writing in Mesoamerica developed during the late Olmec times, around 700–500 BC, and probably originated from Olmec iconography that preceded it. Whether this early ‘writing’ is true writing – or merely a composition of iconic elements that do not represent sounds of any given language – can be debated 21 . This writing system was later separated into two traditions in two different areas: the highlands of Mexico, and the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas with an adjacent area in the Guatemalan Pacific coast. The first known signs that can be identified as part of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system can be found at San Bartolo in present day Northern Guatemala 22 . In Structure 1 of San Bartolo one can find early versions of at least 4 signs (syllables/syllabograms ja, mo, and po, and a sign for ‘lord’ or AJAW 23 ). Other early textual indications from the Maya Lowlands of known archaeological context come from the site of Cerros in Northern Belize. On the masonry masks fronting Structure 5C-2 nd two glyphs can be identified: YAX (blue-green / first) and K’IN (sun / day). Roughly contemporaneous to the Cerros example is a masonry mask from Lamanai Structure N9-56 which bears the glyph for AK’AB (night / darkness) on its cheek. Another early Maya text is found on a reused Olmec greenstone pectoral (the so-called Dumbarton Oaks jade 20 See Saturno, Taube, and Stuart 2005 whereas: (3) Reconstructed sounds based on historical, internal, or paleographic evidence should be represented in [square brackets]. Thus the transliteration we use is 27 See Lacadena and Wichmann 2004 and from page 54 onwards in this volume. called a narrow transliteration (including reconstructed sounds based either on historical, internal, or paleographic evidence – instead of broad transliteration that excludes these reconstructions). There are different ways of analyzing texts linguistically. The two most common ones are presented on page 65, being described as morphological segmentation and morphological analysis. The first stage of linguistic analysis represents morphological boundaries divided by hyphens. So-called zero- morphemes are represented by a Ø-sign. In the second type of linguistic analysis the grammatical description of the words is made explicit. There are several methodological ways to describe these components, and the decision is usually left for editors in case of publications. Here we use lowercase letters for glosses 28 and CAPITAL LETTERS for linguistic terminology. The following is to serve as an example how the above indicated stages function: 1. chu-ka-ja 2. chu[h]kaj 3. chu[-h]k-aj-Ø 4. capture-PAS-THM-3SA 5. “he/she was captured” 1 = transcription 2 = transliteration 3 = morphologica