Draft translation of a previously unpublished manuscript:
Wolfgang Gockel
On the History of the Decipherment of the Mayan Hieroglyphs
On the history of the decipherment of the Mayan hieroglyphics
Wolfgang Gockel
Many summaries on the researchers and the investigations that have lead to an understanding of the Mayan glyphs or to the interpretation of portions of the inscriptions or parts of the codices have been published in recent years, most recently Ch. Jones (1985:20ff). Thus, we can confine ourselves here to a presentation of certain key aspects[1] of the research history.
Since the selection of such aspects is always subjective, we will concentrate on points that reveal the nature of the “discussion” that arose after the publication of the book "Die Geschichte einer Maya- Dynastie"[2]. In this context, problems of current research will also be emphasized.
In 1562, Diego de Landa, a fanatical member of the Franciscan Order, in Yucatan, burned a large number of codices (Maya manuscripts in book form) and initiated the persecution of the native scholars (priests). At the same time, however, he also collected all the available information about the Maya and their culture. Challenged to defend his inquisitorial methods by his bishop, he defended himself in a written report which also outlined a Mayan alphabet. Landa's work, which was preserved in copies in Spanish and Mexican archives, was not published until 1864. By this time, numerous stone inscriptions had been copied and three Codices in the libraries of Dresden, Madrid and Paris had been identified as Mayan.
Diego de Landa and Luis Villapando began the study of the languages and dialects of the Maya in the sixteenth century. The first grammar was written in 1620 by Colonel. These earliest linguistic investigations focused on the Yucatecan "variety" of the Mayan languages, still the one best researched.
The German E.W. Förstemann published the Dresden Codex in 1886 and was first to recognize the dot and the bar as signs for the numerical values "1" and "5". Förstemann provided the basis for all later decipherments of dates, which make up the the major part of the stone inscriptions. The results of his captivating study of the chronologies in the Dresden Codex were only generally accepted twenty years later, much to his irritation. Förstemann did not credit the Maya with the ability to write verbs or whole sentences.
As early as 1876, Leon de Rosny carried out the first serious scientific study of the Mayan hieroglyphs by comparing Landa’s information with the characters of the Codices. He was able to determine the glyphs for the colors "red, black, white, yellow” and "blue/green" and for the four directions "north, south, east, west
In addition, he noted that, for example, the ideogram “cab = Earth” independently of its meaning was used phonetically as "cab / kab” . There were two decisive reasons for the limited success of this and subsequent work on the Codices. The texts of these "books" are mainly of religious or astronomical nature and include words or meanings that are hard to find in Mayan language dictionaries from colonial times because they belonged to special subject matter mastered only by the Mayan priests, who were persecuted and driven out. Subsequent investigations have also shown that the Dresden Codex is a faulty copy of one or more earlier sources. Such errors are indeed fairly easy to determine from the calculations, but they can be identified only with difficulty in the accompanying text. The major asset (especially of the Dresden Codex) is to be found in the many rows of numbers that have proved to be the key to deciphering the Mayan calendar.
Thomas made a new attempt to explain the character of the Mayan hieroglyphs in 1893. Like Rosny, he assumed that the script consisted of ideograms (picture symbols), phonograms (phonetic symbols) and determinatives (classifiers), but he believed that the individual symbols did not indicate vowels when read phonetically. This form of vowelless writing can be found in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thomas cited 70 characters in his examination, of which he confused 20 with other symbols, and still worse, he read the glyphs in the cartouches in any order he found convenient, rather than in a fixed order[3]. Rosny and Thomas both showed that the Mayan script includes glyphs/characters with phonetic value.
On the other hand, Brinton (1890/1895) assumed that the characters were basically ideographic . Brinton also stressed that small differences in similar glyphs were relevant for meaning and for their interpretation (1894).
Eduard Seler certainly was one of the most important Mayan language and script researchers. He made outstanding contributions to deciphering the calender and carried out comparative studies of the Mayan languages, publishing a grammar of several Mayan dialects in 1887. Some of his major achievements in calender research are still credited to the amateur scientist J. T. Goodman. Goodman, a newspaper publisher , issued “his” findings on the Mayan calendar in 1897 (4). He mocked the “academic dilettantes” and failed to mention the earlier published research ([4]), especially the decisive findings of Förstemann and Seler. Goodman and Seler identified the headglyphs of numbers and date terms which appear in quite different forms in the Codices and stone monuments. If the main focus in Mayan research in the next period turned from the texts to analysis of the dates, then probably because of superior chances of success with the dates.
In his book "An introduction to the Maya Hieroglyphs" S.G. Moley (1915) provided a guide to Mayan chronology and date documentation which is still used today ([5]). In 1930, J.E. Teeple produced a summary of his research on the lunar dates, which are often found with initial dates in classical inscriptions. The American linguist B.L. Whorf published his findings on the Maya script from 1933 to 1942. He assumes, like Thomas Rosny before him, that this script contains ideograms, phonograms and determinatives. Whorf particularly condemned the use of the word "decipherment" for mere suppositions about content or comments on the glyphs. Unfortunately, this deplorable practice prevails even in current research. After Worf's death, E. Thomson criticized his results, mainly pointing to formal errors and the fact that Whorf changed several glyph readings in the course of 12 years ([6]). Thomson even accused Whorf of "total ignorance" of Mayan writing, a harsh form of criticism that has appeared again and again in subsequent debates.
One of the reasons for Whorf's numerous failures in identifying glyphs was the lack of a reference system or glyph catalog. W. Gates was the first to try to create such a catalog for the Codices in 1931. In his book, 757 numbers are assigned, but only 440 glyphs recorded, including 25 day symbols, 19 month symbols and 15 numeric or calendric symbols. Later, G. Zimmermann created a catalog of glyphs in the codices, which contains 272 symbols and a numbering up to 1377 ([7]). E. Thompson's book “A catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs” was not released until1962. In addition to material in the Codices, it included the most frequent glyphs of the classic script monuments. His system is still used in the most recent glyph catalog ([8]), although it has some serious disadvantages as it doesn't account for the countless variants of symbols.
In the meantime, the study of the script had embarked on several different research paths, independently of the catalog production. H. Beyer tried to solve the the secret of non-calendric symbols with a context analysis of all the inscriptions at Chichen Itzá. As there are only a few, rather short texts available at this site, he was not able to produce any dramatic results. But, his method of research, disparaged at first, is used today, more than 30 years later, with good results ([9]). Another method attempted to find readings for non-calendric glyphs taking traditional day and month names as a point of departure. In 1937, W. Wolf derived the readings of the appropriate main glyphs by adopting the initial phonetic value of the Tzental day names. In a similar way, J.E.S. Thompson tried to read certain glyphs based on the Yucatecan names of days and months. The Russian scientist Y. Knorozov had pointed out the precariousness of these derivations ([10]) as it is not at all assured that the day and month names attested in colonial times or even later correspond to those of the classic or later pre-colonial period.
When Knorozov published the results of his examinations on the Maya script between 1952 and 1955, they were rejected by most Maya experts. In 1953, Thompson even claimed that, as far as he knew, there never had been any deciphering in the USSR and therefore never could be. Thompson denied the existence of phonetic symbols in the Maya script although he himself used three readings given by Landa ([11]). In 1957, the Mexican M. Covarrubias noted not without cause: "Unfortunately, politics has been linked to research on the Mayan writing system”. Knorozov, like Whorf and Gates before him, has denounced the misleading use of the term "deciphering" [for mere suppositions], citing Thompson as an example. Thompson claimed in 1950 that he had deciphered 30 hieroglyphs ([12]), but only provided readings for 8, leaving the rest as just interpretations ([13]). Knorozov's comprehensive work was first translated from Russian (1963) into English in 1967. Today, with the American school working on the basis of Knorozov's findings, the background of the original rejection of his work is shamefacedly disguised or rationalized away ([14]).
To do Knorosov justice, his method and some of his results will presented here. Knorozov mainly used the evidence from the codices and Landa's alphabet for his investigations. Both of these sources contain errors and the readings obtained from them are incorrect in many cases. Knorosov used the method of cross-comparison to test and verify his readings, assuming, like many other investigators, that the texts in the codices were descriptions of the accompanying pictures – which is far from certain. Far more likely, the texts provide additional information about the pictures. Another uncertainty arises from the fact that his initial cross-comparisons were between individual words only without taking the coherence of the whole sentence into account.
Knorozov's contribution is not so much in the reading of individual glyphs as in the method and the proof that the Maya hieroglyphs really do represent phonetic values.
About the time of Knorozov's publications, American investigators began to concentrate on interpretations of the content of the documents which could be gleaned from the structure of the inscriptions and parts of the text. H. Berlin recognized the importance of the so-called emblem glyphs that are typical in particular sites or regions. He was, however, reluctant to identify them as place names,[15] which is the general practice today. This is a questionable practice as, in the case of Palenque, for example, more than 6 different emblem glyphs for the site have been identified – a clear indication that the glyphs are not place names as it is unlikely that Palenque could have had so many different names.
Using the Piedras Negras inscriptions as an example ,T. Proskouriakoff was able to demonstrate ,in 1960, that the classical stela texts contained historical information. Landa had reported this and Morley and Stephens suspected that this was the case. Thompson, however, repeatedly rejected this view. Proskouriakoff's greatest contribution is the identification of the cartouches for important events like births and coronations.
In 1976, D.H. Kelley published an outstanding book on the state of the research on the study of Mayan writing.[16] Kelley, who was one of the first to recognize Knorosov's contribution, uses both structural analysis and cross-comparison.
In 1977, Th. Barthel published readings of some 300 glyphs as determined by the Tübingen research group.[17] These found little acceptance at first. In recent years, D. Dütting (as a representative of the Tübingen school) has published numerous integral texts. These, however, rarely exhibit grammatically correct forms and can often only be understood metaphorically. In 1981, Dütting presented his translation of the text of Lintel 1 of Kuná-Lacanhá. M. Davoust and B. Riese offered a critique of this almost complete translation of the text that consisted primarily of attacks aimed at the readings of particular glyphs, since they were not able to offer an alternative translation. The controversy demonstrated, in any case, how far removed researchers were from a real decipherment.[18] Despite assertions to the contrary, this situation prevails down to the present day as a glance at the most recent glyph catalog confirms.[19]
Nine researchers read T. 116 as “il, kin, kim, ki?, n(e), k'in, ni , ne, en”, whereby the readings “-n” and “ne” are also categorically rejected. With so many possible readings, the Mayan writing system would have had no practical function since it would not have allowed a precise interpretation.
The two following examples may serve to illustrate how Mayanologists work: An article in the New York Times (4 April 1989) reports on the latest “progress in deciphering the ancient Mayan language,” relying on American researchers as its source.[20] One of the translation examples in the article mentions a goddess, “white heron,” whose name is contained in a head glyph. The prefix “kak'ax” 'lamed' is simply ignored.[21] This presumed goddess is written exactly the same way as a female ruler of the same name[22] and nowhere is there any indication of a divinity, except perhaps for the preceding 807 year time span that serves as proof that she reached an age to rival Methuselah. Until a few years ago, the woman was called Sak Kuk. Although it is well-known that her name is often written with a heron's head (heron = sac/sak, boc/bok), B. Riese now translates the glyph as “Tier” 'animal'.[23]
The rest of this lengthy article explains research methods and gives readings for individual glyphs as examples. A header reads “Scribes found many ways to write the same sentence [?].” If entire sentences can be written in different ways, one must ask why N. Grube finds my procedure of using different writings of the same name as cross-comparisons to be particularly ridiculous.[24]