Hieroglyphs.
Mayan hieroglyphs resemble the Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs only in being “sacred writing” that is not based upon an alphabet. The styles and symbols are entirely different. No Rosetta Stone has yet been discovered to give us inscriptions in more than one system of writing in Central America. The great use of hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments was characteristic of the earlier period of Mayan history and at a later time the writing was reduced to books. Bishop Landa obtained what he supposed was a Mayan alphabet, but what he really obtained was a list of signs representing among other sounds the particular sounds he had asked for.
The phonetic use of syllables rather than of simple sounds or letters is probably an important feature of Mayan writing. Many hieroglyphs are pictographic and consist of abbreviated pictures of the thing intended or of some object connected with it. Often a head stands for the entire body. The following list practically exhausts our knowledge of Mayan hieroglyphs:—
1. The signs for the twenty named days of the calendar.
2. The signs for the nineteen months of the Mayan year.
3. The face signs for numbers from zero to nineteen inclusive.
4. Period glyphs in two styles for place values in the numerical notation.
5. The symbols for the four directions and for the colors associated with them.
6. The hieroglyphs of several gods and ceremonies.
7. The symbols of Heaven and Earth, the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and a few astronomical phenomena such as conjunctions.
8. Hieroglyphs for special times of the year such as solstices and equinoxes.
9. Signs meaning era, or base from which a numerical count is made, completion, etc.
Some of these have recently been solved, thanks to mathematical and astronomical calculations, others rest on the calendarial forms given by Landa. There are some phonetic elements in Mayan writing and some ideographic elements. It seems likely that the gist of the Mayan inscriptions which deal with history will be solved in somewhat the same fashion as those that deal with astronomy. The matter is, however, most perplexing. So far not a single place name or personal name has been definitely recognized and translated. In spite of the hundreds of glyphs recovered at the sites called Copan and Palenque, for instance, we do not know the real names of these cities or even their symbols. We may expect to find signs referring to tribute and common objects of trade and others referring to birth, death, establishment, conquest, destruction, and other fundamentals of individual and social existence. These signs, taken with directives, connectives, and dates, would make possible the recovery of the main facts of history. There seems no possibility of purely literary inscriptions. While progress necessarily will be slow there is no reason for despair and without doubt the greater portion of Mayan inscriptions will finally be deciphered.
Fig. 46. Hieroglyphs of the Four Directions: East, North, West, South.
Fig. 47. Hieroglyphs containing the Phonetic Element kin: a-b, kin; c, li-kin; d, chi-kin; e-f, yax-kin; g, kan-kin.
As an example of the phonetic use of signs in the building up of hieroglyphs let us take the common sign kin, meaning “sun.” This sign appears regularly in the glyphs for the world directions east and west, the Mayan names being likin and chikin, and also in the month sign Yaxkin, and sometimes in that for Kankin. It also appears as the sign for the lowest period in the time count having the value of a single day and called kin ([Fig. 47]). Now this kin sign also appears in many undeciphered hieroglyphs and in some of these it seems likely that it has a phonetic value. Other signs with definite values in several glyphs are yax, tun, zac, etc. This general method of writing is seen in more decipherable form among the Aztecs. The glosses of the early priests that have proved so great a help in the case of the Aztecan writing are absent from the few Mayan documents.