Scribes, Literacy, and Education in Maya Society

The people who actually wrote the texts that fill the stelae, the lintels, the painted walls, and the bark-paper books of the ancient Maya were not anonymous functionaries but a recognized class of elite professionals. They were called ah ts’ib in the Classic-period inscriptions, a term that can be translated as “writer,” “scribe,” or “he of the brush.” They were attached to the royal courts of the major cities, where they served as the principal recorders of dynastic events and as the principal custodians of the calendrical, astronomical, and ritual knowledge of the period. They were also painters, sculptors, and diviners, and their craft required a long and demanding period of training.

This pages describes the social role of the scribe, the tools of the trade, and the conventions of scribal education. The script itself is treated on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system; the books that the scribes produced are treated on the page on the Maya codices and surviving books; the historical and political context is on the page on Maya writing, language, and books.

The Classic Maya social hierarchy placed the ah ts’ib at the highest ranks of the professional class, alongside the priests, the astronomers, and the architects. A few of them are known by name from inscriptions: the scribes K’inich Lakam Tuun and K’altuun Hix, who worked at Palenque and the court of Pakal in the seventh century, are among the most prominent. The names suggest that the scribes came from families of high standing, since the K’inich and K’altuun elements of the names are the kind of prestige names reserved for the royal lineages. The names also suggest that the scribes were members of the royal lineage, or at least closely connected to it.

The painted program of the so-called Apothecary of the Scribe at Bonampak, Yaxchilán, and the Usumacinta is the most famous depiction of a Maya scribe at work. The figure, who appears in a small chamber off the main gallery of the Acropolis at Bonampak, is shown with the tools of his trade: a brush in one hand, a small jar of paint in the other, and a codex spread out on a small table. The room is sometimes called the Apothecary because of the small jars and implements scattered around the figure, but the identification is uncertain; some scholars have suggested that the room is the office of a court official rather than a pharmacy. The figure is often identified as a scribe on the basis of the brush and the codex, and the identification has been generally accepted.

The painted program at Bonampak also shows the scribe as a member of the royal entourage. In the great murals of the Acropolis, the scribe appears alongside the king, the queen, the heir, the priests, the warriors, and the captives. The position of the scribe in the procession is significant: the scribe walks immediately behind the king, in a position of honor that places him among the highest ranks of the court.

The tools of the trade

The principal surface for writing in the ancient Maya was huun, a kind of bark paper manufactured by pounding and felting the inner bark of the wild fig tree, Ficus species. The process began with the cutting of a length of inner bark from a tree, the bark being peeled from the trunk in long strips. The strips were then laid out in overlapping layers, pounded with a stone or wooden mallet until the fibers matted together, and then coated with a thin layer of fine lime stucco to give a smooth, white writing surface. The process is described in colonial sources and is still practiced in parts of highland Guatemala, where huun paper is used in the ceremonies of the year-bearers and the day-keepers.

Pens were made of animal hair, especially the hair of small mammals, and of hollow bird bone. The animal-hair brushes were used for the larger strokes, and the bird-bone pens for the fine detail. The bone pens have been recovered in caches at Bonampak, Calakmul, and Tikal, and are a key piece of evidence for the conventions of Maya writing. The most spectacular set of writing implements ever recovered archaeologically is the Burial 116 tomb cache of the early Classic king at Tikal, which included Spondylus and Strombus shell ornaments, jade, and the carved bones of a jaguar — interpreted by some as the remains of a writing implement.

Pigments were mineral and organic: black from soot and charcoal, red and orange from hematite, blue from indigo, and a brilliant sky-blue (the famous “Maya blue”) from indigo mixed with the clay palygorskite. The paint pots that are sometimes recovered archaeologically are the principal source for the conventions of Maya painting. The painted walls of the Bonampak murals are an example of the use of these pigments on a large scale.

The scribal curriculum

Scribal training in the ancient Maya world is a topic on which we have only the most fragmentary information, but the painted programs at Bonampak and the comparisons with colonial and modern Highland Maya pedagogy make it clear that the scribal curriculum was long and demanding. The conventions of inscription are consistent across the corpus, from the earliest stelae of the Classic period to the latest monuments of the Postclassic, and the conventions are sufficiently complex that a modern epigrapher needs years of training to read them. The conventions of inscription are reviewed in detail on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system.

The colonial and post-colonial Maya traditions preserve a number of conventions of scribal education. The K’iche’ of highland Guatemala preserved, into the late twentieth century, a tradition of glyphic divination in which a ajq’ij (day-keeper) would consult the 260-day Tzolkin and the 365-day Haab’ to determine the ritual obligations of a given day. The K’iche’ day-keeper was a kind of professional scribe, with a long period of apprenticeship under an older practitioner. The conventions of the day-keeper are described in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The colonial Maya schools, the calpul, trained boys and girls in a curriculum that included the reading and writing of the script, the calculation of the calendar, and the recitation of ritual and mythological texts. The schools were supported by the colonial authorities and, in the early colonial period, by the indigenous communities themselves. The conventions of the colonial schools are described in the works of the Franciscan and Dominican friars, including the Arte de la lengua maya of the friar Pedro Beltrán de Santa Rosa (1746) and the Calepino de Motul of the friar Antonio de Ciudad Real.

The painted scribes

Maya scribes are often shown in the painted programs of the royal courts, both as named individuals on monuments and as anonymous figures in the painted murals. The most famous of these painted programs is the Bonampak Acropolis, but the convention is widespread. At Palenque and the court of Pakal, a small number of stelae depict scribes with the tools of their trade. At Tikal, the heart of the Classic Maya world, the Burial 116 cache includes the carved bones of a jaguar that are sometimes interpreted as the remains of a writing implement. At Copán and the dynasty of the 18-Rabbit, the Hieroglyphic Stairway records the names of the scribes who carved it, a long list that gives a sense of the size of the scribal class at a major royal court.

The painted scribes are often shown with a brush in one hand and a small jar of paint in the other, and they are often shown with a codex or a folded paper spread out on a small table. The pose is consistent across the corpus, and is a key piece of evidence for the conventions of Maya writing. The painted program at Bonampak is reviewed in detail in the page on what does the Bonampak mural show, and the painted program at Yaxchilán is reviewed in the page on Maya murals, painting, and iconography.

Literacy in the ancient Maya world

Maya literacy in the early Colonial period was high enough to support both the production of local doctrinal texts and the chicanery practiced by friars and indigenous assistants. The Diccionario de Motul, the Calepino de Sahagún, and the eighteenth-century dictionaries of colonial Yucatán preserve a technical vocabulary for the parts of a glyph, the qualities of paper, and the stages of instruction. The technical vocabulary is a key source for the modern reconstruction of the conventions of Maya writing, and is a reminder that the Maya had a sophisticated tradition of philological and pedagogical thought.

The colonial Maya literacy rate is sometimes estimated to have been as high as fifty percent of the adult male population, although the figure is contested. The estimate is consistent with the survival of a large number of colonial Maya texts, including the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Tizimín, and Kaua, the Books of the Jaguar, and the Popol Vuh of highland Guatemala. The colonial texts are reviewed in detail on the page on what happened to most of the Maya books.

The Isim K’uh and the esoteric register

A particular feature of the scribal tradition is the Isim K’uh, the “loss of the god’s essence,” a process in which the syllabic signs of a word are spread across the various elements of a glyph block to create a visual pun. The convention is described in detail on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system, and the convention is closely related to the personification of syllabic signs, in which a syllable sign is dressed up as a deity or mythological animal.

The Isim K’uh is an esoteric register, used chiefly in the inscriptions of the late Classic period and in the Postclassic codices. The convention is one of the most distinctive features of Maya writing, and is one of the things that makes the script so different from the modern alphabetic systems that we are used to. The convention is reviewed in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The scribal class and the political order

The scribal class was closely tied to the political order. The inscriptions of the major royal courts record the accessions, marriages, captures, and deaths of named kings, and the conventions of inscription reflect the conventions of the court. The ah ts’ib served the king, and the king’s legitimacy was recorded in the inscriptions that the ah ts’ib produced. The convention is reviewed in the page on Maya society, politics, and daily life.

The scribal class was also closely tied to the priestly class. The priests served as the principal interpreters of the calendar and the rituals, and the scribes served as the principal recorders of the priests’ interpretations. The convention is reviewed in the page on Maya priesthood and shamanism. The painted program at Bonampak shows the king in the company of the priests and the scribes, and the position of the scribes in the procession is a reminder of the close relationship between the scribal and the priestly classes.

The survival of the scribal tradition

The scribal tradition survived the Spanish conquest, in diminished form, into the colonial and post-colonial periods. The K’iche’ of highland Guatemala preserved a tradition of glyphic divination into the late twentieth century, and the tradition is still practiced in some communities. The colonial and post-colonial Maya traditions are reviewed in the page on the modern Maya: identity and survival, and the conventions of the K’iche’ day-keeper are reviewed in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The conventions of the modern day-keeper are a useful reminder of the conventions of the ancient scribal tradition. The day-keeper consults the 260-day Tzolkin and the 365-day Haab’ to determine the ritual obligations of a given day, and the conventions of the day-keeper are consistent with the conventions of the ancient inscriptions. The convention is a piece of evidence for the continuity of the Maya scribal tradition from the Classic period to the present.

Sources

Coe, M. D. & Van Stone, M. (2005). Reading the Maya Glyphs (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Houston, S. D. (2004). The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. — link
Martin, S. & Grube, N. (2008). Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Boot, E. (2009). The Updated Preliminary Classic Maya–English / English–Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings. Wayeb. — link
Knorozov, Y. V. (1952). Ancient writing of Central America. Sovetskaya Etnografiya, 3. — [link](https://www.worldcat.org/title/sovet skaia-etnografiia/oclc/60638864)
Proskouriakoff, T. (1971). Commoners in Classic Maya sculpture. In Memoirs of the Peabody Museum vol. 6. Peabody Museum, Harvard. — link