Who First Deciphered Maya Writing?

The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing is one of the great intellectual achievements of twentieth-century scholarship, and one of the most unusual. It was not the work of a single genius, as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs had been the work of Champollion in 1822. It was the cumulative work of several generations of scholars, working on different aspects of the problem in different countries, who finally came together in the 1970s and 1980s to produce a fully phonetic reading of the script. The four key figures in the decipherment were the Russian structuralist Yuri Knorozov, the American linguist David Kelley, the epigrapher Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and the German-born art historian Heinrich Berlin. A later generation — Linda Schele, David Stuart, Peter Mathews, Stephen Houston, Nikolai Grube, and others — applied and extended the decipherment to thousands of new monuments.

The script that they deciphered is described in detail on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system. The books that they studied are described on the page on the Maya codices and surviving books. The broader context is reviewed on the page on Maya writing, language, and books.

The state of the field before Knorozov

The first European attempts to read the Maya script are conventionally dated to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and they were largely unsuccessful. The traveller Jean-Frédéric Waldeck claimed in 1838 to have deciphered the inscriptions, but his claims rested on fantasy rather than method. The American lawyer and amateur archaeologist Ephraim George Squier published a number of speculative readings in the 1850s, but the readings were based on little more than imagination. The French scholar Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg had a similar ambition, but his reading of the Maya script as a Semitic language is now generally dismissed.

The first systematic description of the script is the work of the British scholar Alfred Maudslay, who photographed and published the major inscriptions of the central Maya lowlands in the 1880s and 1890s. Maudslay’s photographs are still the standard reference for the state of the monuments at the end of the nineteenth century, and they were the basis for most of the subsequent work in the field. The American archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, who published The Inscriptions of Petén in 1937–1938, brought the field to a new level of systematic description. The British scholar J. Eric Thompson, who published Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction in 1950 and A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs in 1962, brought the field to its highest level of description before the modern decipherment. Thompson was, however, skeptical that the script recorded a Mayan language, and his skepticism was to delay the decipherment by a generation.

The most important of the early sources for the script is the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (c. 1566) of the bishop Diego de Landa, which contained what is now known as the Landa “alphabet” — a partial syllabary of Spanish letters and Maya signs. The “alphabet” is a partial syllabary of the CV signs, with the addition of a few logograms, and was the basis of the modern phonetic reading. Landa’s “alphabet” is reproduced and discussed in the page on what happened to most of the Maya books.

Yuri Knorozov and the phonetic breakthrough

The first scholar to argue systematically that the script was phonetic was the Russian structuralist Yuri Knorozov, who published The Ancient Writing of the Maya and the Question of its Decipherment in Moscow in 1952, in a revised version in 1963, and in an English translation in 1967. Knorozov argued, on the basis of a careful reading of the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán of Diego de Landa and of the few surviving inscriptions, that the Landa “alphabet” was, in fact, a partial syllabary, and that the script was therefore phonetic in the same way that the Japanese kana is phonetic. The argument was a breakthrough, and it was the foundation of the modern decipherment.

Knorozov’s work was largely ignored in the West for nearly a generation. The political circumstances of the Cold War made it difficult for Western scholars to obtain copies of his books, and the few who did were often dismissive of his approach. Knorozov was, in addition, a structuralist in the tradition of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and his work was thought to be inaccessible to Western scholars. The argument was taken up by a small number of Western scholars in the 1960s, including David Kelley in the United States and Thomas Barthel in Germany, and the argument was finally accepted as a working hypothesis by the field in the 1970s.

David Kelley and the syllabary

The American linguist David H. Kelley, who had been a student of the Yucatec Maya and a reader of Knorozov, took up the phonetic argument in the 1960s and applied it systematically to the inscriptions. Kelley’s contribution was to develop a phonetic syllabary, building on the Knorozov reading of the Landa “alphabet” and on the comparative phonology of the Mayan languages, and to apply the syllabary to a number of specific inscriptions. The result was a body of readings that, while not always correct in detail, was systematic and consistent with the comparative phonology of the Mayan languages. Kelley’s work was the foundation of the modern phonetic reading, and his syllabary is the basis of the current Thompson–Coe–Kelley syllabary.

Kelley’s work was first summarized in his Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (1962) and in his Deciphering Maya Glyphs (1976). The work was taken up by a small number of other scholars in the 1970s, including Peter Mathews, Barbara MacLeod, and Linda Schele, and the work was finally applied to the inscriptions in a systematic way in the 1970s and 1980s.

Heinrich Berlin and the Emblem Glyphs

The German-born art historian Heinrich Berlin, working at the Instituto Nacional Indigenista in Mexico City and later at the Dumbarton Oaks research library, made a complementary contribution to the decipherment. In a 1958 paper in the American Antiquity journal, Berlin argued that certain glyphs in the inscriptions — which he called the Emblem Glyphs — were the names of individual city-states, and that the inscriptions could therefore be read as records of specific political entities. The argument was based on a careful analysis of the geographic distribution of the Emblem Glyphs, and on the observation that each Emblem Glyph was associated with a particular archaeological site.

Berlin’s argument was a breakthrough of a different kind. By identifying the Emblem Glyphs as the names of city-states, Berlin was able to reconstruct the political geography of the Classic Maya lowlands, and to identify the major centers of political power. The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

Tatiana Proskouriakoff and the historical breakthrough

The American architect and epigrapher Tatiana Proskouriakoff made a complementary contribution to the decipherment, in a paper published in 1960 in the American Antiquity journal and reprinted in her A Study of Classic Maya Inscriptions (1974, posthumous). Proskouriakoff had been studying the inscriptions of the site of Piedras Negras, on the Usumacinta River, and she noticed that the inscriptions of the central plaza of the site recorded a series of events that could be matched to the life of a single named individual. The events included a birth, an accession, a marriage, the capture of prisoners, and a death. Proskouriakoff argued, on the basis of the correspondence, that the inscriptions were genuinely historical, and that the Initial Series dates could be linked to real persons.

Proskouriakoff’s argument was a breakthrough of the first order. The argument showed that the inscriptions could be read as historical records, and it set the agenda for the subsequent decipherment. The argument was, in addition, an important corrective to the prevailing view of the inscriptions as calendrical or ritual, and it made the decipherment a matter of historical interest. The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The Schele / Stuart era

The generation that applied the phonetic reading to thousands of new monuments included, most prominently, the American epigrapher Linda Schele and her student David Stuart, who worked together at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1970s and 1980s. Schele brought a new visual sensitivity to the study of the monuments, and her Maya Glyph Dancers (1982) and subsequent works revolutionized the field. Stuart, who began as an undergraduate and became one of the most influential epigraphers of his generation, made a number of important contributions to the reading of the script, including the identification of the sign for the Ajaw day and the systematic application of the Isim K’uh convention.

The Schele / Stuart era produced a number of important reference works, including the Maya Cosmos: Myth, Astronomy, and Warfare (1993) by Schele, David Freidel, and Joy Parker; the Codex of Maya History (1990) by Schele and Nikolai Grube; the Maya Vase Book (1997) by Justin Kerr; and a number of important articles in the Texas Notes on Maya Epigraphy and in the Mayab journal. The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The era also produced a generation of students who went on to become the leading epigraphers of the next generation, including David Mora-Marín, Joel Skidmore, Mark Zender, Christophe Helmke, and Simon Martin. The era also produced a number of important collaborations with linguists, including the Project for the Standardization of the Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, which produced a standard reference list of signs and their values.

The Project of Maya Hieroglyphic Decipherment

The Project of Maya Hieroglyphic Decipherment, founded in 1990 by Linda Schele and Robert Wald, was a major force in the field for the next two decades. The project, based at the University of Texas at Austin, produced a number of important reference works, including the Maya Glyph Dictionary of Eric Thompson, the Maya Hieroglyphic Database of John Montgomery, and the Codex of Maya History of Schele and Grube. The project also supported a number of important conferences and workshops, and it was a major source of funding for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

The project was wound down in 2005, but its legacy is still felt in the field. The conventions of the project are the standard conventions of the modern discipline, and the publications of the project are the standard reference works of the field. The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The standard reference works

The standard reference works of the modern field are, in approximate order of importance:

The Peabody Museum Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, published in fascicles since 1975.
The Maya Hieroglyphic Database of John Montgomery, hosted by FAMSI.
The Maya Vase Book of Justin Kerr, in its eighth volume.
The Codex of Maya History of Schele and Grube.
The Maya Cosmos of Schele, Freidel, and Parker.
The Maya Decipherment blog of David Stuart.
The Mesoweb journal.
The Glyph Digitisation Project.

The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

Houston, Stuart, and the current generation

The current generation of epigraphers includes Stephen Houston of Brown University, David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, Nikolai Grube of the University of Bonn, Simon Martin of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Marc Zender of Tulane University, Christophe Helmke of the University of Copenhagen, and a number of other scholars. Houston, who has been one of the most influential epigraphers of the last two decades, made a number of important contributions to the reading of the script, including the identification of the sign for the verb to walk and the systematic application of the conventions of the calendar. Stuart, who is the son of the painter Gene Stuart, has continued the work of Schele at the University of Texas, and has produced a number of important reference works, including the Maya Decipherment blog and the Glyph Digitisation Project.

Grube, who was the director of the project of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions at the Peabody Museum for many years, has produced a number of important reference works, including the Codex of Maya History with Schele and a number of important studies of the dynasties of the major sites. Martin, who is the senior epigrapher at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, has produced a number of important studies of the political history of the Classic Maya, including Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2008, second edition 2020) with Nikolai Grube. Zender, who is a professor at Tulane University, has produced a number of important studies of the script, including A Syllabic Orthography for the Maya Script (2004, doctoral thesis) and a number of important reference works on the Isim K’uh convention.

The current state of the field

The current state of the field is the result of roughly fifty years of work, beginning with the establishment of the phonetic values of the syllabary in the 1970s and continuing through the publication of electronic resources and the systematic application of digital imaging in the 2000s and 2010s. A new generation of epigraphers — most of them trained in graduate programs at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Calgary, and a small number of European institutions — can read roughly 90 percent of the surviving texts in some form, can read a large fraction of those texts fluently, and is making progress on the rest. The convention is reviewed in detail in the page on how do scholars read Maya hieroglyphs today.

The future of the field is bright. The application of new technologies — three-dimensional scanning, photogrammetry, machine learning — is producing new readings of monuments that were previously unreadable. The application of new methods — corpus linguistics, digital imaging, comparative philology — is producing new insights into the conventions of the script. The conventions of the modern Maya day-keeper are providing a new source of evidence for the conventions of the ancient inscriptions. The field is in a period of rapid growth, and the next generation of epigraphers is making important contributions of its own.

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