![]() ![]() Today most Mayan texts can be read, though there are still some unknown glyphs.Ī gripping account of the decipherment of the Mayan script can be found in Breaking the Maya Code, by Micheal D. His ideas were not welcomed by other Mayanists, but he was eventually proved correct.įurther progress in the decipherment was made during the 1970s and 1980s when more linguistics began to take an interest in the script. The first major breakthrough in decipherment came during the 1950s when a Russian ethnologist, Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov, proposed that the Mayan script was at least partly phonetic and represented the Yucatec Mayan language. This became known as the Landa Alphabet and helped with the decipherment of the script, even though it was based on the false premise that the script was alphabetic.įor a long time many scholars believed that the script did not represent a language at all, or that it wasn't a complete writing system. In about 1566, the first bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, compiled a key to the Mayan syllabary consisting of 27 Spanish letters and the Mayan glyphs with similar sounds. Recent archeological finds indicate that the Mayan civilisation started much earlier: around 3,000 BC. The earliest known writing in the Mayan script dates from about 250 BC, but the script is thought to have developed at an earlier date. ![]() Scanning the news for any cataclysmic events? (20.12.The Mayan civilisation lasted from about 500 BC to 1200 AD, with a classical period from 300-900 AD.To show you, how a quick and dirty digital result could look like, I prepared the glyph of my first name and also the one of someone else. If Thomas would go to Guatemala and present his glyph to a Maya, he would say “Welcome Tomas!”, which is great. When you have aligned all the symbols in the proper way, you can see your name in a Mayan Glyph. Digitally it might be a bit tricky to add transparency first, so you might want to draw it first. You have to draw or digitally align the glyphs in that order. You can easily order up to nine syllables. And don’t worry, readers with long names. You are free to pick the style you like most. There are three different ways to write three syllables. Look for a glyph design that fits the number of syllables you have, three in our example. Those fixed orders you can find on page 31. In the end, someone has to read it again – and you don’t want to end up being called “Masato” instead of “Thomas”. Now that we sorted out all the single syllables, we have to order them. Find out which one you like most and try around. You can choose one, which makes in a wonderful, artistic work. There might be several possible symbols in the field of the syllable you look for. Simply sort out your symbols, copy them from the file, if you want to try it digitally. “To” we can find on page 22 for example, in the line for T and the column for O. ![]() On the left side, you see a consonant, the columns show the vowels. There you try to find the glyphs, that represent your syllables. If you have split your name into syllables, now you move to the charts starting at page 18. Thomas, congratulations, you just gained a syllable! If your name would be Thomas, the second syllable obviously doesn’t end in a syllable, so you have to make it end, by adding a syllable with a silent vowel. Mayan syllables always end in a vowel, which means, that you have to improvise a with. It’s really worth reading it, however, I want to point you to the important part for writing your names.įollowing the steps starting at page 34, you first have to divide your name into syllables, cause the single glyph parts stand for syllables. Now, if you downloaded book 1 – The complete Writing in Maya Glyphs Book 1 – Names, Places, and Simple Sentences – you will be confronted with a big paper. I will come back to Mark Pitts later again. For that purpose, I want to present to you “Writing in Mayan Glyphs” by Mark Pitts, hosted on the wonderful friends over at. It’s a fascinating thing to do and it raises your understanding of glyphs in general, even though you don’t have to learn one word of a Mayan language. Today, I want to give you the possibility to write your name in Mayan glyphs, or simply mess around with glyphs.
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