Reading the Maya Glyphs
The deciphering of Maya hieroglyphic writing either listed on the monuments, or written in the manuscripts, or painted or carved on ceramics, can be read easily with some confidence now. Such decipherment had completely changed our knowledge about the ancient civilization, and gave the Mayan people a long history that other areas are missing it especially from the New World in Columbia before. Many years ago, the scientific knowledge of this type of script was confined on the scientists and art historians and other specialists.
And because it was not familiar to the public, it seems to be difficult as it is consisting of about 800 marks, and this had made it as a more complex and ambiguous system than they are. The author of this book Michael D. Co. and photographer Mark Van Stone succeeded in collecting a rich scientific material about this great civilization and this rich writing and presented it to us in the form of this valuable book. The Calligraphy center had translated this book due to the lack of the Arabic references about this culture and its writings.
Among the Topics that are included and mentioned in this book is the nature of this script, the Mayan calendar, and texts of the ruling families and politics, and every aspect of the natural world and the extraordinary that have lived. Almost 160 years ago, the jungle-shrouded ruins of the ancient Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America were discovered.
The Maya script is a somewhat difficult on, both in its underlying structure and in the way scribes rang variations on it. Yet the subject matter of most public inscriptions, like those of ancient Egypt, is relatively restricted, and there is much repetition and redundancy.
As in Egypt, among the Maya there was a strong linkage between text and picture, one providing a commentary on the other. The book has presumed no previous knowledge of the Maya or their script. The main aim is to take the reader step by step into decipherment, with examples taken from real texts. And the hope is to help the beginning and intermediate students to be able to read relatively the simple texts and to gain a deeper understanding of the remarkable civilization that produced them.
This book consists of an introduction and twelve chapters, in addition to illustration examples and a Syllabary for the Maya Script.
Chapter one is giving an overview about the Maya Civilization, and how it was arose, flourished and died in the tropical lowlands of south-eastern Mexico and neighboring Central America. Thanks to the modern decipherment as it provided us with a fairly accurate picture of Classic Maya society and politics.
Chapter two is about the nature of the Maya script, starting from its principals, and some conventions for transcribing the Maya Glyphs, the Morphosyllabic signs, the Syllabograms, ending with some grammar rules which include the nouns, gender, pronouns, verbs and adjectives.
Chapter three is continuing describing this interesting script, and it is about the time and the calendar. The ancient Maya had a deep knowledge of naked-eye astronomy, and the movement of the visible planets and of the sun and the moon. In this chapter, one can read about the numerals and the Calendar Round of the Mayans, including the 260-day count and the Maya month signs.
Chapter four is about the Royal rites and the royal rituals within the Mayans; starting from their birth dates of both living rulers and supernatural ancestral deities that were noted with great care. Then it moves to the idea of the accession, as the most significant event in the life of a royal personage was his accession to power. Then the writer moves to the idea of the death and burial and the ritual activities that were celebrated by rulers and their families throughout their lives.
As for the places and the politics it was discussed in chapter five, were there is valuable information about the emblem glyphs which follow the personal names or the names of royal personages kings and their wives. In addition to the Toponyms which include the names of the places of the Maya city.
Chapter six is talking about the dynastic names and titles for the kings and the supreme ruler of the city-state polity. In addition to the list of all the rulers of every major Maya city-state. Relationships were an important subject that was presented by
the author, including the parentage statements: The spouse and the Siblings.
Chapter eight is about the warfare, where one can read the glyphs related to the general war, and the procedures of taking the prisoners.
Scribes and artists and the ceramic texts were described in chapters nine and ten. The author had expressed this point through the users of the brush pens, the carvers, in addition to this; he mentioned other titles for artists and scribes.
The author here in this book had described the Mayan society by the supernatural world. he mentioned that although there was no word religion in the Maya, yet they are still deeply religious people. They had major gods; some of them connected with agriculture others with daily life and some with the elites and the royal lineage. In this part, there is a list about the major gods and the paired gods and the triads. There was also the death gods and the way the spirit-companions.
The inanimate and animate worlds were an important final subject in the book, it focuses on the physical world and the directions the sky and the earth in the Mayan glyphs, then it moves to the humans and animals as an example for the living world, then to the buildings and structures and the vessels as an example of the non living.
Most of the previous chapters include different exercises to teach the reader step by step on how he can read the Maya glyphs, in addition to the answers that are found at the end of the book.
Also there are illustration examples photographed by Mark Van Stone, which include the drawings and photographs which will introduce the reader to some real texts, carved, painted, or drawn on a wide variety of materials. In the end, there is a syllabary and the Maya lexicon which includes the Maya glyphs.
The Calligraphy center had translated and published this book into Arabic. It was translated by a group of professors who are specialized in the field of translation as Dr Isahaq Ebeid, Dr Mervat Fashal and Dr. Mustafa Riad. Ahmed Mansour, Azza Ezzat, Yasmin Abdou and Radwa Zaki had also participated in the translation of the book and were able to present the idea of this book into Arabic easily, despite the accuracy of the subject and specialization. Dr. Mohammed Abdul Ghani had reviewed the Arabic language for this book and gave careful attention to adjust and compare it with the English version, in a very simple way free from any complications.