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The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing

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The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing Part Om Discovery Compared to other ancient scripts, Maya writing was forgotten for a relatively short time. The script was in use when the Spaniards came to Yucatan, but it took only a few decades before the last literate survivors from the pre-Conquest period had passed away in the northern part of the penin- sula, Nonetheless, elsewhere in the Maya region, particularly in the Itza kingdom around Lake Peten, Maya peoples continued to write in hierogl~phsuntil the end of the seventeenth centu y. The first attempts by outsiders to understand the system were made only about a century and a half latev, by which time little knowledge of the script remained. Early Colonial writers noted the existence of books and a writing system, but the testimonies they le ft are, with few exceptions, lamentably short, vague, and misleading. Yet they do provide a wealth of information that merits close attention. While not exhaustive, the paragraphs here cover the majority of Colonial writings on the subject. We have avoided sources dealing with highland Guatemala and other parts ofMesoamerica, which might refer to othev, nonlogosyllabic forms of writing (pace Tedlock 1992; see Houston and Stuart 1992: 591). Perhaps the best evaluation of Colonial texts on Maya writing can be found in the first chapter ofJ. Eric S. Thompson's commen- tary on the Dresden Codex (1972a: 3-14. For early Colonial writers in Yucatan, there was no question about the identity and language of the creators of the script.' However, only a few years after Andre's de Avendafio y Loyola described the Maya books at Tayasal, the Isagoge histbrico-apologitica offered a hint of what was to become a basic problem for nineteenth-century authors. With time and population loss, scholars would disassociate the ancient remains of the Classic Maya fvom the contemporary Maya, partic- ularly in the southern Lowlands. Antiquarians devised imaginative explanations for the existence of cities and monuments, often phrasing their discussions in terms of ancient migvations from the Old World. The author of the Isagoge was probably the fivst to seek an understanding of the insc+ tions through structural analysis alone, without relating the texts to the modern inhabitants or languages of the area. By the last quarter of the eighteenth centuty exploration ofMaya sites had begun in earnest under the auspices of the Spanish crown, with the ruins of Palenque as their main focus. Jose' de Estacheria, Colonial governor of Guatemala between 1784 and 1789, provided the impetus for two formal research expeditions to Palenque, both of which produced reports and drawings of the buildings, sculptures, and hieroglyphs at the site. The results of the first expedition, undertaken by 22 Discovery architect Antonio Bernasconi in 1784, would not be printed until the twentieth century (Angulo Ifiijpez 1933-3 9; Castafieda Paganini 1946). Through unknown circumstances the results of the second expedition, directed by Captain Antonio Del Rio in 4 786, were to be translated into English and published in London in 1822, together with drawings of the reliefs and buildings made by artist Ignacio Armendhz (Del Rio and Cabrera 1822; H. Berlin 1970a). Earlieu, Alexander von Humboldt had published one ofArmendhriz's drawings of Palenque, as well as five pages of the Dresden Codex (Humboldt 18/10), but at that point he did not recognize their true cultural afilia- tion. Del Rio's book was the first to call international attention to the ancient remains in the jungles of CentralAmerica. Del Rio and others soon recognized that the hieroglyphs in some ofArmenddriz's drawings represented writing. Although inaccurate by modern standards, these drawings supplied the basis for the early, and partly successful, interpretations of Constantine Rafinesque and James H. McCulloh, both much-neglected by Mesoamericanist scholarship (G. Stuart 1989), particularly in relation to later North American involvement in Maya archaeology. The aesthetic appeal ofMaya art to Westerners, along with the existence of a well-developed writing system, influenced discussions about the degree of civilization among peoples of the New World, a debate that troubled both sides of the Atlantic tom the eighteenth century on (Gerbi 1973). This dispute ofien carried political connotations. In the emerging states of Central and South America, early nationalists used such evidence to support their aspirations to independence and equal standing with the nations of Europe. This also held true in the United States, where a quest for national reafFration involved early attention to ancient Maya art as well as to the "Mound builder" cultures ofNorth America. These nationalist intellectual movements rejected claims of Old World origins for New World cultures, a position that found full expression in the writings ofJohn L. Stephens (see Ortega y Medina 1953, 1990). Rafiulesque and McCulloh had scant and ill-copied glyphic material at their disposal. Later scholars benefited from the independence of the Spanish colonies and the expansion of the world capitalist economy, which led to more direct contact with Europe and the possibility of more open travel. Soon hieroglyphic material became available through a variety ofpublications, many of them investigative reports: Captain Guillermo Dupaix (1834), who visited Palenque and Tonina in 1809-10 under the sponsorship of the Spanish crown, published a profusely illustrated account of his explorations;Juan Galindo eventually reported on his travels to Palenque and Copan, the latter under commission tom the government of Guatemala (Galindo 1831, 1835); Jean-Fre'de'ric Waldeck offered his flamboyant account ofMexican travels in 1838. The most extravagant publi- cation by far was Lord Edward Kingsborough's (1830) reproduction of the Dresden Codex. By mid-century, Stephens's narrative description of his travels together with Catherwood's illustrations provided an extensive corpus of drawings with the accuracy necessary for serious interpretation (Stephens 1841, 1843). Systematic attempts to interpret the inscriptions did not occur, howeveu, until the discove ry of what appeared to be a bilingual (or, more correctly, bigraphic) "key": Diego de Landa's "ABC" (abecedario). Stimulated by this discovery, enthusiasts dedicated themselves to elucidating the "key" in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Since the writings of several of these authors appear elsewhere in this book, we have chosen to include here three contributions that are seldom read today: the early musings of Brasseur de Bourbourg, the noteworthy effort of another French pioneer, Le'on de Rosny, and the ideas ofDaniel G. Brinton, all of which provide some notion of state- ofthe-art epigraphy at the turn of the century. Discovery 23 NOTE 1. It would be misleading to say that Colonial authors writing outside Yucatan specif- ically described the Lowland Maya logosyllabic writing system. Some authors, however, including E. Thompson (1972a), have included Colonial descriptions of pre-Hispanic books from the Guatemala highlands in their discussions of Colonial sources on Maya writing. This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER ONE De Orbe Novo Decades, Fourth Decade Peter Martyr d'Anghiera Maya codices were included among the treasures sent by Herndn Cortis to Charles V in 1519 from the recently established town of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. Like other items in the treasury, these books excited the curiosity of European observers, who produced several descriptions of them (M. Coe 1989). The best comes from the pen of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, a celebrated humanist in the service of the Spanish crown. Peter Martyr was born in Arona, Milan, sometime between 1456 and 1457. Although his family appears to have been somewhat impoverished, he prized his noble descent, which allowed him to gain noble patronage and education. Living in Rome between 1477 and 1487, Martyr became a member of the highest intellectual circles, acquired an extensive knowledge in the clas- sics, and started his literary ventures. In 1487, he lefi Italy for Spain, attracted by the growing fame of the Catholic kings and with the desire to participate in their struggle against the Moors. He became a member of the Spanish court and several years later entered the priesthood, apparently to engage more closely in the intellectual debates of the country. At coun he served as a preceptor for noble children and was also entrusted with diplomatic missions to Bohemia and Egypt. Martyr witnessed and participated in the important events that accompanied the rise of the Spanish monarchy, and his correspondence (Angleria 1953-57) is an important source on the politics of his time. In 1518, he was appointed to the Royal Council of the Indies, where he was named "royal senator for the Indian matters" in 1519 and royal chronicler in 1520 (Kubler 1991: 43). Among several ecclesiastical benefits, he was given the ofie of abbot ofJamaica in 1524, a title he held for only two years, before dying in Granada in 1526. The discoveries of the Spaniards in the New World aroused enormous interest in Peter Martyr: De Orbe Novo Decades, his main work on the subject, consists of eight Latin letters written between 1493 and 1525, describing the Spanish ventures, which he knew from the reports of the conquerors and Pom personally interviewing voyagers to the New World. The letters contain valu- able information on New World populations, being one of the earliest written sources on the subject. The Fourth Decade is addressed to Pope Leo X. The clarity and detail of his description have allowed modern students to argue that the books so described are Mayan rather than Written in 1519 by Peter Martyr d7Anghiera (1456157-1526). Excerpted from Angleria 1989: 279-80. Translation following Coe 1989: 4-6, with modifications. Discovery Mexican (E. Thompson 19726: 3-4; M. Coe 1989). Clues for that assertion come from his descrip- tion of the material and form of the books, as well as the arrangement of script and figures.
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