This chapter addresses the semi-deciphered written language of the Classic Maya, whose cultural area extended over territories of the present-day nation states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Maya hieroglyphic writing, which was used between around 300 BC and AD 1500, is a mixed, morpho-graphic and syllabic system comparable to Egyptian hieroglyphs or cuneiform writing systems. Hieroglyphic texts, often associated with complex imagery and narrative scenes, have survived on more than 12,000 monuments, architectural elements and portable objects. The sign inventory comprises around 1000 pictorial elements depicting figurative and abstract objects from the natural environment, material culture, human and animal body parts, or portraits of supernaturals, among other contexts (Fig. 6.1).
Considerable breakthroughs have already been achieved in the decipherment of Classic Mayan writing during recent decades (Houston 2000; Houston and Martin 2016).
Despite the great progress made, however, approximately 30% of the script’s 1000 signs remain unreadable even today (Fig. 6.2). Maya texts still elude full understanding because Classic Mayan, the language of the hieroglyphs, has itself not survived;
instead, it can only be reconstructed through historical linguistic comparison among the 30-odd Mayan languages that have been documented since European conquest, most of which are still spoken today (Wichmann 2006). Much Classic Mayan vocabulary has been lost since the decline of the written culture in the tenth century and the hieroglyphs’ complete abandonment in the aftermath of European colonisation in the sixteenth century; meanings and translations must now be deduced from co-texts
1 I would like to thank Sven Gronemeyer, Mallory Matsumoto, and Elisabeth Wagner for productive discussions and constructive criticism of the text. Mallory Matsumoto also kindly corrected the English of the original draft.
Fig. 6.1. Map of the Yucatan peninsula with major archaeological sites. Drawing by N. Grube and U. Lohoff-Erlenbach, all rights reserved.
and context. For this reason, although we can read large portions of text phonetically, the meaning of many words, phrases or even entire texts still remains unexplored.
In my contribution to this conference volume, I focus less on the linguistic, epigraphic and palaeographic domain of Maya writing and more on certain semiotic aspects that become apparent upon exploring Classic Maya imagery and hieroglyphic
Fig. 6.2. Extract from the Maya hieroglyphic catalogue showing signs representing birds, deers, jaguars, jaguar tail, and other objects. Drawings by C. Prager.
texts. Beside epigraphy and linguistics, semiotic approaches are key to the study of Classic Mayan written culture. The work of a historian not only addresses the material legacies of past societies, but also represents an archaeology of thoughts and minds:
using written sources, historical research attempts to delve into past systems of ideas, values and conceptions to draw conclusions about the intellectual world underlying the cultural achievements of a so called ‘interpretative community’ (Fish 1980).
Methodologically, this approach primarily relies on semiotic artefacts, which were intentionally used as instruments for indirectly communicating messages. Moreover, these artefacts functioned as indices that evoked stored knowledge and experiences and established analogies with other signs. Scientific research on the intellectual achievements of a past community thus focuses on all those public representations which, as communicative artefacts based on language or visual codes, encode and convey knowledge (Martin 2006). For Mesoamerican studies in general, these artefacts consist primarily of linguistic, semasiographical and iconic texts, as well as images on various media that provide insights into the beliefs, practices, intellectual world, conceptual systems of pre-Hispanic societies. If image and text are used in complement to each other, they constitute an overall message that is conveyed jointly by visual and linguistic codes (Reents-Budet 1989).
According to the theory of semiotics, texts themselves become signs that communicate meaning(s) that are not the signs themselves (Nöth 2000). The function and meaning of writing and texts as semiotic artefacts thus goes beyond their phonographic and discursive properties. Maya hieroglyphic texts are language made visible on writing surfaces that extend into two- and three-dimensional space. Writing thus has sensual, visual and communicative (and semiotic) potential for which there are no correspondences in spoken language. This visual-iconographic dimension of writing is best described as ‘notational iconicity’, making writing and text ‘a hybrid construct in which the discursive and the iconic intersect’ (Krämer 2003, 519).
Maya scribes made use of the hybrid property of writing when designing texts and introduced several semiotic modes or vehicles to transport meanings beyond the text. Aspects of notational iconicity that the Maya scribe used to imbue hieroglyph texts with a further level of communicative meaning included, but were not limited to: the shape and arrangement of text fields, the varying size of inscriptions, their elevation or embedding in the text carrier, the play of text and character sizes, the three-dimensionality and ‘animation’ of graphs, colourful accentuations, different sculpting styles within a single text carrier, and applying pseudo-writing or so called
‘ugly writing’ as decorative elements (Houston 2018a; 2018b; Martin 2006) (Fig. 6.3).
Among the Classic Maya, big writing, for example, not only facilitated visibility and legibility from far away, but was also motivated by the notion that big writing, big text carriers and supersized glyphs existed as places or livingobjects (Houston 2015).
A selection of other such ‘stylistic devices’ with semiotic functions that have been little researched to date will be presented and discussed in the following sections.
I would like to begin my contribution with a brief overview of the writing system
Fig. 6.3. 3D model of Stela 1 from the archaeological site of La Amelia, Peten, Guatemala (scan by project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan).
in its cultural and historical context. I will continue the discussion with the idea that Mayan texts and images represent semiotic artifacts that convey non-linguistic meanings, ideas and intentions that are not expressed in words and images. The relationship between text and image and its semiotic potential is the focus of the concluding section, which contains a theoretical discussion complemented by text and image examples from the Classical period.
Maya writing and its context
As a visual language, Classic Mayan has survived in thousands of hieroglyphic texts that were created in and around royal palaces. Only scribes, painters, sculptors and court officials could write; there is no reason to assume widespread literacy (Houston 1994).
Thus, most public and private inscriptions often exhibit biographical information on political elites and provide written evidence for inter‐ and intra‐dynastic connections between the ruling families. Others attest to ceremonies and religious rituals carried out in the context of accessions to the throne, ancestor worship, calendrical anniversaries, inaugurations, processions and other occasions that marked royal daily life (Stuart 1998). According to texts from the Classic period (AD 250–900), rulers and vassals of petty states often competed for regional and superregional supremacy, as well as for control of resources and trade and communication routes (Martin and Grube 1995).
Royal authority was based on religion, and rulers attained political power through marriage and political alliances, hegemonic strategies, resource control and warfare (Grube 2010). Rulers regarded themselves as divine kings (Stuart and Houston 1996);
they made their claim to power through writing and images as well as the construction of imposing architecture in the centre of their city‐states, all of which were used by divine kings as backdrops for public performances and expressions of their all‐
encompassing authority (Houston 1998). In this context, written and pictorial records, especially those on stone, wood, ceramics, bone and fig‐bark paper, not only served as vehicles for cultural memory at the time, but today form the most important material basis for reconstructing elite history and culture.
The Maya writing system is considered a hieroglyphic script because of the iconic character of its approximately constituent 1000 graphs. Typologically, it is a logosyllabic, or rather a morphographic-syllabic writing system with two basic, functional sign types: syllabic signs and morphographs (Fig. 6.4). The latter denote concrete words and bound morphemes, whereas the former represent vowels and open (CV) syllables and thus permit syllabic spellings of lexical and grammatical morphemes. In addition, syllabic signs were used as phonetic complements that were pre- or post-fixed to morphographs. Thus, it was possible to write words entirely with syllabic signs, by using morphographs alone or by combining the two sign types. To create a hieroglyphic text, signs were ‘squeezed and stacked’ into quadratic or rectangular blocks, the basic structural unit of a Classic Mayan text that usually corresponded to the emic concept of a word. These blocks were usually arranged in
Fig. 6.4. Examples of basic sign functions in Maya writing. Concept by C. Prager.
double columns to be read from left to right and from top to bottom. The elements within a block can be subdivided into main and small graphs, with the main graphs being spatially larger and approximately square in shape, and the small graphs attached to the periphery of the main characters and oriented along their vertical
or horizontal axis. These writing principles are consistent throughout the history of Maya writing, but texts and signs demonstrate a high degree of complexity and variation.
Today, researchers have identified a range of calligraphic principles with which not only individual graphemes, but also Classic Mayan words could be realised in a variety of ways (Zender 1999). The scribes aimed for a maximum of visual splendour and optical variation, and they may have even experienced a horror repetitionis in addition to a graphic and artistic horror vacui (Prager and Gronemeyer 2018). This is probably due to the fact that, in addition to text content, the high aesthetic quality of an overall work was meant to catch the eye, as were the individual skills of its creator;
monotony, conformity and repetition, it seems to today’s viewer of the hieroglyphs, were to be avoided, with calligraphic variation defining the work of a scribe and his school (Coe and Kerr 1997). To this end, a wide range of graphetic and graphemic principles or strategies was available to the scribes and sculptors for generating calligraphic complexity and extravaganza (Stuart and Houston 1989; Zender 1999;
Stuart et al. 1999; Mathews and Justeson 1984) (Fig. 6.5).
Semiotics of image and linguistic text
The main function of images and linguistic texts is to represent and transmit mental representations, such as ideas, thoughts or conceptions of the environment. A fundamental difference between image and text is the amount of information conveyed within the same time of perception. Since images are perceived holistically and simultaneously and have the potential to be associated with emotions, they are attention-grabbing Fig. 6.5. Graphotactic patterns in Maya writing: a) syllabic spellings of y=uk’ib ‘his drinking vessel’;
b) Different spellings of K’inich, the proper name of the Classic Maya sun god; c) scribal plays for the word kakaw ‘cacao’; d) two spellings of the word u=pakbu tuunil ‘his stone-lintel’. Concept by C. Prager.
and more memorable; linguistic information, on the other hand, is conveyed successively and linearly, and an utterance’s net information is therefore less than that may be conveyed by a single picture (Nöth 2000). According to Nöth, images and texts also possess different semiotic potentials which limit their possibilities of public representation in various areas. Images are ideal for spatial-visual representations that accurately reflect the position of objects within space; moreover, images are static and atemporal due to their two-dimensionality and are therefore better suited to representing a moment. Points of time, time periods and duration, on the other hand, can be more accurately described with language.
Semiotic differences between the media of image and text also come into play in representations of the visual and non-visual. One advantage of language is that although all images can be represented by language, ‘not everything represented linguistically can be visualised by images’ (Nöth 2000, 491). Whereas visual entities, such as objects, are represented by means of images or language, other sensory impressions are primarily represented by linguistic signs. Images and iconic symbols are used to objectify complex and difficult-to-process concepts whose interpretation is open and ambiguous, i.e., has no limited or predictable potential for drawing conclusions (Sperber 1975,160). The semiotic fuzziness of images is a consequence of their semantic openness, according to which images ‘are potentially infinitely interpretable and thus ‘underlaid’ with an infinite number of possible texts’ (Burger 1990, 300) and thus have the character of an open message (Barthes 1964). In this sense, an image supports the construction of knowledge and cognition. In contrast, meta-language and self-reference belong to the domain of language and are difficult to represent pictorially.
Speech acts, such as questions, requests, promises, or even negation, affirmation and logical relationships cannot be represented visually, according to Nöth (2000, 490–491).
Levels of understanding text and image
The meaning of a text or image lies in its use by an interpretative community (Fish 1980). Such communities are characterised by the fact that their members share a repertoire of agreed codes and conventions by means of which signs are ‘understood’, images are ‘seen’, texts are ‘read’ and messages are thus conveyed. Despite the different semiotic potential of text and image, both media assume a form that, due to its materiality, is perceived and processed first, before the user has grasped the intended content by interpreting the signs that it contains (Blazejewski 2002, 46). The design of images and texts thus constitutes a further level of meaning beyond what is represented in them; in other words, the style and layout can express an ‘overall message’ alongside the message conveyed by their contents. In the Classic Maya case, for instance, the colour and texture of image and text carriers, as well as the proportions used in designing image and text, convey an overarching idea in addition to the linguistic contents contained in the accompanying text (Kubler 1969; Martin 2006, 58 ff; Houston et al. 2009), as explained in the following section.
Signs are multimodal objects: they ideally have a constant materialisation and fulfil the indexical function of constituting relations between present and absent elements in certain contexts (i.e., meaning) (Dürscheid 2006, 223). Symbols, icons, pictures, etc., are ‘occupied’ according to the semiotic perspective and thus represent something for someone. In order for people to be able to communicate and constitute interpretative communities by means of signs, standardisations, conventions or norms of action must be agreed upon and learned. These codes regulate the ‘meaning’, or the application, function and form of signs and images, and thus make them communicable and communicative. The shape of a sign or an image represents a multimodal level of action, with whose help various associations with memory content can be established. Not only the sign and image as an integral whole, but also its shape (design) and mode of representation (style) evoke a perceptual experience that is linked to certain memory contents, thus focusing the attention of the recipient and evoking corresponding knowledge (Dürscheid 2006, 234–238; Martin 2006, 59).
Relations between text and image
In many writing cultures, linguistic text and image engage in a collaborative, multimodal coexistence that compensates for the aforementioned communicative weaknesses of each form of communication alone. The merging of linguistic and image codes creates a complementary semiotic relationship, on which basis images contribute to the understanding of a text and vice versa. What cannot be expressed by the image, such as time, non-visual sensory impressions, modes of the speech act, relations or causalities, can be elucidated by an additional, linguistic text. With the help of this descriptive commentary, the open and ambiguous nature of the image is channelled and transferred to the desired context of meaning (Sperber 1985, 20–21; Nöth 2000, 492; Straßner 2002, 30 ff).
In principle, the image-text relation raises the question of an overall message. Does an image with an associated linguistic text duplicate the information conveyed in each case – are the statements thus redundant – or do the media forms complement each other and are understood as a coherent whole (Barthes 1964)? The text-image relationships that constitute an overall message can be classified according to their redundancy, dominance and complementarity (Nöth 2000, 492). In the case of image-text redundancy, the image-text does not add any new information to the image or vice versa;
rather, both media forms refer to and thus duplicate the same information. Nöth describes this situation as double coding and assumes that it results in more effective retention by the viewer (2000, 492). When the image is more informative than the accompanying text, we speak of the dominance of image over text. But the opposite case may also occur in which the picture is subordinate to the text and only fulfils an illustrative function. Another relation is that of complementarity. Text and image can be classified as complementary if ‘both sources of information are necessary
to understand the overall meaning of the text-image combination (i.e. the text has gaps which are filled by the image and vice versa’ (Nöth 2000, 493). A special form of complementarity is the indexical relation between text and image. In this case, both media forms are anchored together by a linguistic or iconic index. For instance, the linguistic text appears in a closed field and functions as an index that explicitly refers to the image or its components, thus controlling interpretation of that image.
Classic Maya text-image relations
Compared to linguistic texts, images are semiotically more productive for representing space and objects. In a communicative act, they fulfil the function of depicting and representing. Texts, on the other hand, are superior to pictorial representations for expressing causality, time sequences, abstract thoughts and social facts, and they thus assume the communicative functions of telling and reporting (Nöth 2000, 491–
492). Individually or in combination, image and linguistic text constitute narrative representations in Mesoamerican traditions. Discourses are narratives when they report on an event or a series of events and are constituted from the components of place, time, action and actors (Martin 2006, 61). Such narrative texts are forms of action that convey content through communicative-linguistic transmission and are characterised by chronological sequences of action in which events cause changes in the situation (Martin 2006, 61). However, narrative representations are not necessarily bound to a linguistic code, i.e. to the media of spoken or written language; they may also be conveyed through image in the form of narrative pictographies or pictorial narratives, independent of language (Chatman 1978, 34). The message is represented by means of graphic conventions and codes and thus give members of an interpretative community something to understand (Martin 2006).
Visual narratives are semasiographies and represent content without linguistic coding (Gelb 1963 245). Such systems have been attested for Mesoamerica since the Preclassic period (2000 BC–AD 250) and had the function of representing narrative content pictorially or iconographically, especially in the Zapotec, Mixtec and Aztec traditions (Prem 1971; Grube 1994). Although glottography was used to some extent among the Aztecs (Zender 2008), these narrative texts did not literally record a spoken narrative, but were recorded in the form of images and episodes (Martin 2006). Only names of persons and places, as well as calendar-chronological records and, in the case of Zapotec, verbs, were denoted in the aforementioned interpretative communities by means of linguistic signs complementing pictorial information (Whittaker 1992).
Classic Maya writing traditions differed from these glottographic writing systems by enabling phonetic reproduction of spoken texts. In addition to being able to linguistically name objects, persons and places, Classic Maya writing enabled public representation of narrative texts that could be recorded phonetically, word for word.
Classic Maya writing traditions differed from these glottographic writing systems by enabling phonetic reproduction of spoken texts. In addition to being able to linguistically name objects, persons and places, Classic Maya writing enabled public representation of narrative texts that could be recorded phonetically, word for word.