This second edition includes revised and updated versions of three earlier publications: Understanding Maya Inscriptions: A Hieroglyph Handbook; New and Recent Maya Hieroglyph Readings; and A Resource Bibliography for the Decipherment of Maya Hieroglyphs and New Maya Hieroglyph Readings. This volume is designed to function as a self-teaching tool to help the neophyte, and yet be of value to scholars. It introduces the latest methods of analysis, illustrates techniques for computing Maya calendrics, uses the currently accepted orthography, provides syllabary and syntax, suggests new glyph readings, and presents various interpretations.

The goal of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world. Volume 1 includes a Spanish translation of the Introduction text and six appendices: sources of sculpture and their codes; list of abbreviations and symbols used in the Corpus series; table of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a complete Calendar Round in tabular form, giving the position of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a method for the quick computation of Calendar Round position, by John S. Justeson; and Moon Age tables, by Lawrence Roys.

For hundreds of years, Maya artists and scholars used hieroglyphs to record their history and culture. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, archaeologists, photographers, and artists recorded the Maya carvings that remained, often by transporting box cameras and plaster casts through the jungle on muleback. The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume I: The Classic Period Inscriptions is a guide to all the known hieroglyphic symbols of the Classic Maya script. In the New Catalog Martha J. Macri and Matthew G. Looper have produced a valuable research tool based on the latest Mesoamerican scholarship. An essential resource for all students of Maya texts, the New Catalog is also accessible to nonspecialists with an interest in Mesoamerican cultures. Macri and Looper present the combined knowledge of the most reliable scholars in Maya epigraphy. They provide currently accepted syllabic and logographic values, a history of references to published discussions of each sign, and related lexical entries from dictionaries of Maya languages, all of which were compiled through the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project. This first volume of the New Catalog focuses on texts from the Classic Period (approximately 150-900 C.E.), which have been found on carved stone monuments, stucco wall panels, wooden lintels, carved and painted pottery, murals, and small objects of jadeite, shell, bone, and wood. The forthcoming second volume will describe the hieroglyphs of the three surviving Maya codices that date from later periods.

Some give us portraits of the great leaders who played important roles in the rise of this extraordinary culture. The complexity of their incredible calendar and astronomical calculations reveals a highly developed civilization."--BOOK JACKET.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Ch’olti’ was spoken throughout much of the southern Maya lowlands in what is present-day Petén and Chiquimula, and is closely related to that spoken by the authors of the Classic Maya inscriptions. This book presents for the first time a facsimile, transcription, English and Spanish translation, and grammatical analysis of the Morán Manuscript, a Colonial-era document that provides the sole attestation of Ch’olti’. In addition to its value as a chronicle of the Colonial period, the Morán Manuscript is crucial to our understanding of the Classic Maya, particularly their language, captured in thousands of intricately carved and painted hieroglyphic inscriptions. Robertson, Law, and Haertel, regarded as the ablest interpreters of Ch’olti’ now working in Mayan linguistics, provide not only a painstaking presentation of language data but also a detailed history of the manuscript itself. They discuss the document’s probable authorship, investigate where and by whom Ch’olti’ was spoken at contact, and infer how speakers maintained their expressive capabilities in the face of colonial oppression. The transcribed Ch’olti’ texts feature an orthographically standardized version with a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss, a literal English translation that preserves many of the poetic structures and metaphors, and a flowing translation in both English and Spanish. The publication of this document marks a major contribution to the fields of Maya epigraphy, Mayan linguistics, ethnohistory, and Mesoamerican languages. It will serve as the definitive presentation of the Morán Manuscript and stand as a major contribution to further understanding the language of the Maya inscriptions in Mexico and Guatemala.

The breaking of the Maya code has completely changed our knowledge of this ancient civilization, and has revealed the Maya people's long and vivid history. Decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing has progressed to the point where most Maya written texts—whether inscribed on monuments, written in the codices, or painted or incised on ceramics—can now be read with confidence. In this practical guide, first published in 2001, Michael D. Coe, the noted Mayanist, and Mark Van Stone, an accomplished calligrapher, have made the difficult, often mysterious script accessible to the nonspecialist. They decipher real Maya texts, and the transcriptions include a picture of the glyph, the pronunciation, the Maya words in Roman type, and the translation into English. For the second edition, the authors have taken the latest research and breakthroughs into account, adding glyphs, updating captions, and reinterpreting or expanding upon earlier decipherments. After an introductory discussion of Maya culture and history and the nature of the Maya script, the authors introduce the glyphs in a series of chapters that elaborate on topics such as the intricate calendar, warfare, royal lives and rituals, politics, dynastic names, ceramics, relationships, and the supernatural world. The book includes illustrations of historic texts, a syllabary, a lexicon, and translation exercises.