Mayan Writing - Codices

Mayan Writing - Codices, MEZOAMERYKA

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Mayan Writing - Codices
The Mayans evolved the only true written system native to the Americas and were
masters of mathematics and engineering.
The Maya writing system (often called hieroglyphics from a vague superficial
resemblance to the Egyptian writing, to which it is not related) was a combination of
phonetic symbols and ideograms. It is the only writing system of the Pre-Columbian New
World that can completely represent spoken language to the same degree as the written
language of the old world. The decipherment of the Maya writings has been a long
laborous process. Bits of it were first deciphered in the late 19th and early 20th century
(mostly the parts having to do with numbers, the calendar, and astronomy), but major
breakthroughs came starting in the 1960s and 1970s and accelerated rapidly thereafter, so
that now the majority of Maya texts can be read nearly completely in their original
languages.
With the decipherment of the Maya script it was discovered that the Maya were one of
the few civilizations where artists attached their name to their work. The Maya developed
a highly complex system of writing, using pictographs and phonetic or syllabic elements.
Their writing was highly sophisticated. Most likely only members of the higher classes
were able to read their symbols.
Maya writing was composed of recorded inscriptions on stone and wood and used within
architecture. Rectangular lumps of plaster and paint chips are a frequent discovery in
Maya archaeology; they are the remains of what had been books after all the organic
material has decayed.
Folding tree books were made from fig tree bark and placed in royal tombs.
Unfortunately, many of these books did not survive the humidity of the tropics or the
invasion of the Spanish, who regarded the symbolic writing as the work of the devil.
The Maya also carved these symbols into stone, but the most common place for writing
was probably the highly perishable books they made from bark paper, coated with lime to
make a fresh white surface. These 'books' were screen-folded and bound with wood and
deer hide. They are called
codices; codex is singular.
Unfortunately zealous Spanish priests shortly after the conquest ordered the burning of all
the Maya books. While many stone inscriptions survive - mostly from cities already
abandoned when the Spanish arrived - only 3 books and a few pages of a fourth survive
from the ancient libraries. Only four codices remain today.
The
Dresden Codex
- Astronomy
The Madrid Codex
The Paris Codex
The Grolier Codex
The contents of the codices must have varied, but some of them were evidently similar to
astronomic almanacs. We have examples of a Venus table, eclipse tables in a codex in
Dresden. There is a codex in Paris that seems to contain some kind of Maya Zodiac, but
if it is and how it must have worked are still unknown.
Another major example of Maya almanacs are present in the Madrid Codex. The fourth
codex is called the Grolier and was authenticated as late as 1983. These codices probably
contained much of the information used by priests or the noble class to determine dates of
importance or seasonal interest. We can only speculate as to whether or not the Maya
developed poetry or drama that was committed to paper. The codices probably kept track
of dynastic information as well.
Mayans had a voluminous literature, covering the whole range of native interests either
written, in their own peculiar "calculiform" hieroglyphic characters, in books of maguey
paper or parchment which were bound in word, or carved upon the walls of their public
buildings.
Twenty-seven parchment books were publicly destroyed by Bishop Landa at Mani in
1562, others elsewhere in the peninsula, others again at the storming of the Itz capital in
1697, and almost all that have come down to us are four codices, as they are called, viz.,
the "Codex Troano", published at Paris in 1869; another codex apparently connected with
the first published at Paris in 1882; the "Codex Peresianus", published at Paris in 1869-
71; and the "Dresden Codex", originally mistakenly published as an Aztec book in
Kingsborough's great work on the "Antiquities of Mexico" (London, 1830-48).
Besides these pre-Spanish writings, of which there is yet no adequate interpretation, we
have a number of later works written in the native language by Christianized Maya,
shortly after the conquest.
Several of these have been brought together by Brinton in his "Maya Chronicles". The
intricate calendar system of the Maya, which exceeded in elaboration that of the Aztec,
Zapotec, or any other of the cultured native races, has been the subject of much
discussion.
It was based on a series of katuns, or cycles, consisting of 20 (or 24), 52, and 260 years,
and by its means they carried their history down for possibly thirteen centuries, the
completion of each lesser katun being noted by the insertion of a memorial stone in the
wall of the great temple at Mayapan.
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