________________
THE ALPHABET
"hieroglyphic" writing continued to be made as late as at the end of the seventeenth century, when some Spaniards seem still to have understood it. It is, however, not certain that the script of that period was identical with that of the earlier period.
132
Maya System of Writing
It is one of the ironies of history that the man who seems to have been responsible for the wholesale destruction of Maya manuscripts, is the main source for our knowledge of Maya history and civilization including what we know of their writing. That man was Diego de Landa (1524-1579). the second bishop of Yucatan. Unfortunately, a part only of his Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, written about 1566 is extant; its eighth edition has been published in English translation in 1941 by the well-known
1
2
3
2
退
Cal
8
5 CB) & it
BO
12
A
13
1016
14
17
18
ရုရှား တ
2 19
220
712
N
21
P
125
26 ku
21
be
27
Nom
Additional Symbols
I
R
، مالم
tro
。
Fig. 68
The Maya "alphabet" according to Bishop Diego de Landa
Americanist Alfred M. Tozzer; the numerous notes, the full bibliography on the Mayas, the translations of four other well-chosen early Spanish documents containing information about the ancient Mayas, make this publication an important handbook on the ancient Mayas in general,
We cannot say much about the Maya system of writing. According to Landa, it was composed of "letters," "characters," "figures" and "signs." Landa himself gives us the names and the representations of the "letters" of the Maya "alphabet" (Fig. 68). It is not difficult to trace the origin of some of the "letters," but the modern scholars, who tried to make use of this alphabet in deciphering Maya written documents, met with failure. With some exceptions, it is now held that Landa's alphabet is more or less artificial, leaving the question open whether it was a Spanish fabrication, or an indigenous trick, or a misunderstood explanation of the actual intricate character of the Maya script.
The whole problem is still debatable. However, Maya writing was
