#MAYAN GLYPHS ENGLISH MEANING CRACK#

This grapheme has not been phonetically deciphered, but it belongs to the semantic field of ‘seed, fruit harvest child’. He lies on the head variant of the grapheme T533, which may represent a personified blossom (Martin 2002) or a seed kernel. The infant maize god is shown in a pose that is characteristic for representing infants in Maya art (e.g. The symbolic representation of the birth of the maize god on an unprovenanced ceramic vessel (Kerr 2723).

#MAYAN GLYPHS ENGLISH MEANING CRACK#

Birth from a fissure or crack in a specific object is a symbolic representation of this life-beginning act and is widespread in Mesoamerica (Stuart and Houston 1996:294–295 Stuart et al. All iconographic representations of birth have in common the depiction of a V-shaped break or fissure in an object out of which the relevant actor appears.įigurations of birth are found in the name phrases of several Classic Maya rulers, in which the essential divine figures, including K’awiil, Chahk, or K’inich, are born out of a fissure or crack in the heavens, from of the sun, or from fire. Symbolic images that are interpreted in the scholarly literature as representations of birth show anthropomorphic actors emerging from a split, anthropomorphic skull, an anthropomorphic blossom, turtle shells, or a cleft in the so-called earth band (Figure 2). Another painted ceramic vessel bears the representation of the newborn Sun God with the umbilicus and placenta still attached to his navel and God L cutting his umbilical cord with an obsidian knife (Fondation de l’Hermitage 2004:frontispiece). Vessel K559 shows the Moon Goddess giving birth to the Moon Rabbit. The so-called ‘Birth Vase’ (K5113) seems to illustrate one of the very few exceptions, although it shows the woman preparing herself for giving birth, rather than the sequence of the birth itself (Taube 1994). Linguistic references to ‘birth’ are numerous, but in contrast with illustrations of violence, military conquest, or abasement, there are hardly any portrayals of birth in Maya art that are true to reality (Houston et al. Hieroglyphs meaning ‘birth’, including siyaj ‘be born’, sihyaj or sijyaj ‘be bestowed’ (represented by the grapheme T740), and pan kab or tal kab ‘touch the earth’ (T217:526) (MacLeod 1991:2–3 Stuart 2005:79) are, with over 100 attestations, among the most frequently used verbs in texts from the Classic period (Gronemeyer 2014:617–621), because of the large number of biographical reports about Maya rulers and members of their courts (Proskouriakoff 1960 Schele 1982). Grapheme (a) denotes the syllabic sign hu and (b) represents the logogram SIH ‘bestow’ or ‘be born’, respectively (drawings by Christian Prager).

All these respective linguistic readings of the logogram are plausible interpretations that will be discussed below in further detail.įigure 1. The first variant of T740 lacking the dots represents the syllable hu (1) (Figure 1a) the second grapheme with the row of dots (Figure 1b) is read as SIY, SIH, or SIJ, depending on its respective context (Houston 1997:292 Stuart 2005:78). Their icon represents an upward-facing iguana head, but differ by a row of dots atop the mouth of one variant. 740 two graphs that are nearly identical. In his sign catalog, Eric Thompson (1962:320–322) includes under sign no.

Prager (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn)

The Signs 740 and 812 for SIH “Gift”: Representation and Meaning in the Maya CodicesĬhristian M.

Mayan glyphs english meaning