The inside story of one of the great intellectual breakthroughs of our time—the first great decipherment of an ancient script—now revised and updated. In the past dozen years, Maya decipherment has made great strides, in part due to the Internet, which has made possible the truly international scope of hieroglyphic scholarship: glyphic experts can be found not only in North America, Mexico, Guatemala, and western Europe but also in Russia and the countries of eastern Europe. The third edition of this classic book takes up the thorny question of when and where the Maya script first appeared in the archaeological record, and describes efforts to decipher its meaning on the extremely early murals of San Bartolo. It includes iconographic and epigraphic investigations into how the Classic Maya perceived and recorded the human senses, a previously unknown realm of ancient Maya thought and perception. There is now compelling documentary and historical evidence bearing on the question of why and how the “breaking of the Maya code” was the achievement of Yuri V. Knorosov—a Soviet citizen totally isolated behind the Iron Curtain—and not of the leading Maya scholar of his day, Sir Eric Thompson. What does it take to make such a breakthrough, with a script of such complexity as the Maya? We now have some answers, as Michael Coe demonstrates here.
The inside story of one of the great intellectual breakthroughs of our time--the last great decipherment of an ancient script--now revised and updated Book jacket.
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.
Deciphering the Rosetta Stone -- Reading a text: the Egyptian scripts of the Rosetta Stone -- Towards reading a cultural code: the uses of writing in ancient Egypt -- The future: futher codes to crack.
To the four great calligraphic traditions - ancient Egyptian, East Asian, Islamic, and western European - is now added a fifth: that of the ancient Maya. Long known but little...
Sunday, June 15, 1952. Having spent four years clearing a secret passage inside Palenque's Temple of the Inscriptions, Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz gazed into a vaulted chamber. There, beneath a...
This authoritative work is the first visual dictionary of Maya glyphs published since the script's complete deciphering, offering a much-needed, comprehensive catalogue of 1100 secured glyphs. Each entry includes the...
A chronological survey of Mayan literature, covering two thousand years, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to later works using the Roman alphabet.
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself.
( Photograph © Jamie Marshall ) ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT CHAPTER ONE : The Discovery of the Maya Drawing and plan of the Temple of the Cross , Palenque by Frederick Catherwood From Incidents of Travel in Central America , Chiapas and ...
A foremost American archaeologist traces his more than four-decade career, describing his Harvard education, discoveries about ancient American civilizations, and travels to such regions as remote Guatemala, Russia, and Angkor Wat.