Open AccessWriting with heads: animated logographs and syllabograms in Maya writing
Author(s) -
Nikolai Grube
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
estudios latinoamericanos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 0137-3080
DOI - 10.36447/estudios2021.v41.art9
Subject(s) - syllabic verse , maya , sign (mathematics) , natural (archaeology) , literature , meaning (existential) , art , agency (philosophy) , head (geology) , animation , class (philosophy) , relation (database) , linguistics , history , visual arts , computer science , psychology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , archaeology , mathematics , mathematical analysis , epistemology , geomorphology , database , psychotherapist , geology
One aspect of Maya hieroglyphic writing that continues to fascinate us is its pronounced figurativeness, which finds its greatest expression in head variants of signs and in full figure glyphs. For a more systematic understanding of these personified signs, it is necessary to divide them into two groups. The first class are “essential personifi cations”. These are logograms that render names of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic beings by depicting their heads or other important parts of their bodies. The second class of personified signs are “unspecific personifications”, where there is no natural relationship between sign and meaning. These are most, syllabic signs. The animation of syllabic signs occurs especially in dedication texts. The study of the use and distribution of personified signs helps us to understand the relation between image, anima, and agency in Maya hieroglyphic writing.