A wildcard (*) is used in place of the unknown. Wildcards can be used in any field except the date field. To view all entries leave fields blank and click the Search button. Word Search Use one of the fields below to search the dictionary. Click on the links below to view and print the dictionary.Ĭlick on a letter to acquire an alphabetical lists of words and syllables.Ĭlick on a letter to acquire an alphabetical lists of words. Individual search results can be printed through a link on the results page. This dictionary is an on-going project with continuous additions and corrections, therefore the ability to print the dictionary is split into two sections: Introductory Sections and the Dictionary Entries. Welcome to the Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary Please Read - Anticipated Dictionary Progress A major aim of the Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary is for it to be 'user-friendly', so that words can be looked up either by the Maya word or by their English or Spanish translation. The Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary also provides analyses of the word or compound and cross-references to similar words and compounds. Each entry will eventually include a picture of the hieroglyph as well as its transcription and a translation in English and Spanish. Zach Zorich is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.The Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary provides translations and analyses of about 1,000 Maya hieroglyphic words and compounds, arranged in alphabetical order. "She was able to lay a foundation that people were able to build on." But it was Proskouriakoff laying out a coherent argument that made the difference," says Stephen Houston of Brown University. "It's a strange little story of Maya archaeology that these ideas and these specific observations had been floating around there for decades. In 1901, Charles Bowditch, a wealthy supporter of Harvard's Peabody Museum's work in Mesoamerica and an amateur Mayanist, first proposed the idea that the stelae recorded the lives of Piedras Negras' kings. Proskouriakoff was not the first person to believe that the stelae were historical records. These naming conventions are still used by archaeologists today. One she called "Shield Jaguar" because his name glyph has an element that looks like a shield in front of the face of a jaguar, and the other she named "Bird Jaguar" because of the bird and jaguar elements in his name glyph. In addition, she identified the name glyphs of two kings who were frequently mentioned in the monuments.
She found that the pattern of the "upended frog" and "toothache" glyphs applied to that site as well. To further test her ideas, she also studied monumental stone carvings at Yaxchilan. Proskouriakoff plotted all of the dates on the stelae on a graph, which showed that her interpretation of the glyphs was consistent across all seven series. She surmised that the glyph that appears next to the earliest date on the stela, informally dubbed the "upended frog" glyph, referred to the birth of the king, and the glyph that appears next to the second date, dubbed the "toothache" glyph, referred to the day when the king ascended the throne. Proskouriakoff noticed that some of the dates on each stela in a series were identical to each other, and that they were always followed by the same glyph. However, Proskouriakoff believed that these scenes symbolized a king ascending the throne, and that the other stelae in each series marked the passing of a five-year period, called a hotun, during the king's reign. At the time, most scholars believed the stelae were records of astronomical events and the figures in the niches were gods. Glyphs, including some that referred to specific dates, were carved in various places on the monuments.
Below the niche the carvings depicted footprints ascending a ladder. Above each niche were carvings of astronomical signs and a grotesque bird figure. Inside that niche was the image of an elaborately costumed person sitting on a cushion. Her research showed that the stelae could be separated into seven "series," each of which began with a stela that had a niche carved into it. In 1960, art historian Tatiana Proskouriakoff published a systematic study of the glyphs on more than 40 large rectangular monuments called stelae that had been erected at Piedras Negras.
Some of the most important clues that led to deciphering ancient Maya glyphs came from the carved stone monuments at Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan.