The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume One: The Classic Period Inscriptions

by Martha J. Macri Ph.D., Matthew G. Looper

Overview

For hundreds of years, Maya artists and scholars used hieroglyphs to record their history and culture. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, archaeologists, photographers, and artists recorded the Maya carvings that remained, often by transporting box cameras and plaster casts through the jungle on muleback. The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume I: The Classic Period Inscriptions is a guide to all the known hieroglyphic symbols of the Classic Maya script. In the New Catalog Martha J. Macri and Matthew G. Looper have produced a valuable research tool based on the latest Mesoamerican scholarship.

An essential resource for all students of Maya texts, the New Catalog is also accessible to nonspecialists with an interest in Mesoamerican cultures. Macri and Looper present the combined knowledge of the most reliable scholars in Maya epigraphy. They provide currently accepted syllabic and logographic values, a history of references to published discussions of each sign, and related lexical entries from dictionaries of Maya languages, all of which were compiled through the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project.

This first volume of the New Catalog focuses on texts from the Classic Period (approximately 150–900 C.E.), which have been found on carved stone monuments, stucco wall panels, wooden lintels, carved and painted pottery, murals, and small objects of jadeite, shell, bone, and wood. The forthcoming second volume will describe the hieroglyphs of the three surviving Maya codices that date from later periods.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806143712
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	02/04/2013
Series:	The Civilization of the American Indian Series , #247
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	394
Sales rank:	264,478
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Martha J. Macri is Professor Emerita of Native American Studies and Research Professor in Linguistics at the University of California, Davis. She is a co-principal investigator for the Maya Hieroglyphic Database project funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Matthew G. Looper, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico, and Research Associate at the San Diego Museum of Man, is a specialist in ancient Mesoamerican art and writing.

Editorial Reviews

"A major contribution to the field.”—Michael Coe, author of Breaking the Maya Code

From the Publisher