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xxxiii Ishouldalsonoteherecertainconventionsthathavecome from the decipherment of the hieroglyphs (glyphs). First of all, Maya scribes generally ordered texts as pairs of columns in which the reading order is top to bottom and left to right. The square elements filling these columns and rows are termed glyph blocks. Each glyph block may be composed of up to four types of elements: numerals, calendric units, phonetic glyphs, or logographic glyphs. Phonetic glyphs are composed of consonant-vowel phonemes (e.g., le, b’i, and k’a) or pure vowel elements (e.g., a, i, and o). Logographic glyphs are those elements that represent entire words (e.g., chak, ek’, and b’ahlam). When a text is transcribed according to the ALMG orthography, phonetic elements are written in lowercase Hieroglyphic Script xxxiii xxxiv script and logographs in complete upper case. When a glyph is undeciphered , or at least unknown by me, I transcribe it as a question mark. In this book, I have used two forms of representation for hieroglyphic texts: published archaeological illustrations showing the text in its iconographic context and my own script illustrations of the text. In most cases, the original texts were carved into stone. Because of erosion or the ambiguity created by the original artist’s style, rendering them as line drawings necessarily introduces a degree of interpretation. These drawings, however ambiguously rendered, are historical texts, and this book quotes from them extensively. To make this anchoring clear, I have redrawn numerous passages in my own hieroglyphic hand to editorially treat these quotes as such throughout the book.1 This approach also serves the purpose of reminding the reader that history is interpretation, and although intimately tied to the scholarship in the field, in the end these readings are my own and may differ from others. Such is the nature of humanities-based inquiry.2 This information should provide a sufficient base for the reader unfamiliar with such matters to get through the text. There are now several treatments available that provide much more extensive developments (Coe 1992; Coe and Van Stone 2001; Houston, Chinchilla Mazariegos, and Stuart 2000a; Wichmann 2004). Notes 1. Hieroglyphic quotes are referenced by column and row relative to their position in the original inscription, for example, (A1–B4) refers to the glyph blocks in columns A and B, from rows 1 through 4. 2. See also the Introduction, pages 12–13. Hieroglyphic Script ...

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