The Mayan Epigraphic Database Project (MED) is an experiment in networked scholarship with the purpose of enhancing Classic Mayan epigraphic research. An Internet-accessible relational database of primary and secondary sources, MED has been made possible in part by support from the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia.
At the center of the Project is the idea that the Internet can be used as a powerful tool in scholarly research. Over and above the properties of nanosecond speed and massive storage that make computers enormously useful instruments for information processing, the Internet introduces qualities of information access and exchange that are particularly useful to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. To adapt an aphorism from theology, the Internet is a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. Anyone with access to a terminal on the 'net has arrived at a "place" where information and people, though they be physically located thousands of miles away, are gathered, as if in the same building. Unlike the traditional library, inforamtion stored in this place is simultaneously and universally distributed. And unlike a conference or a seminar, the exchange of that infornmation is on-going and open to all.
The consequences of this new mode of communication are profound but perhaps difficult to envision. After all, the Internet has been around for twenty- five years and hasn't yet had a profound effect on the conduct of humanistic research. Nonetheless, as any observer of the 'net will point out, the full potential of the medium has yet to be fulfilled, and the time is upon us when a critical mass of participants will change all that. As is often pointed out, we are in the midst of a revolution in communication no less profound than that of the print revolution initiated by Gutenberg in the fifteenth century.
To see how the Internet might enhance epigraphic research, consider the following scenario. A student of the Classic Maya wishes to research a particular motif in the hieroglyphic texts, say the practice of auto- sacrifice. The student, who, let us say, attends a university in the United States, wishes to explore this motif as it appears in textual narratives. In order to pursue this research, the student will have to acquire as large a body of hieroglyphically inscribed artifacts (or their facsimiles) as she can, in order to explore the various patterns and contexts associated with the motif. The larger the body of information, the more clearly will emerge the patterns of association, substition and absence, and the more accurate will be her research.
At the outset of her research, our student encounters a problem. Depending on where she lives and studies, access to this information will be limited. Aside from the various books she has been able to buy and check out, she will have to go to other libraries, museums and collections--in Philadelphia, Austin, Cambridge, Washington DC, San Francisco, not to mention Mexico, Guatemala, and Europe--to complete her work. Of course, due to constraints of time and money, she will not be able to go to all of these places, but instead will go to some of them and make the best of what she can acquire.
After she has amassed her material, she is faced with another problem. Because she is not yet an expert epigrapher, she would like to ground her research in the work of authorities in the field. Sensitive to the complexity of epigraphic decipherment, translation and interpretation, she would like to know not only what gloss an epigrapher has provided for each block in a text, but the precise interpretive moves and decisions that led to the gloss. To what extent did the epigrapher apply the structural method of Berlin, Proskouriakoff and Kelly? What Thompson numbers were associated with each glyph? What phonetic or semantic values were assigned to each glyph? How were these values selected and combined to produce the words and sentences attributed to the inscription?
Here our student encounters a serious problem. The published material contains precious few examples of translations that detail the stages of glyphic identification and evaluation. Except for a few sources, like the Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing (Center for Maya Research) and site reports like the Excavations at Seibal (Peabody Museum, Harvard), the translations available to her are incomplete. To remedy this, she limits her body of material to those texts that she can account for, either from published sources or by contacting epigraphers with specific questions.
But here she encounters another difficulty. She finds that epigraphers disagree on their transcriptions of the same text. Disagreements are of course to be expected, and indeed applauded, but she finds that occassionally there are discrepancies at the level of identification. That is, a given glyph may be classified as a token of two or more glyph types. (Roughly speaking, a glyph type corresponds to a glyph number in Thompson's scheme.) To remedy this problem, she creates, from the material at her disposal, a set of standard transcriptions that contain the varying identifications.
After having limited her material to those texts and images that meet her criteria, our student then produces a set of interpretations and, based on these, arrives at a set of hypotheses to account for the meaning of the motif she is studying. At this point she wishes to submit her ideas to the criticism of others working in the field. Again, she encounters limitations. Desiring to augment the criticism of her advisors, who may not be specialists in her subject, she must wait for a conference or journal to present her work, or for the responses of those to whom she has sent it. These things take time and, unless she is in close contact with the specialists whose evaluations she desires--those individuals able to provide that precious resource unassumingly referred to as "personal communication"--they do not always succeed in allowing for the kind of immediate dialogue that is so important for the advancement of scholarly research.
In the end, after going through one or two rounds of criticism by these methods, our student produces her study, after which it is distributed to those who may be interested by it, to those libraries that will accept it, or, if her work is good enough and she is well connected, to a publisher. Over the next few years, she will receive responses from people who have picked up a copy of her work. Even in the best of circumstances, she does not expect a response from her work in less than a year.
To borrow the language of economics, this scenario describes the cycle of the production, distribution and consumption of scholarly research. In general, it describes how scholars today do work given the means of communication available to them--the infrastructure of books and buildings that are circulated and in which scholars circulate as they produce their work. The scenario also describes how research is limited by barriers which do not become visible except by contrast to what is made possible by another means of communication, such as that provided by the Internet. At each stage in her research our student encountered limited access to information, specifically to the raw data, interpreted data and interpretive criticism. In each case, the restrictions arose from the fact that the information is stored in a medium which resists easy distribution.
Now consider what effect the Internet might have on this cycle. Assume that a site or number of sites have been set up where researchers can submit and retrieve information of various kinds, such as scanned images and transcriptions of epigrapraphic texts, translations of those texts, and criticism of those translations. Also found at these sites are various glyph dictionaries (such as Kurbjuhn's Catalogue), along with dictionaries of the relevant Mayan languages, as well as various experimental text-processing programs that have been created to aid in the task of translation. Assume further that important epigraphers contribute to these sites, and that they, along with numerous others, have contributed for some time.
With this rudimentary infrastructure of networked scholarship in place, each point of the cycle of research will be greatly enhanced. Our student will be able to access immediately a large body of data in the form of scanned facsimiles and tanscribed texts. She will also be able to access existing translations of these texts, along with, perhaps, criticisms of those translations. And she will be able to communicate the results of her work as it evolves, through the use of electronic mail with participants and by posting notes in archives reserved for such ephemera. As for the distribution and publication of her results, she can get a head start by posting her work to an appropriate archive. In short, at all points in our scenario where access to data was restricted by limitations of having to travel to a particular place at a particular time, our student gains enormously in saved time and quantity of information.
In addition to these benefits, the prospect of networked scholarship offers other, unexpected advantages that arise from the constraints that medium places on message. The Internet, after all, is made up of computers, and therefore differs from spoken and printed communication not only by virtue of its fast and vast distributive capacity, but by the formal requirements it places on information that is exchanged on it. Any networked document will have necessarily the properties of replicability, searchability and transformability. What this means for epigraphic research is clearest in the area of hieroglyphic transcriptions. More valuable perhaps than a scanned image of a text, which has limited processing potential, a properly transcribed text can be "read" by a variety of translation routines, from programs which simply parse texts or replace Thompson numbers with phonetic or semantic values, to "smart" programs designed to imitate the rule-governed aspects of decipherment and translation.
Equally valuable to epigraphy is the potential that electronic transcriptions offer for statistical analyses of collections of texts. For example, a text archive, which might easily contain the entire corpus of inscriptions, can be searched as a single document, and patterns of glyphic distribution, substitution and combination can be detected with great speed and accuracy. Other possibilities include the classification of hieroglyphic texts on the basis of their statistical "signatures", as has been detected in statistical analyses of novels, letters and other documents.
Whatever the role such text processing techniques may play in one's epigraphic research, there are other, more subtle features of networked scholarship that will have a decisive effect on that research. These derive from the nature of the medium itself. Although one accesses an archive on the Internet privately and as an individual, as if it were a bookshelf in one's study--and in a very real sense it is--the archive is in an equally real sense a public and collectively authored entity. In principle, all transcriptions are submitted individually and edited collectively. The sharedness of the medium means that transcriptions will tend to be standardized according to the consensus of participants. It also means that the difference between transcription and translation will be more marked--transcription being consensual and translation individual--with the result that the medium will encourage epigraphers to be explicit about the steps they make in producing a translation. Thus, if it is true that epigraphic practice cannot be reduced to algorithms--and it is difficult not to think so--it will be clear at what points rule-governed behavior gives way to intuition and "play," in the positive, hermeneutic sense of that term.
The above should suffice to demonstrate the point that the Internet can enhance significantly the process of epigraphic research. The immediacy and universality of access to primary and secondary sources, the centralization and standardization of that information, the explication of the interpretive process--these are factors that epigraphers should recognize as essential conditions for the growth of their research. It is with the purpose of creating these conditions, and fulfilling the potential that networked scholarship holds for Classic Mayan epigraphic research, that the Mayan Epigraphic Database Project has been created.
In simplest terms, MED is an Internet-accessible database of primary and secondary sources of information of use to Classic Mayan epigraphic research. When completed, the database will consist of several sets of data: scanned images of inscribed artifiacts, transcribed hieroglyphic texts, suggested translations of these texts, a glyphic dictionary, dictionaries of the relevant Mayan languages, calendrical and astronomical tables, other sources of information of value to epigraphers. These datasets will form the foundation of an integrated relational database upon which will be constructed a number of second-order texts, archives and applications. These applications will range from hypermedia documents that link graphical and textual informations, to on-line lexical and glyphic dictionaries and catalogues, to more complex text-processing routines that will perform searches, pattern-matching functions, statistical profiles, raw translations, etc. Ultimately, each of these applications will be integrated into a single "front-end", in the form of a World Wide Web "home-page". Eventually, other components may be added to the database, but those listed here represent the basic structure of MED as it is presently conceived.
The single most important component of MED is the Digital Text Archive (DTA), which comprises one of the datasets of the relational database. The DTA consists of a set of transcribed hieroglyphic texts which will be created by and available to MED participants for a number of uses. As described in the scenario above, these uses range from simply providing the user with access to a large, standardized and centralized source of epigraphic data, to the furnishing of a body of machine-readable material for translation routines and statistical analsys.
In the section that follows, the methodology for the construction and use of this archive is laid out, as well as the rationale for digital transcription.
The Digital Text Archive is only the first step in the construction of the relational database. In the near future, a number of other components will be added to MED. Currently on the drawing-board are the following: an on-line glyphic dictionary, along the lines of Kurbjuhn's Catalogue (1989); a tanscribing program to facilitate the task of digital transcription, to be written for use in Wiindows and then ported to other platforms; a glyph "diviner" to help identify glyphs, through the application of a scheme of classification that groups glyphs according to their graphic attributes; a set of text-processing routines to aid in the decipherment and translation of texts, to the extent that these are rule-governed practices; and a set of statistical descritpion routines to apply to sufficiently large groups of texts.
In addition to these components, MED will include hyperlinks to other sites with resources of use to Classic Mayan epigraphers, as these become available.
The project of digitally transcribing hieroglyphic texts rests on the assumption that it is possible to preserve the salient information content of any given hieroglyphic inscription in numeric and syntactic form. Accordingly, transcription conventions should allow for the accurate and unambiguous representation of that information. Once transcribed, these texts should be of use for an indefinite number of purposes, because a digital transcription is designed simply to reproduce, with as little addition or substraction as possible, the information contained in the original inscription. If the addition of information is thought of as "interpretation," and the subtraction of information as "entropy," then the goal of transcription may be described as the preinterpretive, degree zero replication of the original.
The practice of transcription must be separated from the practice of decipherment, translation, and exegesis, and each of these four must be viewed as levels and moments in a comprehensive process of interpretation. Once the level of transcription is completed, it will be possible to proceed to the other interpretive levels.
The following conventions have been adopted in accordance with these principles and ideas.
The word "inscription" is used to refer to the actual hierglyphic text found on a given artifact, or a facsimile representation thereof. The word "transcription" refers to the rewriting of an inscription in a different form, which preserves some important information content in the inscription. Both inscriptions and transcriptions are referred to as "texts", but a transcritpive segment is sometimes designated as a "string".
The possibility of transcription rests on the condition that the graphic elements of a given inscription are instances or "tokens" or an abstract category or "type" that exists independently of any particular inscription, and which a transcription seeks to identify. Thus, to transcribe a text is to classify its specific elements under the signs of their generic categories. A "grapheme" is a type of graphic sign; inscriptions are made up of tokens of graphemes.
It should be noted that, in this context, a transcription seeks only to represent the geometric and graphemic properties of an inscription as completely and accurately as possible. With very few exceptions, no attempt is made to assign values to graphemes. The assignment of values--phonetic, semantic, grammatic, etc.--takes place rather at the level of "decipherment". The levels of transcription, decipherment, translation and interpretation should be treated as separate and quasi-independent moments of the process of epigraphic research.
A "digital transcription" is a transcription that rewrites the inscription by substituting numbers and other signs for the categories that classify the elements of the inscription.
One of the uses of a digital transcription is that it can be easily processed by a programmed translation routine. Because the visual recognition and classification of the inscribed text has been performed by a person, the mechanical act of substituting values for each numbered element of the transcription is quite easy.
A "glyph" is defined as a minimal unit of an inscription, which may stand alone or in combination with other glyphs. In Classic Maya writing, one or more glyphs are combined to form glyphic "collocations" or "blocks", which are in turn put together to form texts. When used in reference to inscriptions, the word "text" refers to a contiguous group of glyph blocks. Even though two separate groups of glyph blocks may be part of the same narrative, they are reparded as separate texts for the purposes of transcription.
In the system proposed here, a collocation and a block are not synonymous. A collocation is a group of glyphs that combine to form a higher-order unit, as with the signs for day and month names, units of time, temporal indicators, etc. By contrast, a glyph block is a group of glyphs that combine to form those square elements that are distinctive of the Mayan script. A given collocation may or may not be identical to a block, whereas a glyph block is a particular kind of collocation.
Very often one finds in the Classic Mayan inscriptions what appears to be two glyph blocks squeezed together to occupy the space of a single glyph block. The reduced glyph blocks are referred to as "sub-blocks".
All transcriptions use Thompson's (1962) glyph catalog numbers ("t-numbers"), with some modifications suggested by Kurbjuhn (1989), and others that are presented here for the first time. Thus:
For sake of clarity, these numbers are refered to as "g-numbers".
Note that, for purposes of machine-readability, all t-numbers have been converted to a 4-digit form. In addition, two more digits are added to form a six-digit identifier for each glyph, where the first four digits refer to the t-number and the last two digits stand for variants. Thompson designates these variants by lower-case letters; here they are converted to numbers, as follows: a = 00, b = 01, c = 02, etc. Thus, the g-number for "T17b" is "001701".
Aside from the broad categories inherited from Thompson's scheme--affix, main sign, and portrait--the g-number in itself contains no information about the glyph-type it names. Rather, the six-digit g-number serves as a unique identifier for a given glyph. It can act as the keyed index field for glyphic information in a relational database, and it can be used to name each glyph's graphic file (e.g. 050700.gif).
Note that, in this system, classificatory schema that group the glyphs according to their visual attributes--such as whether they are iconic or conventional, symmetrical or not, etc.--are not encoded in the g-number. Instead, such schema are to be applied to the glyphic "alphabet" by supplying, in a separate field alongside the g-number, some attribute code.
Also note that Thompson's system does not clearly distinquish between glyphs and collocations; in many cases a collocation that has been assigned an individual number in fact consists of separate glyphs which themselves have been given numbers. In most cases, it is preferable not to use glyph numbers that refer to collocations; instead, collocations are to be identified by their constituent glyphs. Some exceptions to this rule are collocations that represent day and month names and units of time.
Transcriptions of collocations that signify day and month names, units of time, and other calendrical ideas are designated as follows:
Not all standard collocations are designated by glosses, as in the above list. Period ending signs, for example, are designated by their individual glyphs. Also, it does no harm to transcribe any collocation for which there is an accepted gloss as a string of g-numbers. A good translation routine will detect such strings and convert them to glosses if desired.
A list of distance number indicators is contained in the Appendix.
Numbers are designated as follows, not by their Roman numeral equivalents:
Finally, unknown glyphs are designated as follows:
Unidentifiable glyphs are glyphs that have been eroded, erased or are otherwise missing. Occasionally, such a glyph may be identified by inference, in which case the inferred value is marked by braces.
It may be argued that Kurbjuhn has already reserved the numbers 1300 and up for the category of unidentified glyphs. However, of the 48 elements she includes in this category, most are collocations, not glyphs as defined here. Therefore, this category does not appear in the current scheme of classification.
In a digital transcription, one line of transcribed text corresponds to one block of inscribed text. (This is true even in cases of sub-blocks). Within each line of transcription, each glyph is represented by its g-number, and the spatial arrangement of the glyphs as found in the inscription is represented by a set of punctuators originally developed by Thompson (1962) and modified here. Thompson's conventions have been augmented to avoid certain ambiguities that may otherwise crop up. The punctuators with their meanings are as follows:
If one images a glyph block as a small grid with irregularly shaped cells, then the rule for transcription may be stated as follows. First, define how many full columns are in the block. (A full column is the space between two parallel vertical lines that extend the length of the block.) Then, within the leftmost full column, if more than one, begin at the upper left and move from left to right, top to bottom, within the column. Then go to the next full column to the right and repeat the procedure. This rule, which is actually quite intuitive, is best grasped by looking at the examples in the Appendix.
The order of transcription given above must be applied in all cases. This is because the order of transcription does not necessarily correspond to the order in which the glyphs are to be read, that is, assigned values. It describes only the spatial arrangement of the glyphs as they occupy the space of the glyph block. The determination of the actual reading order of the glyphs takes place at the level of translation. Remember that the point of transcription is simply to preserve the visual information of an inscription as completely and accuraately as possible.
As mentioned above, one block of inscribed text corresponds to a single line of transcribed text. Because the Classic Mayan inscriptions are for the most part composed of ordered rows and columns of glyph blocks, epigraphers have designated individual glyph blocks by their position within an array, where capital letters refer to columns and numbers refer to rows. This practice is adopted here, and transcribers should use received letter and number designations wherever possible.
The order of transcription of glyph blocks follows the established pattern of reading the Classic Mayan inscriptions, which is to read from left to right and top to bottom in columns of two. Thus, for a text with columns A through F and rows 1 through 10, the order of transcription will be: A1, B1, A2, B2, A3, B3, ..., E8, F8, E9, F9, E10, F10.
Many Mayan texts do not conform to the regular square-grid model, such as the "woven" text on Stela J at Copan and the irregularly shaped texts on some of the lintels at Yaxchilan. In cases where epigraphers have discovered the proper reading order of the text, this order is followed. In unattested cases, the order is arrived at by a careful examination of the calendrical phrases, names phrases, or by comparison to other anomalous texts at the same site. In any case, if the order is transcribed incorrectly, it can easily be corrected at a later date when the proper order is determined.
Once the proper reading order of blocks is determined, each block is transcribed on a separate line, beginning with the column letter, the row number, and a caret ("^"), as follows:
A1^ISIG
A2^
B1^
B2^
A3^000012
B3^BAKTUN
A4^000009
B4^KATUN
.
.
.
E16^000006.([054800]:014200:016600|888888)
F16^000001.(002800:[054800]:014200:016600|888888)
E17^[074000]:(005700.012600)
F17^001100.(021200:[076401])
Note that in the example above, lines A2, B1 and B2 are empty. This is because the ISIG collocation given in A1 takes up four blocks or cells in the array. Where such a large block occurs, only the first cell in the space taken up is used to transcribe the content of the block.
Note also that lines E16 and E17 contain alternate readings for a glyph, and that the second reading is the g-number "888888". In these cases, the glyph value has been guessed at, and the insertion of the g-number for "undidentified glyph" acts as a question mark.
Each of the inscriptive texts on an artifact is transcribed as a separate file and given a unique name. The name appears on the first line of the transcription, and also acts as the name of the file in which the transcription is saved. To preserve cross-platform compatibilty, the 8.3 DOS filename structure is adopted, with sincere apologies to Mac, Unix and OS2 users. The first eight numbers (the "filename") encode the site, artifact type and artifact number, whereas the last three numbers (the "extension") encode the number of the text on the artifact and the fact that the file contains a digital text. The precise structure is as follows:
For most inscriptions, this naming scheme is easily applied; however, for sites with artifacts numbered according to a scheme that uses letters or takes up more than two characters, a different numbering system needs to be adopted. For example, the various inscriibed panels in Palenque's Temple of the Foliated Cross would have to be renamed. Also, there are no standard numbers for texts on an artifact with multiple inscriptions. In both cases, what is required is a standardized set of numerical identifiers. At present, Thomas Burglin and Raf Alvarado are devising just such a standardized set. Until this system is worked out, the letters "XX" are used to refer to the artifact number, and the number of the individual texts on an artifact follow the order of their apparent intended reading. The database owner will specify a different artifact number and correct the text number if necessary.
For more information on site and artifact codes, see the Appendix.
All files should be in ASCII format. There should be no spaces between any of the lines of text, including between the text name and the first transcribed block. Nor should there be any spaces between any of the characters on a line of text. The end of each line of transcribed text should have a carriage- return and a line-feed. (If you do not know what these last terms mean, these are usually invisible codes included in a text file. There is in all probability no need to worry to about them, since most word-processors include them.)
Digital transcriptions are mailed to the database owner's address (see below). Because even the longest inscriptions (such as the Central Panel of the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque) yield relatively small files, there is no need to compress the files. Simply attach your file to a message that contains your name, address, and anything else you want to add. The owner will place the file in the appropriate subdirectory at the MED site, where it will be accessible to users via FTP (and services, such as Gopher, Lynx, Mosaic, etc., which make use of FTP).
Note that transcriptions are not uploaded directly to the FTP site. Files can be downloaded directly form the site, however.
Users of MED are encouraged to review transciptions produced by others. This is an important part of networked mode of scholarship on which MED is founded. The more a given text is submitted to criticism by others, the more likely the transcription will be error-free, and the more legitimate the status of the text as a standard transcription.
Critical responses to a given transcription are aired on the Mesoamerican studies listserv, AZTLAN-L, under the category of "epigraphy." At some point in the future, an archive will be set up to store these exchanges, as well as any stand-alone essays than one may wish to contribute.
The following examples, from Schele (1989:6), illustrate the rule of defining full columns to establish the order of glyph transcription:
+-----+-----------+
| | |
| | |
| | |
| 1 | 2 |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+-----+-----------+
Example 1: 2 full columns, 2 glyphs
Transcribed as "1.[2]"
+-----------------+
| 1 |
+-----------------+
| |
| |
| 2 |
| |
| |
+-----------------+
Example 2: 1 full column, 2 glyphs
Transcribed as "1:[2]"
+-----------------+
| 1 | 2 |
+-----------------+
| |
| |
| 3 |
| |
| |
+-----------------+
Example 3: 1 full column, 3 glyphs
Transcribed as "(1.2):[3]"
+-----------------+
| | |
| | |
| 1 | 2 |
| | |
| | |
+-----------------+
| 3 |
+-----------------+
Example 4: 1 full column, 3 glyphs
Transcribed as "([1].2):3"
+-----------------+
| | | |
| 1 | 2 | |
+--------+ 4 |
| | |
| 3 | |
| +--------+
| | 5 |
+-----------------+
Example 5: 2 full columns, 5 glyphs
Transcribed as "((1.2):[3]).([4]:5)"
+-----------------+
| | |
| 1 | |
| | |
| | 4 |
+-----------+ |
| 2 | 3 | |
| | | |
+-----------------+
Example 6: 2 full columns, 4 glyphs
Transcribed as "([1]:(2.3)).4"
+-----------------+
| 1 | 4 |
+-----------------+
| | |
| 2 | 5 |
| | |
+-----------------+
| 3 | 6 |
+-----------------+
Example 7: 2 full columns, 6 glyphs
Transcribed as "(1:[2]:3).(4:[5]:6)"
+-----------------+
| | 2 |
| +-----------+
| | |
| 1 | 3 |
| | |
| +------------
| | 4 |
+-----------------+
Example 8: 2 full columns, 4 glyphs
Transcribed as "1.(2:[3]:4)"
+-----------------+
| 1| 2| | |
+-----+ 5 | |
| | | |
| 3 +--------+ |
| | 6 | 7 | 9|
+-----+--------+ +
| 4 | 8 | |
+-----------------+
Example 9: 3 full columns, 9 glyphs
Transcribed as "((1.2):[3]:4).([5]:(6.7):8).9"
The following site code names, from Graham (1975:1:24), are used to name digital text files:
Note: This list is being updated by members of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. All inquiries for unlisted site names should be addressed to them.
ABJ Abaj Takalik ACN Acanmul AGC Aguas Calientes AGT Aguateca ALH Altun Ha ALM Altamira ALS Altar de Sacrificios AML La Amelia AMP EI Amparo ANL Anonal BLK Balakbal BFK Bonampak BUL EI Baul BVJ Benque Viejo CAY EI Cayo CCL Chocola CDR EI Cedral CHB Chacchoben CHL EI Chal CHN Chichen Itza CKL Chinkultic CKM Chochkitam CLB Chilib CLK Calakmul CML Comalcalco CMT Comitan CMU Chichmul CNC Cancuen CNH Chinaha CNK Chinikiha CNT Cenotillo CNZ Chunhuitz COB Coba COL Collections, public or private COZ Cozumel CPC Chiapa de Corzo CPL Chapayal CPN Copan CRB EI Caribe CRC Caracol CSB Consacbe CTP Chuctiepa CVL Cival CZP EI Chicozapote DBC Dzibilchaltun DBN Dzibilnocac DPL Dos Pilas DZL Dzilam DZT Dzitbalche EKB Ek Balam ENC EI Encanto, Peten ESP La Esperanza ETZ Etzna FLD La Florida FLS Flores FNC Finca Encanto GQT Guaquitepec HIG Los Higos HLK Halakal HLL Halal HNT Huntichmul HRZ La Honradez HTZ Hacienda Hotzuc ICC Ichmac ICL Ichmul ICP Ichpaatun IKL Ikil ITB Itzimte-Bolonchen ITN Itzan ITS Itsimte-Sacluk IXH Ixtelha IXK Ixkun IXL Ixlu IXZ Ixtutz IZP Izapa JAI Jaina JMB Jimbal JNT Jonuta KAB Kabah KAX Kaxuinic KJU Kaminaljuyu KNA Kana KNK Kanki KYL Kayal LAB Labna LAC Lacanha LAG Lagunita LBT Lubaantun LGP Laguna Perdida LOL Loltun LPM Lopez Mateos LTI Lashtunich MAR La Mar MCA La Muneca MCW Mountain Cow MLC Mulchic MLP La Milpa MLS Muluch Tsekal MNC Mario Ancona MNG Managua MPN Mayapan MQL Machaquila MRD Mirador MRF Miraflores MRL Moral MTL Motul de San Jose NAR Naranjo NAY La Naya NCT Naachtun NKM Nakum NPT Nohpat OAG Ojo de Agua OKP Okop OXK Oxkintok OXL Oxlahuntun OXP Oxpemul PAB EI Pabellon PAL Palenque PCL Pechal PCR Pasion del Cristo PCT La Pochitoca PDR Padre Piedra PIX Pixoy PLM EI Palmar PMB Pomona, Belize PMT Pomona, Tabasco PNG Piedras Negras PNH Panhale PNT Pantaleon POL Polol PRS EI Paraiso, Yucatan PRT EI Porton PRU EI Peru PSD La Pasadita PST Pestac PUS Pusilha PVR EI Porvenir QRG Quirigua RAM Rio AmariUo RAZ Rio Azul RBC Rio Bec RMC Rio Michol RTR EI Retvo SAL Salinas de los Nueve Cerros SAY Sayil SBL Seibal SCM San r.lemente SCN Sacchana SCU Sacul SEP Santa Elena Poco Uinic SIS Sisilha SLM San Lorenzo, Campeche SLS San Lorenzo, Chiapas SRC Santa Rita Corozal SRX Santa Rosa Xtampak STN Santoton TAM Tamarindito TBI Hacienda Tabi TCK Tohcok TEN Tenam Puente TIK Tikal TLA Tila TLT Telantunich TMN Teleman TNA Tonina TNL Tonala TPX Topoxte TRS Tres Islas TRT EI Tortuguero TSL Tayasal TUL Tulum TUN Tunkuyi TZB Tzibanche TZC Tzocchen TZD Tzendales TZM Tzum UAX Uaxactun UCN Ucanal UKM Ukum UOL Uolantun UXL Uxul UYM Uaymil XCA Xcocha XCK Xcochkax XCL Xculoc XCR Xcoralche XKB Xkombec XKM Xkichmook XLM Xcalumkin XMK Xmakabatun XNC Xnucbec XTL Xutilha XUL Xultun XUP Xupa YAX Yaxchilan YLC Yalcabakal YLT Yaltutu YUL Yula YXH Yaxha YXN Yaxuna YXP Yaxcopoil ZAP El Zapote
The following codes are adopted from Graham (1975:1:25), but have been modified where the authors used a two-character code:
ALT Altar BSC Ball-court sculpture COL Column CRN Cornice FRG Fragment HST Hieroglyphic stairway, or step JMB Jamb LNT Lintel MON Monument MRL Mural painting MSC Miscellaneous PAN Panel PIL Pilaster or pier STE Stela TAB Tablet THR Throne ZOM Zoomorph
Thompson, J.E.S. 1962. A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kurbjuhn, Kornelia. 1989. Maya: The Complete Catalogue of Glyph Readings. Kassell, Germany: Schneider & Weber.
Schele, Linda. 1989. Notebook for the XIIIth Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at Texts, March 11-12, 1989. Austin, Texas: Art Department, University of Texas at Austin.