Christian M. Prager | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (original) (raw)
Papers by Christian M. Prager
Pathways of Art: How Objects Get to the Museum, edited by Esther Tisa Francini and Sarah Csernay, 2022
Prager, Christian M., and Antje Grothe 2022 The History of a Maya Relief: The Tension Between Tr... more Prager, Christian M., and Antje Grothe
2022 The History of a Maya Relief: The Tension Between Transfer of Cultural Property and Knowledge Production. In Pathways of Art How Objects Get to the Museum, Esther Tisa Francini and Sarah Csernay, editors, pp. 23–42. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich.
In this Chapter of the museum catalog "Pathways of Art" Christian M. Prager and Antje Grothe focus on the history of a Maya relief panel originating from the Maya site of Pomona, shedding light on the broader tension between cultural property transfer and knowledge production. The chapter centers on the acquisition of a large Maya stela and relief panel by the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, during the 1960s under the direction of Dr. Elsy Leuzinger. The chapter discusses the ethical issues surrounding the acquisition of looted artifacts, their authenticity, and the challenges of provenance.
The relief, looted from the Maya site of Pomona, was sold by art dealers through networks that trafficked such items internationally. Using modern technology like 3D scanning, the authors have re-documented the relief, revealing new details about its iconography and hieroglyphic text. This discussion highlights ongoing debates about whether to continue acquiring and studying artifacts of uncertain origin or limit demand for them. The chapter ultimately advocates for critical documentation and transparency in cultural heritage practices to foster cooperation with the countries of origin.
For copyright reasons, no additional images can be shown here. The book is available for purchase in bookstores worldwide.
Research Note, Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2024
During the investigation for the Maya Image Archive of the "Text Database and Dictionary of Class... more During the investigation for the Maya Image Archive of the "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Maya" project the authors identified an unknown und previously unpublished drawing by Teobert Maler. This artwork, dated around 1900, was recently published within Maler's digital repository at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. The rendering illustrates the inscription on Lintel 34 from the archaeological site of Yaxchilan. This inscription originally comprised 32 hieroglyphic blocks, most of which have been physically lost since the monument's discovery. The newly identified drawing reveals the lintel in a surprisingly intact condition upon its discovery between 1897 and 1900. It introduces previously unknown portions of text to the six existing and published fragments of Lintel 34. This new finding is a breakthrough and facilitates a fresh epigraphic analysis and fosters a renewed discussion of the monument's revealed narrative.
XXX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala,, 2016
We describe a notable artifact discovered during our 2015 excavations at the Maya site of Nim li ... more We describe a notable artifact discovered during our 2015 excavations at the Maya site of Nim li Punit, Belize. It is a jade pendant shaped like an Ik’ that was worn on the chest of ancient Maya kings during copal scattering events conducted as part of calendrical rituals. The pectoral is one of the largest jades legally excavated in the Maya world. The reverse contains a historical text of 30 glyphs. If the artifact had been recovered by illegal means and entered a private collection, most of the text would make little sense
and the pectoral could not be attributed to Nim li Punit. The priceless value of the Nim li Punit pectoral, therefore, is not only its inscription, but also its archaeological context and the contemporary carved images of it on the stelae of Nim li Punit. We describe the excavations of a tomb where the pectoral was found and present a translation of its text.
Research Notes, Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2023
In the present note we present an inscribed monument discovered and first documented by Enrique J... more In the present note we present an inscribed monument discovered and first documented by Enrique Juan Palacios almost hundred years ago during his exploration of archaeological sites in Chiapas. Later, Richard Ceough , a professor of speech at the University of Michigan and archaeology enthusiast, who undertook several expeditions in Chiapas during his holidays in the years from 1943 to 1946, rediscovered the monument in 1945, and photographed all sculptured sides of it.
Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya, 2022
Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, 2021
great number of Maya hieroglyphic signs represent animals or their body parts. Most of these anim... more great number of Maya hieroglyphic signs represent animals or their body parts. Most of these animals are carnivores, such as felines and canines. In this paper, I will identify a word-sign for WAX "grey fox." This newly discovered graph 1 complements previously known signs for canines, for example, tz'i' "dog," ook "dog" and ch'amak "fox." So far, this is the third logogram identified that refers to a specific fox species living in the Maya Lowlands, after the sign for CH'AMAK, a general term for "grey fox" in Colonial and Modern Yucatec (Barrera Vásquez 1980:125). Recently, Albert Davletshin and Stephen Houston have identified a logogram WET "gray fox" on a monument from Tonina (Davletshin and Houston 2021). Recent developments in Maya hieroglyphic decipherment have shown an increasing shift to previously undeciphered logograms of the Maya script, such as
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative Issue 14, 2021
Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE-1500 CE) is a semi-deciphered logographic and syllabic autochth... more Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE-1500 CE) is a semi-deciphered logographic and syllabic autochthonous writing system from the Americas and is one of the most signicant writing traditions of the ancient world. Because of its incomplete state of decipherment, complexity and variation in graphematics, and partially lost lexicon, transliterations cannot be used within the encoding. The project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan approaches this challenge with an encoding strategy relying on stand-o markup, which is enriched with additional information sources. Using dierent formats (RDF, XML) and standards (CIDOC CRM, TEI P5), the inscriptions are encoded in a multilevel corpus: (1) a tei_all-compliant schema dening values and rules for the encoding of the text's topological and structural features, (2) a "Sign Catalogue"
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2021
https://mayawoerterbuch.de/calendar-calculations/ The Project Text Database and Dictionary of Cl... more https://mayawoerterbuch.de/calendar-calculations/
The Project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan has just released a new WebTool for the calculation and reconstruction of complete and in complete Maya calendar dates. The tool is free and open access via the project website and allows users worldwide to perform calculations of the Maya calendar and astronomical data. The tool not only calculates and reconstructs individual calendar entries, but also the calendarical and astronomical framework of an inscription. Unknown coefficients are entered either with * or a blank field, multiple coefficients are separated with commas " , " (e.g. 1,2,8) and number ranges are defined with " - " (e.g. 1-3,11-13), separated with commas " , ". Results can be exported as CSV, TXT, ODT or PDF. The features are described in a help menu, a description of the tool (in German) can be downloaded from the Website.
The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Mar 16, 2021
In my contribution to this conference volume, I focus less on the linguistic, epigraphic and pala... more In my contribution to this conference volume, I focus less on the linguistic, epigraphic and palaeographic domain of Maya writing and more on certain semiotic aspects that become apparent upon exploring Classic Maya imagery and hieroglyphic texts. Beside epigraphy and linguistics, semiotic approaches are key to the study of Classic Mayan written culture. The work of a historian not only addresses the material legacies of past societies, but also represents an archaeology of thoughts and minds: using written sources, historical research attempts to delve into past systems of ideas, values and conceptions to draw conclusions about the intellectual world underlying the cultural achievements of a so called ‘interpretative community’. Methodologically, this approach primarily relies on semiotic artefacts, which were intentionally used as instruments for indirectly communicating messages. Moreover, these artefacts functioned as indices that evoked stored knowledge and experiences and established analogies with other signs. Scientific research on the intellectual achievements of a past community thus focuses on all those public representations which, as communicative artefacts based on language or visual codes, encode and convey knowledge. For Mesoamerican studies in general, these artefacts consist primarily of linguistic, semasiographical and iconic texts, as well as images on various media that provide insights into the beliefs, practices, intellectual world, conceptual systems of pre-Hispanic societies. If image and text are used in complement to each other, they constitute an overall message that is conveyed jointly by visual and linguistic codes.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan Research Notes, 2020
A Maya stela with a hieroglyphic text and a portrayal of a Maya ruler that is now in the collecti... more A Maya stela with a hieroglyphic text and a portrayal of a Maya ruler that is now in the collections of the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany (inventory no. M 30751), has received scant attention from scholars to date 1. This stela is the focus of current research by the authors as members of the project "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan", who have been collaborating with Doris Kurella of the Linden Museum since 2018. Using the project's 3D white light scanner, the authors created a high-resolution digital version and three-dimensional visualization of the stela in the storage facilities of the Linden Museum (Figures 1-2). Digital image processing was employed to render legible text passages that can now barely be read with the naked eye and to clarify aspects of the ruler's representation. These developments have led to new understanding of the contents and origin of the stela, which we are presenting here in English for the first time. Our analysis concludes that the monument illustrates a previously unknown Maya king of the small polity of Hix Witz (English "Ocelot/Margay Hill") from the early ninth century CE and most likely originates from Zapote Bobal in Petén, Guatemala, or a neighboring site. Together with the nearby site of El Pajaral (see Figure 11), these two settlements constitute the core of a small, Late Classic polity whose rulers referred to themselves as the kings of Hix Witz and competed with other small polities for regional dominance and control of resources between 600 and 850. According to the inscription, the front of the stela shows a ruler of Hix Witz/Zapote Bobal, whose name is only partially interpretable as Ahiin Ahk ? Witz and who presumably ascended to the throne in the late eighth or early ninth century as the last king of this polity. Our investigations thus add to the list of historical persons whose names appear in the Maya hieroglyphic corpus between 465 and ca. 800 CE in connection with the toponymic title of Hix Witz.
Tiempo detenido, tiempo suficiente: ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, 2018
This article concerns the concept of k’uh ‘gods’ in the religious conceptions and beliefs of the ... more This article concerns the concept of k’uh ‘gods’ in the religious conceptions and beliefs of the Classic Maya (ad 250–900). It explores the intracultural variation and stability of the concept, based on all textual attestations that were compiled, epigraphically evaluated, and interpreted in the context of religious history. At the forefront of this tempo-spatial research is the question of which cultural influences and dynamics promoted the stability of this deity concept or contributed to its variation, and how these phenomena were expressed in Classic Maya texts. To this end, the semantic domain of each attestation needed to be determined based on an analysis of distribution and equivalence class. Using so-called paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, the linguistic usage of the term k’uh is tested to determine its lexical field and semantic domain, and thus to draw conclusions about the foundational concept with respect to its spatial and temporal dimensions.
El artículo se refiere al concepto de k’uh ‘dioses’ en las creencias religiosas de los mayas clásicos (250–900 d.C.). Se explora la variación y la estabilidad intracultural del concepto basándose en todas las evidencias textuales que fueron compiladas, epigráficamente evaluadas e interpretadas en el contexto de la historia de las religiones. El enfoque de esta investigación temporal–espacial ha sido la cuestión sobre las influencias y dinámicas culturales que promovían la estabilidad de este concepto de deidad; cuáles contribuían a su variación y cómo se expresaban estos fenómenos en los textos mayas clásicos. Para ello era necesario determinar el campo semántico de cada registro basándose en el análisis de la distribución y la clase de equivalencia. Utilizando las llamadas relaciones paradigmáticas y sintagmáticas, se probó el uso lingüístico del término k’uh para determinar su campo léxico y su campo semántico, y así llegar a conclusiones sobre el concepto fundacional con respecto a sus dimensiones espaciales y temporales.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan Research Note, 15, 2020
The decipherment KUK for sign 576 that has been tested here proves productive for understanding i... more The decipherment KUK for sign 576 that has been tested here proves productive for understanding its occurrences in Palenque (yok kuk ch’ajan ‘guardian of the tied bundle’) and for reading the name phrase of the way creature nicknamed “man in the bundle” as kuk winik, kukil winik, or kukan winik ‘bundle person’, ‘rolled-up person’, or ‘person who becomes a bundle’. This interpretation also fits well with the attestation on La Amelia Stela 2, where the captive who has been tied and wrapped up into a bundle is rolled down the stairs in the context of a ritual ballgame. In Palenque, this term also identifies a member of the royal court who was assigned with caring for the royal vesture and regalia and dressing the king or otherwise assisting him with donning his vestments.
As part of our work on a new catalogue of Maya signs and their graphs, we are currently evaluatin... more As part of our work on a new catalogue of Maya signs and their graphs, we are currently evaluating and revising Eric Thompson's Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs (1962). We are critically scrutinizing his system with the help of his original grey cards and supplementing it with signs that were not included in Thompson's original catalogue. Despite its known shortcomings and incompleteness, his catalogue is still regarded as the standard work for Maya epigraphers, which is why we adopt Thompson's nomenclature while removing misclassifications and duplicates, merging graph variants under a common nomenclature, and adding new signs or allographs to the sign index in sequence, starting with the number 1500.
My 1990 transcription Alonso de Solana's "Vocabulario muy copioso en lengua española y maya de Yu... more My 1990 transcription Alonso de Solana's "Vocabulario muy copioso en lengua española y maya de Yucatán, compuesto por Fr. Alonso de la Solana de la Orden de N.P.S. Francisco, Mérida 1580", original at the Hispanic Society manuscript number b2005, based on a microfilm provided by the Hispanic Society of Amarica, New York, N.Y. The Ms. is from 1990 and exhibits the original spelling with editions added as footnotes. The Ms. has never been published.
Original transcription and and edited transcription of the Bocabulario de Mayathan, Bocabulario d... more Original transcription and and edited transcription of the Bocabulario de Mayathan, Bocabulario de Mayathan, the colonial period dictionary of Yucatec Maya, or Codex Vindobonensis s.n. 3833, Austrian National Library. Spanish - Maya, 1750's copy of an 1570's original. Transcription by Christian Prager, produced in 1988 and 1989, used and cited by R. Acuña for his 1993 edition of the Vienna Dictionary, published by UNAM. The Ms. contains an edited transcription containing comments, corrections and additions by R. Acuña.
Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy: From Practice to Discipline: 65–83, edited by Irene Rossi & Annamaria De Santis. Berlin & Warsaw: De Gruyter Open, 2018
The Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE–1500 CE), which has only been partially deciphered, is one ... more The Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE–1500 CE), which has only been partially deciphered, is one of the most significant writing traditions of the ancient world. In 2014, the project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan was established at the University of Bonn by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, to research the written language of the pre-Columbian Maya. The project aims to use digital methods and technologies to compile the epigraphic contents and object histories of all known hieroglyphic texts. Based on these data, a dictionary of the Classic Mayan language will be compiled and published near the end of the project’s runtime in 2028. The project is methodologically situated in the digital humanities and conducted in cooperation with the Göttingen State and University Library (Grube & Prager, 2016).
Informatik 2017 (Lecture Notes in Informatics, 275): 1185-1196, edited by Maximilian Eibl & Martin Gaedke. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2017
Im Projekt "Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya" stellt der Zeichen-katalog eine de... more Im Projekt "Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya" stellt der Zeichen-katalog eine der wichtigsten Komponenten zur Erstellung des digitalen Textkorpus und dessen lin-guistischer Analyse dar. Für die noch nicht vollständig entzifferte Schrift und Sprache des Klassi-schen Maya ist der Zeichenkatalog das essentielle Hilfsmittel zur Identifikation und Klassifikation der im Schriftsystem verwendeten Zeichen. Aufgrund besonderer Eigenschaften der Hieroglyphen-schrift und der noch unvollständigen und damit auch auf Hypothesen basierenden Entzifferung ist eine Neukonzeption zur Inventarisierung und Klassifikation von Mayaschriftzeichen notwendig. Herausforderungen bei der Modellierung stellen sich vor allem bei der Erfassung von Zeichen und deren Zuordnung zu Graphemen sowie der qualitativen Bewertung und Einstufung von Entziffe-rungshypothesen. Dieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Vorstellung des Zeichenkatalogs und sei-ner Bedeutung für die Erforschung des Schriftsystems des Klassischen Maya. Dabei wird der ge-wählte Modellierungsansatz erläutert und die Methode der Anforderungsanalyse unter besonderer Betrachtung des Aspekts der interdisziplinären Arbeit in einem Digital Humanities Projekt beschrie-ben.
Digital and Traditional Epigraphy in Context: Proceedings of the EAGLE 2016 International Conference (Studi Umanistici, Serie Antichistica 36): 233-246, edited by Silvia Orlandi, Raffaella Santucci, Francesco Mambrini and Pietro Maria Liuzzo. Rome: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2017
No existing digital work environment can sufficiently represent the traditional epigraphic workfl... more No existing digital work environment can sufficiently represent the traditional epigraphic workflow ‘documentation, analysis, interpretation, publication’ for a non-alphabetic writing system. Using the Maya hieroglyphic script, this workflow will be transferred to a digital epigraphy. Digital methods and tools will be developed and reused in a Virtual Research Environment to create a freely accessible, annotated textual corpus, including metadata on cultural and object history and references.
Ägyptologische ‚Binsen‘-Weisheiten III: Formen und Funktionen von Zeichenliste und Paläographie (Abhandlungen der Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, 15): 135-181, edited by Svenja A. Gülden, Kyra V. J. van der Moezel & Ursula Verhoeven-van Elsbergen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag
The hitherto only partially deciphered Maya hieroglyphic writing system is one of the most eminen... more The hitherto only partially deciphered Maya hieroglyphic writing system is one of the most eminent examples of the development of writing in the world. The present article discusses a new description scheme for graphemes in Maya writing. Previous sign catalogues applied a more or less random approach to make an inventory of allographs. Our scheme works on the basis of sign-morphological criteria and revises the coding scheme established by Eric Thompson. This new grapheme classification is moreover designed to match the requirements of corpus linguistics and machine readability.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Methods in the Humanities 2018 (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2314): 33-44, edited by Michael Piotrowski. Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, 2019
The project ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ aims at creating a machine-readable c... more The project ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ aims at creating a machine-readable corpus of all Maya texts and compiling a dictionary on this basis. The characteristics of this complex writing system pose particular challenges to research, resulting in contradictory and ambiguous deciphering hypotheses. In this paper, we present a system for the qualitative evaluation of reading proposals that is
integrated into a digital Sign Catalogue for Mayan hieroglyphs, establishing a novel concept for sign systematisation and classification. The paper focuses in particular on the modelling process and thus emphasises the role of knowledge representation in digital humanities research.
Pathways of Art: How Objects Get to the Museum, edited by Esther Tisa Francini and Sarah Csernay, 2022
Prager, Christian M., and Antje Grothe 2022 The History of a Maya Relief: The Tension Between Tr... more Prager, Christian M., and Antje Grothe
2022 The History of a Maya Relief: The Tension Between Transfer of Cultural Property and Knowledge Production. In Pathways of Art How Objects Get to the Museum, Esther Tisa Francini and Sarah Csernay, editors, pp. 23–42. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich.
In this Chapter of the museum catalog "Pathways of Art" Christian M. Prager and Antje Grothe focus on the history of a Maya relief panel originating from the Maya site of Pomona, shedding light on the broader tension between cultural property transfer and knowledge production. The chapter centers on the acquisition of a large Maya stela and relief panel by the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, during the 1960s under the direction of Dr. Elsy Leuzinger. The chapter discusses the ethical issues surrounding the acquisition of looted artifacts, their authenticity, and the challenges of provenance.
The relief, looted from the Maya site of Pomona, was sold by art dealers through networks that trafficked such items internationally. Using modern technology like 3D scanning, the authors have re-documented the relief, revealing new details about its iconography and hieroglyphic text. This discussion highlights ongoing debates about whether to continue acquiring and studying artifacts of uncertain origin or limit demand for them. The chapter ultimately advocates for critical documentation and transparency in cultural heritage practices to foster cooperation with the countries of origin.
For copyright reasons, no additional images can be shown here. The book is available for purchase in bookstores worldwide.
Research Note, Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2024
During the investigation for the Maya Image Archive of the "Text Database and Dictionary of Class... more During the investigation for the Maya Image Archive of the "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Maya" project the authors identified an unknown und previously unpublished drawing by Teobert Maler. This artwork, dated around 1900, was recently published within Maler's digital repository at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. The rendering illustrates the inscription on Lintel 34 from the archaeological site of Yaxchilan. This inscription originally comprised 32 hieroglyphic blocks, most of which have been physically lost since the monument's discovery. The newly identified drawing reveals the lintel in a surprisingly intact condition upon its discovery between 1897 and 1900. It introduces previously unknown portions of text to the six existing and published fragments of Lintel 34. This new finding is a breakthrough and facilitates a fresh epigraphic analysis and fosters a renewed discussion of the monument's revealed narrative.
XXX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala,, 2016
We describe a notable artifact discovered during our 2015 excavations at the Maya site of Nim li ... more We describe a notable artifact discovered during our 2015 excavations at the Maya site of Nim li Punit, Belize. It is a jade pendant shaped like an Ik’ that was worn on the chest of ancient Maya kings during copal scattering events conducted as part of calendrical rituals. The pectoral is one of the largest jades legally excavated in the Maya world. The reverse contains a historical text of 30 glyphs. If the artifact had been recovered by illegal means and entered a private collection, most of the text would make little sense
and the pectoral could not be attributed to Nim li Punit. The priceless value of the Nim li Punit pectoral, therefore, is not only its inscription, but also its archaeological context and the contemporary carved images of it on the stelae of Nim li Punit. We describe the excavations of a tomb where the pectoral was found and present a translation of its text.
Research Notes, Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2023
In the present note we present an inscribed monument discovered and first documented by Enrique J... more In the present note we present an inscribed monument discovered and first documented by Enrique Juan Palacios almost hundred years ago during his exploration of archaeological sites in Chiapas. Later, Richard Ceough , a professor of speech at the University of Michigan and archaeology enthusiast, who undertook several expeditions in Chiapas during his holidays in the years from 1943 to 1946, rediscovered the monument in 1945, and photographed all sculptured sides of it.
Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya, 2022
Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, 2021
great number of Maya hieroglyphic signs represent animals or their body parts. Most of these anim... more great number of Maya hieroglyphic signs represent animals or their body parts. Most of these animals are carnivores, such as felines and canines. In this paper, I will identify a word-sign for WAX "grey fox." This newly discovered graph 1 complements previously known signs for canines, for example, tz'i' "dog," ook "dog" and ch'amak "fox." So far, this is the third logogram identified that refers to a specific fox species living in the Maya Lowlands, after the sign for CH'AMAK, a general term for "grey fox" in Colonial and Modern Yucatec (Barrera Vásquez 1980:125). Recently, Albert Davletshin and Stephen Houston have identified a logogram WET "gray fox" on a monument from Tonina (Davletshin and Houston 2021). Recent developments in Maya hieroglyphic decipherment have shown an increasing shift to previously undeciphered logograms of the Maya script, such as
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative Issue 14, 2021
Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE-1500 CE) is a semi-deciphered logographic and syllabic autochth... more Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE-1500 CE) is a semi-deciphered logographic and syllabic autochthonous writing system from the Americas and is one of the most signicant writing traditions of the ancient world. Because of its incomplete state of decipherment, complexity and variation in graphematics, and partially lost lexicon, transliterations cannot be used within the encoding. The project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan approaches this challenge with an encoding strategy relying on stand-o markup, which is enriched with additional information sources. Using dierent formats (RDF, XML) and standards (CIDOC CRM, TEI P5), the inscriptions are encoded in a multilevel corpus: (1) a tei_all-compliant schema dening values and rules for the encoding of the text's topological and structural features, (2) a "Sign Catalogue"
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan, 2021
https://mayawoerterbuch.de/calendar-calculations/ The Project Text Database and Dictionary of Cl... more https://mayawoerterbuch.de/calendar-calculations/
The Project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan has just released a new WebTool for the calculation and reconstruction of complete and in complete Maya calendar dates. The tool is free and open access via the project website and allows users worldwide to perform calculations of the Maya calendar and astronomical data. The tool not only calculates and reconstructs individual calendar entries, but also the calendarical and astronomical framework of an inscription. Unknown coefficients are entered either with * or a blank field, multiple coefficients are separated with commas " , " (e.g. 1,2,8) and number ranges are defined with " - " (e.g. 1-3,11-13), separated with commas " , ". Results can be exported as CSV, TXT, ODT or PDF. The features are described in a help menu, a description of the tool (in German) can be downloaded from the Website.
The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Mar 16, 2021
In my contribution to this conference volume, I focus less on the linguistic, epigraphic and pala... more In my contribution to this conference volume, I focus less on the linguistic, epigraphic and palaeographic domain of Maya writing and more on certain semiotic aspects that become apparent upon exploring Classic Maya imagery and hieroglyphic texts. Beside epigraphy and linguistics, semiotic approaches are key to the study of Classic Mayan written culture. The work of a historian not only addresses the material legacies of past societies, but also represents an archaeology of thoughts and minds: using written sources, historical research attempts to delve into past systems of ideas, values and conceptions to draw conclusions about the intellectual world underlying the cultural achievements of a so called ‘interpretative community’. Methodologically, this approach primarily relies on semiotic artefacts, which were intentionally used as instruments for indirectly communicating messages. Moreover, these artefacts functioned as indices that evoked stored knowledge and experiences and established analogies with other signs. Scientific research on the intellectual achievements of a past community thus focuses on all those public representations which, as communicative artefacts based on language or visual codes, encode and convey knowledge. For Mesoamerican studies in general, these artefacts consist primarily of linguistic, semasiographical and iconic texts, as well as images on various media that provide insights into the beliefs, practices, intellectual world, conceptual systems of pre-Hispanic societies. If image and text are used in complement to each other, they constitute an overall message that is conveyed jointly by visual and linguistic codes.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan Research Notes, 2020
A Maya stela with a hieroglyphic text and a portrayal of a Maya ruler that is now in the collecti... more A Maya stela with a hieroglyphic text and a portrayal of a Maya ruler that is now in the collections of the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany (inventory no. M 30751), has received scant attention from scholars to date 1. This stela is the focus of current research by the authors as members of the project "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan", who have been collaborating with Doris Kurella of the Linden Museum since 2018. Using the project's 3D white light scanner, the authors created a high-resolution digital version and three-dimensional visualization of the stela in the storage facilities of the Linden Museum (Figures 1-2). Digital image processing was employed to render legible text passages that can now barely be read with the naked eye and to clarify aspects of the ruler's representation. These developments have led to new understanding of the contents and origin of the stela, which we are presenting here in English for the first time. Our analysis concludes that the monument illustrates a previously unknown Maya king of the small polity of Hix Witz (English "Ocelot/Margay Hill") from the early ninth century CE and most likely originates from Zapote Bobal in Petén, Guatemala, or a neighboring site. Together with the nearby site of El Pajaral (see Figure 11), these two settlements constitute the core of a small, Late Classic polity whose rulers referred to themselves as the kings of Hix Witz and competed with other small polities for regional dominance and control of resources between 600 and 850. According to the inscription, the front of the stela shows a ruler of Hix Witz/Zapote Bobal, whose name is only partially interpretable as Ahiin Ahk ? Witz and who presumably ascended to the throne in the late eighth or early ninth century as the last king of this polity. Our investigations thus add to the list of historical persons whose names appear in the Maya hieroglyphic corpus between 465 and ca. 800 CE in connection with the toponymic title of Hix Witz.
Tiempo detenido, tiempo suficiente: ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, 2018
This article concerns the concept of k’uh ‘gods’ in the religious conceptions and beliefs of the ... more This article concerns the concept of k’uh ‘gods’ in the religious conceptions and beliefs of the Classic Maya (ad 250–900). It explores the intracultural variation and stability of the concept, based on all textual attestations that were compiled, epigraphically evaluated, and interpreted in the context of religious history. At the forefront of this tempo-spatial research is the question of which cultural influences and dynamics promoted the stability of this deity concept or contributed to its variation, and how these phenomena were expressed in Classic Maya texts. To this end, the semantic domain of each attestation needed to be determined based on an analysis of distribution and equivalence class. Using so-called paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, the linguistic usage of the term k’uh is tested to determine its lexical field and semantic domain, and thus to draw conclusions about the foundational concept with respect to its spatial and temporal dimensions.
El artículo se refiere al concepto de k’uh ‘dioses’ en las creencias religiosas de los mayas clásicos (250–900 d.C.). Se explora la variación y la estabilidad intracultural del concepto basándose en todas las evidencias textuales que fueron compiladas, epigráficamente evaluadas e interpretadas en el contexto de la historia de las religiones. El enfoque de esta investigación temporal–espacial ha sido la cuestión sobre las influencias y dinámicas culturales que promovían la estabilidad de este concepto de deidad; cuáles contribuían a su variación y cómo se expresaban estos fenómenos en los textos mayas clásicos. Para ello era necesario determinar el campo semántico de cada registro basándose en el análisis de la distribución y la clase de equivalencia. Utilizando las llamadas relaciones paradigmáticas y sintagmáticas, se probó el uso lingüístico del término k’uh para determinar su campo léxico y su campo semántico, y así llegar a conclusiones sobre el concepto fundacional con respecto a sus dimensiones espaciales y temporales.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan Research Note, 15, 2020
The decipherment KUK for sign 576 that has been tested here proves productive for understanding i... more The decipherment KUK for sign 576 that has been tested here proves productive for understanding its occurrences in Palenque (yok kuk ch’ajan ‘guardian of the tied bundle’) and for reading the name phrase of the way creature nicknamed “man in the bundle” as kuk winik, kukil winik, or kukan winik ‘bundle person’, ‘rolled-up person’, or ‘person who becomes a bundle’. This interpretation also fits well with the attestation on La Amelia Stela 2, where the captive who has been tied and wrapped up into a bundle is rolled down the stairs in the context of a ritual ballgame. In Palenque, this term also identifies a member of the royal court who was assigned with caring for the royal vesture and regalia and dressing the king or otherwise assisting him with donning his vestments.
As part of our work on a new catalogue of Maya signs and their graphs, we are currently evaluatin... more As part of our work on a new catalogue of Maya signs and their graphs, we are currently evaluating and revising Eric Thompson's Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs (1962). We are critically scrutinizing his system with the help of his original grey cards and supplementing it with signs that were not included in Thompson's original catalogue. Despite its known shortcomings and incompleteness, his catalogue is still regarded as the standard work for Maya epigraphers, which is why we adopt Thompson's nomenclature while removing misclassifications and duplicates, merging graph variants under a common nomenclature, and adding new signs or allographs to the sign index in sequence, starting with the number 1500.
My 1990 transcription Alonso de Solana's "Vocabulario muy copioso en lengua española y maya de Yu... more My 1990 transcription Alonso de Solana's "Vocabulario muy copioso en lengua española y maya de Yucatán, compuesto por Fr. Alonso de la Solana de la Orden de N.P.S. Francisco, Mérida 1580", original at the Hispanic Society manuscript number b2005, based on a microfilm provided by the Hispanic Society of Amarica, New York, N.Y. The Ms. is from 1990 and exhibits the original spelling with editions added as footnotes. The Ms. has never been published.
Original transcription and and edited transcription of the Bocabulario de Mayathan, Bocabulario d... more Original transcription and and edited transcription of the Bocabulario de Mayathan, Bocabulario de Mayathan, the colonial period dictionary of Yucatec Maya, or Codex Vindobonensis s.n. 3833, Austrian National Library. Spanish - Maya, 1750's copy of an 1570's original. Transcription by Christian Prager, produced in 1988 and 1989, used and cited by R. Acuña for his 1993 edition of the Vienna Dictionary, published by UNAM. The Ms. contains an edited transcription containing comments, corrections and additions by R. Acuña.
Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy: From Practice to Discipline: 65–83, edited by Irene Rossi & Annamaria De Santis. Berlin & Warsaw: De Gruyter Open, 2018
The Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE–1500 CE), which has only been partially deciphered, is one ... more The Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE–1500 CE), which has only been partially deciphered, is one of the most significant writing traditions of the ancient world. In 2014, the project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan was established at the University of Bonn by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, to research the written language of the pre-Columbian Maya. The project aims to use digital methods and technologies to compile the epigraphic contents and object histories of all known hieroglyphic texts. Based on these data, a dictionary of the Classic Mayan language will be compiled and published near the end of the project’s runtime in 2028. The project is methodologically situated in the digital humanities and conducted in cooperation with the Göttingen State and University Library (Grube & Prager, 2016).
Informatik 2017 (Lecture Notes in Informatics, 275): 1185-1196, edited by Maximilian Eibl & Martin Gaedke. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2017
Im Projekt "Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya" stellt der Zeichen-katalog eine de... more Im Projekt "Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya" stellt der Zeichen-katalog eine der wichtigsten Komponenten zur Erstellung des digitalen Textkorpus und dessen lin-guistischer Analyse dar. Für die noch nicht vollständig entzifferte Schrift und Sprache des Klassi-schen Maya ist der Zeichenkatalog das essentielle Hilfsmittel zur Identifikation und Klassifikation der im Schriftsystem verwendeten Zeichen. Aufgrund besonderer Eigenschaften der Hieroglyphen-schrift und der noch unvollständigen und damit auch auf Hypothesen basierenden Entzifferung ist eine Neukonzeption zur Inventarisierung und Klassifikation von Mayaschriftzeichen notwendig. Herausforderungen bei der Modellierung stellen sich vor allem bei der Erfassung von Zeichen und deren Zuordnung zu Graphemen sowie der qualitativen Bewertung und Einstufung von Entziffe-rungshypothesen. Dieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Vorstellung des Zeichenkatalogs und sei-ner Bedeutung für die Erforschung des Schriftsystems des Klassischen Maya. Dabei wird der ge-wählte Modellierungsansatz erläutert und die Methode der Anforderungsanalyse unter besonderer Betrachtung des Aspekts der interdisziplinären Arbeit in einem Digital Humanities Projekt beschrie-ben.
Digital and Traditional Epigraphy in Context: Proceedings of the EAGLE 2016 International Conference (Studi Umanistici, Serie Antichistica 36): 233-246, edited by Silvia Orlandi, Raffaella Santucci, Francesco Mambrini and Pietro Maria Liuzzo. Rome: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2017
No existing digital work environment can sufficiently represent the traditional epigraphic workfl... more No existing digital work environment can sufficiently represent the traditional epigraphic workflow ‘documentation, analysis, interpretation, publication’ for a non-alphabetic writing system. Using the Maya hieroglyphic script, this workflow will be transferred to a digital epigraphy. Digital methods and tools will be developed and reused in a Virtual Research Environment to create a freely accessible, annotated textual corpus, including metadata on cultural and object history and references.
Ägyptologische ‚Binsen‘-Weisheiten III: Formen und Funktionen von Zeichenliste und Paläographie (Abhandlungen der Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, 15): 135-181, edited by Svenja A. Gülden, Kyra V. J. van der Moezel & Ursula Verhoeven-van Elsbergen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag
The hitherto only partially deciphered Maya hieroglyphic writing system is one of the most eminen... more The hitherto only partially deciphered Maya hieroglyphic writing system is one of the most eminent examples of the development of writing in the world. The present article discusses a new description scheme for graphemes in Maya writing. Previous sign catalogues applied a more or less random approach to make an inventory of allographs. Our scheme works on the basis of sign-morphological criteria and revises the coding scheme established by Eric Thompson. This new grapheme classification is moreover designed to match the requirements of corpus linguistics and machine readability.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Methods in the Humanities 2018 (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2314): 33-44, edited by Michael Piotrowski. Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, 2019
The project ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ aims at creating a machine-readable c... more The project ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ aims at creating a machine-readable corpus of all Maya texts and compiling a dictionary on this basis. The characteristics of this complex writing system pose particular challenges to research, resulting in contradictory and ambiguous deciphering hypotheses. In this paper, we present a system for the qualitative evaluation of reading proposals that is
integrated into a digital Sign Catalogue for Mayan hieroglyphs, establishing a novel concept for sign systematisation and classification. The paper focuses in particular on the modelling process and thus emphasises the role of knowledge representation in digital humanities research.
Jahrbuch · Year Book · Anuario 2014 - 2015: Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan
FREE DOWNLOAD via AMAZON KINDLE - The present Year Book of the project Text Database and Dictiona... more FREE DOWNLOAD via AMAZON KINDLE - The present Year Book of the project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan (University of Bonn) includes publications that members and associates of the research project have issued on the website www.mayawoerterbuch.de. The first volume gathers eleven research reports, working papers, research notes as well as a selection of web contents. In addition to the electronic distribution format the project will make a selection of its digital resources (published on its website www.mayawoerterbuch.de) periodically available as an e-book and a printed volume. This web-to-print initiative is part of the project's long term preservation and information dissemination strategy, combining the traditional publication formats with digital distribution of research data under the label of CC-BY. Volume editor: Christian Prager; series editor: Nikolai Grube. ISBN 978-3-7392-4593
[= Supernatural Agents in Classic Maya Religion: A Study of intracultural variation and stability... more [= Supernatural Agents in Classic Maya Religion: A Study of intracultural variation and stability, presented on the example of the k'uh "god" concept in the belief system of Classic Maya elites (250 - 900 AD)]
Museum Anthropology, Jan 1, 2011
This short epigraphic note concerns ideas and observations regarding the dating and provenance of... more This short epigraphic note concerns ideas and observations regarding the dating and provenance of the Dresden Codex (COL Dresden) on the basis of a paleographic comparison between various spellings of the name of God D in COL Dresden and a hieroglyphic spelling of God D's name attested on a sherd from Mayapan. This painted sherd of bowl was found in Cache 3 from Building R-87 and was first published by Proskouriakoff and Temple (Proskouriakoff and Temple 1955, Smith 1971:II-64). This text is painted on outer surface in black and it contains the hieroglyph T1009 or T152.1009:23 /ITZAM TZ'IKIN(?)-na/ which has been identified by Paul Schellhas as the name hieroglyphic for the Postclassic deity Itzamnaaj (Schellhas 1892). The archaeological record exhibits that the surface of Cache 3 also contained fragments of a turtle sculpture that yields the calendaric inscriptions 10 Ajaw 8 Ajaw which has been associated with the LC 10.18.0.0.0 and 10.19.0.0.0 on the basis of radiocarbon dating for various samples from the building (1185 and 1204 AD) (Graña-Behrens 2002). The calligraphic style of the hieroglyph T1009 on the sherd is, at first sight, very similar to or even identical with the various spellings of this hieroglyphc attested in the COL Dresden as exhibited in the chapter "Paleography". On the basis of this comparison on could hypothesize that the sherd and the COL Dresden, or at least its contents, are contemporaneous.
Originally distributed among colleagues in 2006, an idea regarding a decipherment of the Maya log... more Originally distributed among colleagues in 2006, an idea regarding a decipherment of the Maya logograph T533 as BOK "smell". Meanwhile new alternative decipherments have been distributed (MOOK, SAAK etc.).
Instituto de Antropología e Historia, Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, 2019
PA LI EB'IL TZUL: RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND EPIGRAPHIC INVESTIGATIONS AT UXBENKA AND PUSILHA, 2008
Paper presented at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, Ca... more Paper presented at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, Canada, March 2008: PA LI EB'IL TZUL: RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND EPIGRAPHIC INVESTIGATIONS AT UXBENKA AND PUSILHA
(panel organized by Geoffrey Braswell)