The Digital Exploration of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing and Language (original) (raw)
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5 The Digital Exploration of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing and Language
Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy, 2018
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 Mayan1 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).
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan: Annual Report for 2014
The incompletely deciphered hieroglyphic script and language of the Maya constitutes the primary focus of the research project under discussion here, which is being carried out cooperatively by the Universities of Bonn and Göttingen. The project's goal is to compile a text database and, on this basis, a dictionary of Classic Mayan. Approximately 10,000 text and image carriers have survived from the the time of the Maya culture's fluorescence between A.D. 250 and 950, and their textual and iconographic information provide unique perspectives into the language, culture, and history of pre-Hispanic Maya society. To this day, however, the text and image carriers have yet to be systematically documented and comprehensively analyzed. Such efforts would permit a detailed and precise investigation of the Classic Mayan literary language, for instance by comparing text passages using cotext and co-occurrence analysis, correlating imagery with text passages, or registering the composition or function of a text carrier in the inscription and thus potentially elucidating ambiguous text passages. Until now, such systematic and cross-linked work with text, image, and information carriers was impossible, because the necessary technology did not yet exist in this field of research. Within the framework of this project, the text and image carriers will be systematically described according to uniform standards and the source material will be made machine-readable based on XML, thereby creating the foundation for compiling the dictionary. This undertaking can only be initiated using methods and technologies from the digital humanities, whereby the project is drawing upon tools and technologies that are already available in the virtual research environment (VRE) TextGrid or that are being developed and implemented in the context of the project, as the case may be. An essential prerequisite for this is that not only the linguistic content of the inscriptions and the iconic information from the imagery, but also data concerning the text and image carriers (descriptive or metadata) be taken into account and integrated into the database. Towards this goal, tools and workflows are being developed in TextGrid that facilitate 1) documentation of the text and image carriers with an assessment of the current state of research, 2) epigraphic-linguistic evaluation of the hieroglyphic text,
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 2015
We present an integrated framework for multimedia access and analysis of ancient Maya epigraphic resources, which is developed as an interdisciplinary effort involving epigraphers and computer scientists. Our work includes several contributions: definition of consistent conventions to generate high-quality representations of Maya hieroglyphs from the three most valuable ancient codices, currently residing in European museums and institutions; a digital repository system for glyph annotation and management; as well as automatic glyph retrieval and classification methods. We study the combination of statistical Maya language models and shape representation within a hieroglyph retrieval system, the impact of applying language models extracted from different hieroglyphic resources on various data types, and the effect of shape representation choices for glyph classification. A novel Maya hieroglyph dataset is contributed, which can be used for shape analysis benchmarks, and also to study the ancient Maya writing system.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan: Annual Report for 2015
The only partially deciphered Maya hieroglyphic script and language constitute the primary focus of this research project, which has been carried out cooperatively by the University of Bonn and the Göttingen State and University Library (Niedersächsische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, SUB) 1 since mid-2014 and funded by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. The project's goal is to compile a text database and, on this basis, a dictionary of Classic Mayan, the language of a civilization which reached its florescence between A.D. 250 and 950. When the project was inaugurated in 2014, the approximately 10,000 extant text and image carriers that permit a detailed and precise investigation of the Classic Mayan literary language had yet to be systematically documented or comprehensively analyzed. In the context of the project, the text and image carriers will be systematically described according to uniform standards. This source material will be made machine-readable with XML (Extensible Markup Language) and integrated into the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) of the research association TextGrid 2 , thereby creating the foundation for compiling the dictionary. The project draws on methods and technologies from the Digital Humanities that are already available in the VRE or are being developed and implemented in the context of the project. To this end, we are adapting digital tools and services provided by TextGrid to the project's needs, and these project-specific adjustments are summarized under the acronym IDIOM " Interdisciplinary Database of Classic Mayan ". IDIOM permits systematic and networked analysis of Classic Maya text, image, and information carriers using the technology of TextGrid. The structure and functions of IDIOM thus orient themselves toward the epigraphic workflow " documentation – description – analysis – publication " , thereby supporting our work with the inscriptions.
The "Open Science" Strategy of the Project "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan
2015
The following article presents and explains the publication and knowledge transfer strategy of the research project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan. The project's goal is to make accessible in a database the epigraphic contents and object biographies of all extant hieroglyphic texts with the aid of digital technology. On the basis of resultant object and text database, a comprehensive dictionary of the Classic Mayan language will be compiled near the end of the project run-time. This research project, which is supported by public funds, sees as its duty to make project knowledge and research results freely available to the public. This openness is regarded as all-encompassing, i.e. as applying to the entire research process as it relates to methodology, contents, and results. The publication policy that this approach represents is understood as digital humanities that reflect the spirit of the age of Open Science.
Archaeology and epigraphy have made significant progress to decipher the hieroglyphic writings of the Ancient Maya, which today can be found spread over space (in sites in Mexico and Central America and museums in the US and Europe) and media types (in stone, ceramics, and codices.) While the deciphering goal remains unfinished, technological advances in automatic analysis of digital images and large-scale information management systems are enabling the possibility to analyze, organize, and visualize hieroglyphic data that can ultimately support and accelerate the deciphering challenge.
The Code of Maya Kings and Queens: Encoding and Markup of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative Issue 14, 2021
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"
MayaPS: Maya hieroglyphics with (La)TeX
TUGboat, 2012
We present a system for hieroglyphical composition of ancient Maya texts, to be used for their palaeog-raphy, the production of dictionaries, epigraphical articles and textbooks. It is designed on the base of TeX and PostScript using the Dvips interface, and includes a set of Maya fonts. The ancient Mayan writing system is very particular: base writing signs attach to each other from all four sides (left, right, top, bottom), and are also rotated and rescaled. This cannot be produced with TeX's usual tools.
Multimedia Analysis and Access of Ancient Maya Epigraphy
Abstract—We present an integrated framework for multimedia access and analysis of ancient Maya epigraphic resources, which is developed as an interdisciplinary effort involving epigraphers and computer scientists. Our work includes several contributions: definition of consistent conventions to generate high-quality representations of Maya hieroglyphs from the three most valuable ancient codices, currently residing in European museums and institutions; a digital repository system for glyph annotation and management; as well as automatic glyph retrieval and classification methods. We study the combination of statistical Maya language models and shape representation within a hieroglyph retrieval system, the impact of applying language models extracted from different hieroglyphic resources on various data types, and the effect of shape representation choices for glyph classification. A novel Maya hieroglyph dataset is contributed, which can be used for shape analysis benchmarks, and also to study the ancient Maya writing system.