The Code of Maya Kings and Queens: Encoding and Markup of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing (original) (raw)
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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,
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).
The Digital Exploration of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing and Language
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 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).
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.
Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan: Project Report 2017
2018
For the classification and systematization of Mayan hieroglyphs, we developed a digital Sign Catalogue. As an inventory of all signs.it is an indispensable tool for identifying the glyphs used in a specific text. The identification and and classification of the signs is challenging, because they appear in several graphic variants and can have multiple sign functions, for example as a logograph or as a syllabic sign. Further, continuing academic discussions over the decipherment of the approximately 1000 signs arise various hypotheses for linguistic readings of individual signs. The demands of analyzing this complex writing system and of integrating the continually changing state of research into the sign catalog necessitate a flexible data model. It must be able to react to potential changes, and the documented information must be both reproducible and verifiable. We chose an ontologically based modelling approach based on CIDOC CRM 1 and GOLD 2. The data model was implemented in RDF to optimally represent the semantic relations between the entities. The use of graph technology enables semantic queries of the data. The assessment of proposed readings is a particular challenge for the decipherment and analysis of Maya writing. Multiple readings for a series of signs are attested throughout the research literature. We not only want to document, but also to qualitatively evaluate them. Drawing on the academic literature on the Maya script, we developed sets of criteria oriented toward linguistic context of use (e.g., correct part of speech, plausible text-image relationship, etc.), among other parameters (compare Kelley 1976). For each set, the criteria are linked with each other using propositional logic, so that an appropriate confidence level can be obtained according to the combination. 1 CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model http://www.cidoc-crm.org/. 2 General Ontology for Linguistic Description http://linguistics-ontology.org/.
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.
MayaPS: Typing Maya Hieroglyphics with TEX/LTEX
2012
We present a system for the hieroglyphical composition of ancient Maya texts, to be used for their palaeography, 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 Maya’s writing system is very particular: base writing signs attach each other from all four sides (left, right, top, bottom), being aslo rotated and rescaled and could not be produced with usual TEX’s tools. For example, we type: \maya{li.AM2 u.TUN/CHU uj.UJ.ki death.KIMI/la} to ', $. %+ (& " -(Dresden codex) .
Theory and Method in Maya Decipherment
The PARI Journal 18(2): 1-48, 2017
This paper provides a detailed review of the principal assumptions, theoretical orientations, and working methodologies of archaeological decipherment, indicating how these perspectives have guided ongoing work in script comparison, stimulated investigations into the origins, development, and demise of writing systems, and served as a yardstick against which to measure proposed decipherments. The principles are then applied to Maya hieroglyphic writing in a detailed case study of the decipherment of the Maya phonetic sign /me/. The evidence in support of this particular decipherment measures up well against the aforementioned general principles, and is additionally supported by controlled contexts (sufficient in number and variety to allow testing), by the reconstructed grammatical rules and orthographic conventions of Classic Maya writing, and, not least, by the critical presence of biscripts and similar script-external constraints. Following determination of the sign’s function (a CV phonetic sign) and canonical reading value (me), its iconic origins are explored and determined to have arisen acrophonically from the Eastern Ch'olan term /mech/ “snail shell”. Contributions of this study include a nuanced analysis of the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (a critical sixteenth-century biscript), the addition of several ‘new’ Classic Mayan lexemes and grammatical morphemes (including the /-em/ perfect participle), and the recognition of conventionalized markings for ‘shell’ in Maya and wider Mesoamerican art and writing. Most importantly, the study contributes to a broader theory and methodology of decipherment, and urges the application of comparative grammatological principles to the lesser-known scripts of Mesoamerica.
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.
Processing a Mayan Corpus for Enhancing our Knowledge of Ancient Scripts
2011
The ancient Maya writing comprises more than 500 signs, either syllabic or semantic, and is largely deciphered, with a variable degree of reliability. We applied to the Dresden Codex, one of the only three manuscripts that reached us, encoded for L A T E X with the mayaT E X package, our graded representation method of hybrid non-supervised learning, intermediate between clustering and oblique factor analysis, and following Hellinger metrics, in order to obtain a nuanced image of themes dealt with: the statistical entities are the 214 codex segments, and their attributes are the 1687 extracted bigrams of signs. For comparison, we introduced in this approach an exogenous element, i.e. the splitting of the composed signs into their elements, for a finer elicitation of the contents. The results are visualized as a set of "thematic concordances": for each homogeneous semantic context, the most salient bigrams or sequences of bigrams are displayed in their textual environment, which sheds a new light on the meaning of some little understood glyphs, placing them in clearly understandable contexts.