Writing with heads: animated logographs and syllabograms in Maya writing

Abstract

One aspect of Maya hieroglyphic writing that continues to fascinate us is its pronounced figurativeness, which finds its greatest expression in head variants of signs and in full figure glyphs. For a more systematic understanding of these personified signs, it is necessary to divide them into two groups. The first class are “essential personifi cations”. These are logograms that render names of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic beings by depicting their heads or other important parts of their bodies. The second class of personified signs are “unspecific personifications”, where there is no natural relationship between sign and meaning. These are most, syllabic signs. The animation of syllabic signs occurs especially in dedication texts. The study of the use and distribution of personified signs helps us to understand the relation between image, anima, and agency in Maya hieroglyphic writing.