2000 Years of Mayan Literature

by Dennis Tedlock

Mayan literature is among the oldest in the world, spanning an astonishing two millennia from deep pre-Columbian antiquity to the present day. Here, for the first time, is a fully illustrated survey, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the works of later writers using the Roman alphabet. Dennis Tedlock—ethnographer, linguist, poet, and award-winning author—draws on decades of living and working among the Maya to assemble this groundbreaking book, which is the first to treat ancient Mayan texts as literature. Tedlock considers the texts chronologically. He establishes that women were among the ancient writers and challenges the idea that Mayan rulers claimed the status of gods. 2000 Years of Mayan Literature expands our understanding and appreciation not only of Mayan literature but of indigenous American literature in its entirety.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Native American, Classics

480 pages, Hardcover

First published December 20, 2009

About the author

Dennis Ernest Tedlock was the McNulty Professor of English and Research Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Tulane University.

Reviews

[Jacques Coulardeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MAYAS WERE NEVER BROUGHT DOWN TO THEIR KNEES

The ambition of the book is enormous, and it is vastly satisfied. It follows the timeline of all the resources we have that qualify as literature, which means that is written in a way or another on some media that have been durable enough to survive for some of the artifacts one thousand or more years. It is thus normal to start with the most durable medium, stone and thus all the inscriptions and representations of history, private lives, and mythology on stone monuments, either carving, or painting. Then we can move to artifacts recuperated from tombs, like ceramic vases, mugs, plates, etc. that are decorated with representations and inscriptions of some “events” or private data of the buried person or the donator of some favor. It is only then we can move to books because very few have survived since the Spaniards destroyed most of them, most of the oldest ones that had been painted and written before the arrival of the Spaniards. Only four out of thousands of these codices have survived. Then we move to the arrival of alphabetic writing brought by the Spaniards and we consider books produced from the 16th to the 18th centuries. We finally move to works that are more recent, including works of what we should call the Maya revival starting at the end of the 19th century and still going on and getting stronger in Mexico, Guatemala and a couple other countries. For example, the Maya train project has just been financed in Mexico. “CONSTRUCTION of the first 951km phase of Mexico’s Mayan Train project is set to begin in April after the government revealed the tendering process for the controversial scheme.” (Jan 29, 2020, Written by Kevin Smith, International Railway Journal, New York, NY) This means increased tourism, hence increased excavation and archaeological exploration, and it will require a lot more protection too against vandalism, looting, and first of all over-treading. This revival has been going on for a few decades and the final opening of research on the writing system finally recognized as syllabic and phonetic along with the use of semiological glyphs in the early 1970s after the departure of the autocratic and anti-phonetic Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson from the scene. And that brings us to an essential preliminary remark that has to be done from the very start.

Maya language and Maya culture have suffered a lot up to the early 1970s, with the exception of the Soviet Union, since the Russian researcher, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, who put down the syllabic phonetic reading of the old Mayan glyphs was living and working in Leningrad. Thus it justified some researchers refusing his obvious suggestion as part on their side of the Cold War and the anti-Soviet jingoism of that time. This strange element that Tedlock ignores would lead us to a double question: How did British Thompson manage not to make a career in the Great Britain but to make one in the USA? How come he was knighted at the end of his life though his position was plainly political and not at all scientific? We do have to believe Tedlock did not want to be mixed up with this polemical ideological cold war. But in the wake of this decision he does not identify the glyphs in the T-numbers (Thompson numbers) that were devised by Thompson to list the various glyphs and other elements in the glyphs as an easy way to provide the architecture of composite glyphs. These numbers are accepted and referred to by most Mayan scholars like John Montgomery and Michael D. Coe, and not using them is a handicap for the readers of Tedlock’s books. Tedlock uses the architectural structures of glyphs but without the T-numbers. That does not help us in our attempt to go beyond the surface. In Maya studies we need to have five elements:
1- the visual glyphs (drawings) decomposed in the various composite elements.
2- the phonetic values of the glyphic elements superimposed or given in the standard hierarchical transcription, a dot between two glyphs implying the disposition is horizontal and a semi colon implying the relation is vertical.
3- The T-numbers of these glyphic elements so that we can check the value of them in John Montgomery’s Dictionary available in open access at FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc). This is all the more important because the book uses several dialects or Maya languages and they are not always compatible: variations in spelling, in glyphic representation, in meaning, and often in roots.
4- the transliteration of the glyphs in alphabetical writing.
5- the translation into English or Spanish.

That makes the book difficult to use because it does not systematically give these five elements and at best only gives elements 1, 2, 5, and occasionally 4, and rarely more than three of these. In the most recent documents written in alphabetical spelling we only have the facsimile of the documents and a translation, and in the presentation some very partial elements are explained or put forward.

But this being said reading the book requires a lot of personal work to really reach the roots of this language and culture, and at times with only limited success, this book is essential for the reasons I am going to explain now, and first of all its extreme learned knowledge on the language and culture of these people.

[…]

When I came to the end of this book (2000 Years of Mayan Literature), in fact, the end of many books, some by Dennis Tedlock, some by many other authors, Mayan culture, history, mythology and language were more alive on my desk than any or many other cultures, histories, mythologies and languages. Yes, the Mayans are probably one of the oldest and richest post-Ice-Age culture that has managed to survive for at least three millennia if not more, and probably more. Only artifacts and inscriptions left behind on durable media can survive that long and many more will be discovered one day by us. The great chance of the Mayas was that they wrote and carved so many things about their culture, history, religion and everyday life into stone, so that we still have a lot of them and we can know a lot about these Mayas. And they are still here with us and they must have kept their world alive through memory, recollections being transmitted from one “memory-person” to another through the centuries, just like in Africa with the griots and in Northern America with the Indian sacred initiated individuals who keep and broadcast centuries of memories and knowledge.

The Mayas are the proof that resilience is possible even against the worst imaginable human, physical, cultural, and demographic genocides. Dennis Tedlock is thus a witness of our possible hope in front of any catastrophe.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most comprehensive and complete anthology of Mayan literature and the best one to serve as a reader or introduction to this very special, longstanding, and varied genre of literature. The focus here is mainly on the literature of the Maya, but there is emphasis in the supportive materials on the linguistic, historical, and anthropological context of that literature. Dennis Tedlock, the author is not just an adept scholar and translator but a poet who is powerfully introspective into the literary and visual aspects of Mayan literature, even to the point of deconsturcting the Mayan glyphs down to their syllables. To understand Mayan literature, one has to look beyond how we in Western society view textural literature and to take on both a poetic and arts historical approach, viewing the literary contribution as fully part of the visual contribution. Tedlock rises to this challenge and the results are very impressive.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now THIS is a bloody fantastic book! Beautifully printed too.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

a masterpiece: expressive thinking and exotic deduction. tedlock began in zuni storytelling, dissecting the language and its tools, then he moved into the popol vuh, the mayan creation story, translating it finally outside of the semireligious cadence that poisoned earlier versions, now he combines storytelling, astronomy, ethnography, anthropology, linguistics, cryptography and emits the most unusual book related to the maya ever made. even the kerr rollout on the cover is instrumental. not to be missed.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for reference purposes. A vital read for anyone studying or interested in Mayan history.

[Javier Girona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I started reading this book by Dennis Wedlock, my expectations were mainly to gain knowledge of Mayan literature, especially their mythological and cosmological view. I had read a book by Dr Coe about the Mayas, and three books about the Nahualts, so I thought this book could give me a more specific understanding of Mayan's behaviours and ways of thinking. I was not aiming at learning Mayan writing, neither at getting a specific study of their calendars, which I felt it is a work for much deeper studying of Mayan culture. This book though could be taken for these purposes.

I felt this book has fulfilled my expectations. The experience has been favulous, especially the author's interpretation of the divine versus historical eras, and their cosmological connections with astronomy. Discoveries found at sites such as Palenque, Tikal or Copan are really interesting and the analysis and findings of their carved lintels and murals proves Mayas understanding of the universe, the movement of the planets and other stars and an understanding of time-space and the universe.

The author connects pre-colonial and colonial times, coming up with conclusions about the cosmology of the Maya and their understanding of behaviours such as sacrificing or the building of temples. By analysing colonial texts and precolonial carved writing, the author interprets the meaning of their writings, not just from a sacred point of view, but also from an astronomical, cosmological and cultural point of view. To feel we understand what the rulers from Yaxchilan meant by the carving of their lintels, what were the main ancestors of Copan's primal rulers, or how did it look the sky on a certain night time and date in Palenque, it is an extraordinary discovery, which Dr Wedlock and his associates seem to have achieved.

This is a monumental work, bringing us up closer to a civilisation that flourished independently from Western Greco-Roman culture, that obviously is more alien to us, and therefore amazing to be able to understand.

[Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this a quick skim... I was wondering how they did the reconstruction work for determining meaning... (there was an article in MIT technology review for this recently), it might be interesting to in native...

[Lulu]

c. 755-780 CE