Variant: boulder

·    The boulder outline has two infixed elements (a “necklace” and “blades of grass”) in common with a number of other glyphs. The list below shows the unique element infixed in the top which distinguishes them from one another:

o ba: LEM-like element.

o ma: right-side-up AJAW-face.

o t’u: KAWAK.

o tz’e: a slightly curved, bold V with “dot protector” underneath (the “dot protector” replaces the “necklace”, and the bold V can sometimes be non-bold).

o tz’u: K’IN.

o HA’: cross hatched circle.

o “IMIX”: cross hatched circle or LEM-like element (usually distinguished from HA’ by the blood cartouche).

·    Subvariants (2):

o A. Abstract: - vertically elongated rectangle / boulder outline, with:

§ Top: a “LEM”-like element, with a “dot necklace” underneath.

§ Bottom: blades of grass or double blades of grass.

§ Optional arc of touching dots along the bottom, outside of the boulder outline, larger dots than in the case of the “dot necklace”.

Do not confuse this variant of ba with the visually similar boulder variant of HA’ = “water”:

§ ba has an infixed (round) “LEM”-like element.

§ HA’ as an infixed cross hatched circle.

Part of the confusion arises because the dot necklace and the (double) blades of grass are common between the two of them.

o B. Head: the distinctive elements of the abstract subvariant enclosed in a (generic) anthropomorphic head.

Variant: gopher head

·    There are instances where this glyph functions as a syllabogram ba, i.e., is used for the sound /b/, with no reference to meaning, e.g., ba-ki è baak= “bone”, pa-ka-ba è pakab = “lintel”.

·    This is obviously derived from the original use of this glyph for BAAH = “gopher”, with the final consonant dropped in a process closely akin to acrophony (except that here the vowel is also preserved).

·    See the CMGG entry for BAAH for more information.

Variant: trilobate

·    Features:

o Trilobate(?) element: actually only described as such as a matter of convenience – it’s questionable whether the individual components (any one of the three) are actually “leaves”.

o One of the sides of each “leaf” is reinforced.

o Optionally the reinforcing line has a further dotted reinforcement.

·    Some (sub-)subvariants may be bilobate (MHD.33A.2, 0251ts, T251c), and Bonn even gives a unilobate example (0251tl). The Bonn suffixes -tl and -ts are “tripartite left” and “tripartite left-middle” respectively.

·    The Bonn 0251xx and the MHD.33A glyph examples are intended to represent the same glyph (T251). We know this both from the visual similarity and the fact that:

o The MHD Concordance explicitly matches 33A to T251.

o Bonn has allowed the number 251 of T251 to “survive” as 0251xx.

Aside from that, there is actually not that much visual similarity between the Bonn and MHD examples (the former being very leaf-like and the latter not so much). What they do share is the “trilobate-ness” and the dotted and non-dotted reinforcements.

·    For all of the above reasons, the examples of MHD, Bonn and Thompson have been grouped together. The MC, JM and TOK examples are included under this variant on the basis of being read as ba and some visual similarity – that visual similarity being perhaps most tenuous in the case of TOK.p10.r3.c2 because of the absence of the dots (though in this case, there is some similarity to MHD.33A.2, which also lacks dots).

·    The Bonn examples are much more “leaf-like” (= the three components have curved outlines) while the non-Bonn examples are more rectangular. One of Thompson’s examples (T251a) is even more aberrant, with an outline which perhaps resembles the “chopper”, “cleaver” outline of the most common variant of TE’.

·    Subvariants (2?):

o A. Abstract:

§ As above.

§ This is a codical-only glyph.

o B. Head:

§ We can be confident that it’s ba in all these cases because they form part of the formulaic PSS – to be precise, the /b/ of utz'ihba(a)l or utz'ihbnajal = “… the painting of …”.

§ The trilobate element rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise, infixed into a generic head. There’s a single row of non-touching dots in each of the three of the “leaves” – like a dotted spine in each.

§ This form has been recognized by both MHD and Bonn (MHD.PG8 and 1835st respectively).

§ As with the abstract subvariant, the head subvariant has bilobate and trilobate sub-subvariants.

§ In contrast to the abstract subvariant, the head subvariant is not codical at all. Instead, it’s found only on Classic ceramic vessels.

§ I’ve (perhaps somewhat arbitrarily) classed this as a subvariant of the abstract form, based on the similarity between the trilobate elements with dotted spine / line in each “leaf”. Neither MHD nor Bonn have seen a connection between MHD.33A/0251xx (on the one hand) and MHD.PG8/1835st (on the other). This connection is perhaps not justified, as there is no overlap between the two: the “abstract” form is codical and the “head” form is Classic.

·    MHD statistics:

o The abstract subvariant – a search in MHD on “blcodes contains 33A” (2025-04-21) yields 136 hits, all from the Codices:

·      Dresden Codex: 35 hits.

·      Madrid Codex: 95 hits.

·      Paris Codex: 6 hits.

Indeed, the MHD Catalog indicates that 33A is a codical only glyph.

o The head subvariant (if indeed it is the head subvariant equivalent to the abstract subvariant) – a search in MHD on “blcodes contains PG8” (2025-04-21) yields 5 hits, all on ceramic vessels. Of these 5 occurrences, the 4 clearest ones have been given as examples above.

Variant: KAWAK-based

·    These are all KAWAK with another glyph, but the result is that the two glyphs are not read independently. Instead, they form a single glyph, here the syllabogram ba, in the same way as some variants of TZ’AK, where the two glyphs combined are read as the single logogram TZ’AK.

·    Subvariants (4):

o A. KAWAK with “skull-with-jagged-outline”.

o B. KAWAK with (female?) human head (IX?).

o C. KAWAK with ba – which even has two sub-subvariants:

§ 1. With the abstract variant of ba.

§ 2. With the head variant of ba (DAM1997.351 G in the example above).

o D. KAWAK with MAY (deer hoof glyph).

§ Given only by Bonn (1766bh).

·    The MHD Catalog gives only one example – KAWAK + skull. The lack of examples showing other forms does not mean that MHD intends the other KAWAK-based sub-subvariants to be considered “different”. For example, DAM1997.351 PSS-G is KAWAK + the head variant of ba (i.e., category “C2” above) but it’s also given as MHD.SD6 in the MHD TTT.

·    We can be confident that it’s ba in all these cases because they form part of the formulaic PSS – to be precise, the /b/ of utz'ihba(a)l = “… the painting of …”. (The slight exception is Bonn’s 1799bh, but without a reference to the original inscription (as of 2025-04-22), we cannot know for sure. Nevertheless, the same sort of reasoning can be applied, and Bonn wouldn’t have created such a 6-character code, with a KAWAK in one half, and given it a reading of ba without very similar reasoning having been applied.)

Variant: skull

·    Subvariants (2):

o A. Double skull.

§ TOK.p36.r2.c (2017) doesn’t assign a reading to this glyph.

§ Bonn (>2022) gives the reading ba not in brown, which implies that it’s since been deciphered with a high degree of confidence.

§ TOK.p36.r2.c2 is clearly the equivalent of Bonn’s 1767bh, which Bonn reads as ba. For this reason, TOK.p36.r2.c3 is included here as an example of ba, despite it not having been given a reading there.

o B. Single skull.

§ MHD assigns ba (MHD.SJ1s) as one of the possible readings for their “(single) skull glyph” MHD.SJ1, normally read JOL = “head” or BAAK = “bone”, “captive”. This usage might have arisen from the use of BAAK to write ba with the loss of the final consonant, in a way akin to the acrophonic principle (differing from it in that the vowel is also preserved).

§ MHD statistics (2025-04-22) – a search on “blcodes contains SJ1” yields 269 hits, consisting of:

·      MHD.SJ1a (BAAK = “bone”): 14 hits.

·      MHD.SJ1b (BAK = “captive”): 6 hits.

·      MHD.SJ1c (JOL = “head”): 153 hits.

·      MHD.SJ1s (syllabogram ba): 73 hits.

·      Other – there’s a question mark to show uncertainty as to whether it’s perhaps SJ1 or whether it’s any form of a skull at all: 23 hits.

Surprisingly, about a third (73/269 = 27%) of all uses of the “skull glyph” are instances of ba. Looking at the objname or objclass shows that all 73 are ceramic vessels – objclass = “portable object” and objname = bowl, plate, or vase – thus revealing that the use of the “skull glyph” as a syllabogram was restricted to inscriptions on ceramic vessels. In a pattern very similar to that of other “unusual” variants of ba, every single one of these MHD.SJ1s occurrences are in connection with writing the /b/ in utz'ihba(a)l = “… the painting of …”.

·    It’s interesting that Bonn recognizes a double skull form and no single skull form while MHD does the exact opposite, by recognizing a single skull form and no double skull form for ba. The single skull form can’t be viewed as the double skull form with one of the skulls covered by another glyph because all the MHD examples are from ceramic inscriptions where, in general, there’s only one glyph per glyph-block, and where, in this particular case, there’s definitely only one glyph per glyph-block. This means that the single skull alone can (and should) be viewed as ba (in these contexts).

·    With 73 occurrences to choose from in MHD, I could select just the 10 “best” occurrences of the (single) skull glyph writing ba for the examples above. The definition of “best” being that it was very clearly a skull, that the other glyphs for the utz'ihba(a)l phrase were not too eroded, and that the object reference was reasonably standard (i.e., by preference, a K-number, i.e. a Kerr vase).

·    Is there some relationship to the “trilobate” subvariant of ba?:

o It’s interesting to observe that while most skulls have a series of small roundish or “rectangular” dots for the teeth hanging from the upper jaw (often more than three), there are a number of instances of the ba forms which have exactly three teeth, where the teeth are considerably larger (and more rectangular) than the “regular” dots for teeth – e.g., K4681, K8245, K8418, MMC82393.

o Not only that, but the first 3 of the 4 of these examples (K4681, K8245, K8418) seem to have reinforcement on one side of each tooth.

o Such a three-component element at the bottom of the skull glyph is strongly reminiscent of the squarish sub-subvariant of the “trilobate” subvariant of ba (described above).

o This is just a random observation thrown out there – not to be taken too seriously as an analysis of the iconographic origin or relatedness of the two forms. If the (squarish) trilobate form really were the (leftover) teeth of the skull (say, if the rest of the skull was covered by a “main sign”) then they would hardly be rotated 90 degrees and then infixed in a head, for the (posited) head variant of the trilobate form. I.e., the one idea precludes the other – either:

§ The abstract and head forms of the trilobate ba glyph really are iconographically related (in which case the “leaves” are not teeth), or

§ The squarish forms of the trilobate ba glyph really are iconographically related to the teeth of the skull form of ba (in which case the so-called head form of the trilobate glyph is not related to the abstract form).

In all probability, the abstract trilobate form (MHD.33A.1), the head trilobate form (MHD.PG8/1835st), and the skull form (MHD.SJ1.5) of ba have no relationship to one another, iconographically speaking, and any connection is just the product of an overenthusiastic imagination.