Variant: no-face flint

·    Features – a flint-outline with an ovalish / rectangular element on the bottom of the inside:

o The inner, ovalish element may have a bold ceiling and walls, or it might be the bold ceiling and walls of the entire glyph.

o The inner, ovalish element can have, inside it:

§ Two slightly curved, touching or non-touching vertical bands in the middle.

§ A single, slightly curved vertical band in the middle, with two circles at each end, optionally cross hatched.

§ A “ladder” (with slightly curved sides) in the middle, with cross-hatching on both sides:

·      When a “ladder” is present, the whole outline might be the paw of an animal.

·      The ladder and/or paw subvariants are all older forms (see AT-E1168-lecture4.t0:07:40 in the examples above).

·    The historical examples provided by AT-E1168-lecture4 show how the darkness (cross-hatching) on both sides disappeared and the ladder became just vertical bands, in the course of time. There is also an evolution from “animal paw” to just plain “flint”.

·    This variant is called the “no-face” flint in contrast to the variant which immediately follows. But see below under “flint with a row of tiny dots” for another glyph considered to be different from these ones, despite also having a “flint outline” without a face inside.

Variant: face flint

·    Features – a flint-outline with:

o On the left, a “rotated face”:

§ 3 non-touching dots in a triangular formation, with the triangle pointing to the left (= “face” rotated 90 degrees clockwise).

§ The “mouth” of the face is on the left (instead of underneath) due to the rotation.

o On the right, a “ka-comb”-like element (though definitely not a “ka-comb”), pointing left.

§ A U-shape, rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise (the “prongs” hence pointing left, as with the “mouth”).

§ Inside the U-shape, parallel ticks.

·    Subvariants (multiple, hard to classify):

o All subvariants of this variant have the “face” and “ka-comb”-like element.

o This may not be a “fully rotatable” glyph – the Thompson examples have the “face” on the left, right, and top, but never at the bottom (i.e., never as a “face” in the “normal” orientation).

o The “rotated face”:

§ Can be totally inside the glyph or the mouth can touch the side of the glyph.

§ When touching the side of the glyph, It has a tendency to be slightly elongated, rather than being a dot – to the extent of being U-shaped (a “rotated U” in this case).

·      The “prongs” of the U point left instead of downwards, due to the rotation.

·      Optionally, such a mouth can be bold.

o The “ka-comb”-like element:

§ The ticks may be replaced by cross-hatching.

§ Can have the “U” completely disappear:

·      And the cross-hatching is spread all over the non-face part of the glyph (MHD.1G5.2), or

·      The ticks may be directly attached to the outline of the glyph (MHD.1G5.1).

§ May be replaced by crossed bands: common in (perhaps restricted to?) QRG.

o The subvariants are, however, quite rare. [A query in MHD with visual inspection could be done to elaborate on this.]

·    Both MHD and Bonn recognize a head variant (MHD.1G5.4 and 0082hh):

o It appears to be the animated form of the standard variant – just the elements of the standard variant, placed in a “generic head”.

o The 3 dots of the “face” are reduced to 2 dots, presumably because the “mouth” attaches to the left side of the glyph, which, in the head variant, has the outline of the lips and chin. This is hence not a very suitable spot to have a “mouth” touching it on the inside. The “mouth” is hence dropped, and the two “eyes” drift to the centre of the head, where there’s a lot more empty space.

Variant: bird head with worm in beak

·    Features – a bird head with:

o A “worm” half sticking out from the mouth.

o Forehead ornament: a scroll / left feeler with protector and dotted reinforcement. In some examples, it looks a bit like the other end of the worm, visible on the other side of the mouth.

o A “feather” (which looks more like a “boniness property marker”) on the right or top right.

·    Bonn recognizes a full-figure variant (0827fc). It will be interesting to find out where it occurs, when Bonn publishes the TTT of the inscription where it’s to be found.

·    Iconographic origin:

o The theme of the Maya on the Thames 2019 glyph workshop was acrophony, and there, Kerry Hull explained that the word for the bat falcon (Falco rufigularis) – a bird which eats snakes – in modern Q’eqchi’ and Mopan is liklik. This variant of the syllabogram li could hence come from what was formerly a logogram LIK (the “worm” suggesting the snakes that are part of its diet), by the loss of the final –k. [Sim: however, -k is not one of the “weak consonants” which is frequently underspelled (and it’s these weak consonants that often make certain logograms become syllabograms.]

Variant: flint with a row of tiny dots

·    Features:

o A flint-outline with an ovalish element on the bottom of the inside, with, in turn, a row of tiny non-touching dots along the long axis of the flint.

·    This is sufficiently different from the “no-face” flint variant that it might be considered a variant of its own.

o As with other edge cases, it can sometimes be arbitrary / a matter of taste, whether to consider a form as “belonging” to one variant (with some slightly different internal characteristics), or as its own variant. A similar remark applies to subvariants vs. sub-subvariants, etc.

o All the other “no-face” flints stand together (see above). This one has no vertical band in the middle and no darkened areas or blank space on both sides of the band(s). This makes the “flint with a row of tiny dots” the odd one out.

o Thompson and MHD consider it sufficient to give it its own code, but Bonn hasn’t done so.

o We won’t be able to see what happened to T11b until either:

§ Bonn has published a detailed two-way Bonn-Thompson concordance which explicitly tells us that, or

§ If Bonn publishes a TTT of any of the inscriptions found in MHD by searching on “blcodes contains 1G3”. The Fenton Vase, KAB Lintel 1, or XLM Column 1 are three such inscriptions.

·    In the Fenton Vase, KAB Lintel 1, and XLM Column 1, the “flint with a row of tiny dots” occurs in a context where we know the glyph to expect. This gives a lot of support to a reading of li. In the first two cases (the Fenton Vase, KAB Lintel 1), we have u-tz’i-ba-“flint with a row of tiny dots” è utz’ihbal = “the painting of”, where the “flint with a row of tiny dots” substitutes for other very well established li variants writing utz’ihbal. Similarly, in the last case (XLM Column 1), with yu-xu-lu-“ flint with a row of tiny dots” è yuxul = “the carving of”.

Variant: snail

·    Features – a boulder-outline (i.e., squarish shaped glyph, with neither axis being longer than the other) with:

o Top: what appears to be the shell of a snail.

o Bottom: perhaps two tentacles or feelers coming out.

·    This is a rare but interesting variant of li.

·    Subvariants (2):

o A. Simple: perhaps a snail shell, with the snail’s two feelers sticking out?

o B. Double: might be a “doubled” version of the single, with a mirror image added to the right (but with only one feeler and no dotted section on the right of the simple form, before mirroring).

·    A search on “blcodes contains ZD6” (2025-07-23) yields 5 hits. Extending the domain of the search to “All - Blocks” (i.e., including the Codices) does not yield any additional hits.

·    Of those 5 hits, 4 are on vessels and 1 is on a monument (NAR Stela 32).

·    Despite the very small number of occurrences, this glyph can be read with confidence. This is because:

o It occurs as the “simple” subvariant in K8393 PSS D-G, in the context of the standard formulaic word utz’ihbal = “it is the painting of”, at the position where li is expected.

o It occurs as the “simple” subvariant in NAR Stela 32 in the name pa-pa-ma-li-li è Papmalil. This is a name known from monuments elsewhere (CRC Altar 12, CRC Altar 13, and IXL Altar 1) where the name is spelled with very well-established variants of pa, ma, and (in particular) li. I.e., there is a substitution of this “snail” variant for the other well-known forms of li.

o It occurs as the “double” subvariant in 'Lagartero Vase' PSS C-E, in the context of the standard formulaic word utz’ihbal = “it is the painting of”, at the position where li is expected. Slightly irregular is the absence/underspelling of u- and the unnecessary repetition of tz’i.

·    Overall statistics for the syllabogram variants of the syllable li (2026-01-24) – a search in MHD on “blcodes contains ...” yields the following:

o “no-face flint” (1M4): 1,561 hits.

o “face flint” (1G5): 303 hits. This includes the head-variant, as MHD doesn’t distinguish them with separate codes.

o “bird head with worm in beak” (BV5): 301 hits.

o “flint with a row of tiny dots” (1G3): 20 hits.

o “snail” (ZD6): 5 hits

This shows that the “no-face flint” variant is overwhelmingly the most common. The “face flint” and “bird head with worm in beak” variants occur with more or less the same frequency, but far less than the “no-face flint” variant. Yet another flint variant (the one with a row of tiny non-touching dots) and the snail variant are really insignificant in comparison, even in comparison to the second and third most commonly occurring ones, to say nothing of compared to the top one.