Variant: YAX outline

·    Features:

o A “YAX-outline”. Calling it a “YAX-outline” is only an informal description. In fact, in the actual YAX, the middle bump sticks out a bit more. Here, all three bumps tend to be at about the same level of sticking out of the main body of the glyph.

o The “inner” / “non-bump” side (the side closest to the main sign, as this is a rotatable glyph) almost always has a reinforcement, and the inner side of the reinforcement almost always has two or three touching dots in the middle of the long axis of the reinforcement.

§ The most common number is two dots, though three is not unknown.

§ MC and JM give examples of the reinforcement and dots on the “outer” side. These examples are also closer in appearance to the “house” variant (see below).

·    This glyph is always only the syllabogram na.

·    It’s unclear to me if the “YAX outline” variant is a simplified / “degenerate” form of the “house” variant (see below).

Variant: head with IL on cheek

·    Features – an anthropomorphic head with:

o An IL element on the cheek (not a darkened spot, as in the “head with dot on cheek” variant, see below).

o An earspool in the bottom right (not a partitive disk, as in the “head with dot on cheek” variant, see below).

o A lock of hair on the forehead (this is a feature it shares with the “head with dot on cheek” variant, see below).

o A “left feeler”, rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise in the top right (mentioned by Tokovinine in a lecture, present in MC, K&H, JM, TOK.p23.r1.c4, MHD.PL1s1&2, but absent in 1000st).

·    In almost all the examples of syllabograms from the pedagogical sources and from the MHD and Bonn Catalogs, no reading is given below the example. This is because it’s pointless (and takes up space) to have the same syllable written, over and over again, under the examples. However, for this particular glyph (“head with IL on cheek”), there are so many subtleties of multiple readings (and being easily mistaken for other similar glyphs) that the reading is given below the example.

·    Zender-OtRoTCMPG is the paper which brings a lot of clarity to these very easily confused head-glyphs: na/IXIIM/JUUN, WAXAK/AJAN, IX/IXIK. Although the author makes it clear that he’s making no claim to “discovering” all the issues and pioneering the correct reading of all these glyphs, it remains a very clear exposition of the subtle issues involved.

·    AT-E1168-lecture16:t0:00:47-01:42 (part of Glyphs of the Day): So [here’s] another set of common syllables – here's the syllable na [three variants of na are shown on the slide]. It has two variants: one a main sign [points to the boulder variant with the 3-crescent face], the other a rotatable [points to the most common, YAX-outline na]. And then a strange looking human head which also is a logogram for the sign “maize” – IXIIM. It has two readings: a syllable na and a logogram IXIIM. It is quite different from similar glyphs like [the] IX/IXIK logogram, and the differences in that it has a bead in the forehead, a distinct scroll instead of hair [on the top right], and a long strand of what it's probably the corn husk, … strand, … more like the corn flower strand. So, it's the head of the Maize God. And it is a syllable na and a logogram IXIIM. [Sim: Tokovinine gives these three characteristics which distinguish the na/IXIIM (male) head from the IX/IXIK (female) head. The gender of the head is not at all apparent from the glyphs themselves.]

·    AT-E1168-lecture6.t0:42:12 explains that it can also be read as JUUN. Exactly that is also acknowledged by MHD, with PL1b/IXI’M and PL1c/JUUN, graphically indistinguishable from PL1s/na and PL1a/NAH.]

·    Iconographic origin:

o Zender-OtRoTC.p2.pdfp2.para2: Figure 1a. Tonsured Maize God (T1000a) JUUN “one,” IXIIM “grain corn; maíz en grano,” and syllabic na [Sim: are all written with the same sign, shown in figure 1a] (the latter may derive from nal “mature ear of corn; mazorca”).

Variant: house

·    Features – (what seems to me to be an) “axe-blade” with:

o Reinforcement along the “blade” side.

o Optionally, two “struts” (optionally cross hatched) between the reinforcement and the “blade” itself.

o Optionally, crossed bands, in the middle of the “face” of the “blade”.

I use the terms “axe-blade”, “blade”, “face”, etc purely as a way to describe the appearance of the glyph. I have no information that this glyph is, iconographically speaking, (derived from) an “axe-blade”. Furthermore, I see no connection between an “axe-blade” and a “house”, making the likelihood of this being correct even less (unless it derives from some use as a rebus). The terms are, however, useful for conveying what I’m trying to say, “graphically speaking”, and I think they “make sense” (within limits).

·    Subvariants (3):

o Abstract curved: as described in “Features”, and as in most of the examples given above.

o Abstract rectangular: the outline is much more rectangular (MC, MHD.1G2a.2, MHD.1G2b.1).

§ MHD gives examples of the rectangular variant, but doesn’t distinguish it by any difference in the suffix (as the MHD methodology doesn’t do this – suffixes distinguish readings/meanings rather than appearance).

§ Bonn doesn’t give any examples of the rectangular variant. It’s presumably treated as an insignificant subvariant of the curved form.

o Head – an anthropomorphic head with:

§ A darkened spot on the cheek (not an IL element, as in the “head with IL on cheek” variant, see above).

§ A partitive disk in the bottom right (not an earspool, as in the “head with IL on cheek” variant, see above).

§ A lock of hair on the forehead (this is a feature it shares with the “head with IL on cheek” variant, see above).

§ The abstract “house” subvariant (curved version) above or to the left of the head.

§ Bonn’s examples suggest that it’s just the head variant of the “house” variant:

·      The absence of the defining characteristic in the head (0004vc) is unusual for the generic head variant of a non-head glyph.

·      Perhaps the darkened spot is considered enough to trigger a reading of na (/ NAAH / NAH).

§ MHD hasn’t declared a Pxx (P for “Person’s head”) code for this glyph, nor has it declared it as a subvariant of the “house” MHD.1G1 / MHD.1G2 with a different 1-letter suffix. MHD does have a head glyph which is read na, but it’s the “head with IL on cheek” variant, not this one (see na variant below).

·    It’s unclear to me if the “YAX outline” variant (see previous variant) is a simplified / “degenerate” form of this “house” variant. The two shapes do have some parallels. Similarly, I wonder if the touching dots in the “YAX outline” variant are a simplified / “degenerate” form of the crossed bands of the “house” variant. From a graphical/iconographic point of view this seems quite unlikely, but the fact that they occur “at about the same spot” (in the “axe-blade”) is quite striking (if the YAX-outline is, indeed, corresponds to the axe-blade, iconographically speaking).

·    This glyph can be read as the syllabogram na, or the logogram NAAH = “house” or the “logogram” NAH = “first”. It seems very plausible that:

o The original usage was to write NAAH = “house”.

o It was adapted as a rebus for NAH = “first”.

o It was used as the syllabogram na based on the acrophonic principle of dropping a weak final consonant.

·    Due to a difference in methodology, MHD and Bonn have rather different (types of) codes for this glyph:

o MHD distinguishes the nature of the glyph in the code itself (syllabogram or logogram, meaning/reading). This results in three different codes (or rather one 3-character code with three different 1-letter suffixes: 1G2s/na, 1G2a/NAAH, 1G2b/NAH).

o Bonn recognizes all three readings, but assigns the same four initial digits: 0004xx, with the 2-character suffix xx = vb, vt, vl, vr, where the suffix distinguishes the appearance/position, not the meaning/reading.

Variant: head with eye having long eyelashes

·    Features:

o An anthropomorphic head with an eye with very distinctive eyelashes.

o It can have either an earspool or a partitive disk(?, with two dots on the left) in the bottom right:

§ The forms with an earspool are Classic while the form with a partitive disk(?) is Codical.

§ Might what appears to be a “partitive disk” in the Codical form perhaps be a “descendent” of the earspool?

·    This is considered to be equivalent to:

o T1053a, in turn equivalent to Bonn’s 1053st (which also has distinctive eyelashes and partitive disk), which Bonn also reads as na.

o T1008, in turn equivalent to Bonn’s 1008st (without distinctive eyelashes but with a partitive disk), which Bonn reads 1008st as WINIK/XIB, not na. (Note that 1008st/T1008 has neither the darkened dot nor the distinctive eyelashes.)

·    Overall statistics for the syllabogram variants of the syllable na (2025-09-02) – a search in MHD on “blcodes contains ” yields the following:

o “YAX-outline” (1G1): 2,959 hits.

o “head with IL on cheek” (PL1s): 356 hits.

o “face” (PX4): 65 hits.

o “house” (1G2s): 37 hits.

o “head with eye having long eyelashes” (PY4): 17 hits.

This shows (unsurprisingly) that the “YAX-outline” variant is by far the most commonly occurring one, and the “head with eye having long eyelashes” the least. It is perhaps slightly surprising that the “head with IL on cheek” variant is so much more common than the “face” or “house” variants.