Variant: crescent

·    Of all the Maya glyphs, u is the one which is not only the most commonly occurring, but also the most varied in form. No itemized list of subvariants can hope to do justice to or capture the degree of variation in the u glyph. The variants given here are just a rough guide to the most commonly occurring forms. The same applies to the subvariants of each variant.

·    Features:

o  A crescent with either:

§ Tips pointing right (when vertically oriented), or

§ Tips pointing down (when horizontally oriented)

I.e., the tips point to the “inside” of the glyph-block they’re found in.

o Some elements on the “inside” of the crescent (i.e., on the right when vertical, on the bottom when horizontal):

§ Three non-touching dots in line with the long axis of the crescent:

·      The dots can be equal sized, or

·      The centre dot can be slightly larger.

§ Two dots with a triangular element in between them, also in line with the long axis of the crescent.

·      The tip of the triangle points in the same direction as the tips of the crescent (towards the “inside” of the glyph-block).

·      The dots and triangular element can be touching or non-touching.

·      The triangle can even be part of the crescent (SJ example), making it into an “E” or “ϵ” rather than a crescent.

o Optionally, there can be additional elements on the “outside” of the crescent, i.e., on the side (left or top) other than where the dots or triangle are.

§ These can be circles or dots of various sizes, touching or non-touching.

§ My feeling is that these elements are related to the “eyeball” variant, iconographically speaking, but that’s just speculation on my part. For example, the MC subvariant given above could be viewed as the “crescent” variant with the “eyeball” variant to the left, or as the “eyeball” variant with the “crescent” variant to the right – i.e., a conflation of the two variants.

Variant: eyeballs

·    Features – a vertically rectangular element (i.e., much taller than wide) consisting of:

o Two circles, with an “eyeball” feel about them:

§ “Eyeball” in the sense of two circles, the inner one sharing part of its perimeter with the outer one.

§ The inner circle optionally cross hatched.

o (Optionally, but often) there is another element between the two “eyeballs”.

o This variant seems to be exclusively vertical – there doesn’t seem to be horizontal form.

·    There is an immense degree of variation in the subvariants of this variant.

o The “eyeballs” can be both looking left, or one “eyeball” up and one “eyeball” down.

§ Only when looking left are there additional elements between them. When looking up and down, they touch in the middle of the glyph.

§ The additional elements can be:

·      One set of crossed bands.

·      Two short, slightly curved horizontal lines.

·      A series of stacked slightly curved rectangles / rectangular ovals.

·      A curved element somewhat resembling the right side of an alto clef symbol ():

o    This element has “soundwaves” in the middle, going from left to right.

o    See one of the MC examples and the SJ example above.

·    As is often the case with Maya glyphs, whether a glyph should be considered a subvariant of a variant – or its own independent variant – is just a matter of taste and judgement. This is especially so for the very varied forms of u. For example, the “eyeballs looking left” and the “eyeballs looking up-and-down” variants could just as well be considered two different variants, rather than as subvariants of a single “eyeball” variant. All the more so in the case of the syllabogram u, where there is conflation of different variants/subvariants.

Variant: stylized fish

·    Subvariants (2):

o A. Symmetric:

§ An “eye” in the middle of the left side (vertical orientation) or in the middle of the top (horizontal orientation). The “eye” is a “feeler” within a circle.

§ A series of longer, parallel, curved ticks at both ends, perhaps representing the tail fin.

§ Optionally, a series of small touching triangles on the opposite side to that of the eye, i.e., on the right, with the triangles pointing to the right (vertical orientation) or on the bottom, with the triangles pointing down (horizontal orientation), perhaps representing the teeth.

o B. Asymmetric:

§ Very similar to the symmetric subvariant.

§ The main difference is that the longer, parallel, curved ticks are at one end only, perhaps representing the tail, the other end has the (stylized) mouth of the fish, with a smaller set of shorter parallel ticks, perhaps representing the pectoral fin.

The Incised Marine Shell F1 example could just as well be considered the “squid” variant (see below). I’ve classed it as a subvariant of the “fish” variant because of the presence of the “feeler with protector” eye, absent in the “squid” variant. But the overall shape of the glyph (and the upper portion) actually more resembles the “squid” variant. This is the same problem as with many other forms of u – they consist of a mixture of distinctive characteristics from different variants/subvariants, so that many forms don’t fall into one group or the other: the boundaries between the various variants are extremely grey and sometimes quite arbitrary.

·    The symmetric subvariant appears to be less common than the asymmetric subvariant.

Variant: squid-u

·    Features:

o Instead of short, parallel, slightly curved ticks representing the tail fin, there are wavy “squid arms” at only the top end.

o There’s a short, slightly curved arc of small dots, growing very slightly in size from bottom to top, to the left of the “squid arms”. Might these be drops of water?

·    All three examples above are from BPK.

·    This variant is perhaps related to the fish-u variant. The “squid arms” might correspond to the tail fin of the fish variant.

Variant: boulder

·    This variant is sometimes called “muluk-u” because if looks like the glyph within the blood cartouche for one of the variants of the day name Muluk.

·    Do not confuse this with lo. This one is lo rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Variant: animal head

·    Features:

o An animal head.

o Rather than being a variant, this entry is really just a “grab bag” of miscellaneous examples, sharing the not particularly unifying characteristic of being basically an animal head. There are bird, mammal, and fish heads included in the examples above.

·    Misfits(?):

o In the case of PAL TS H4a, it’s not only a fish head, but has the “stylized fish” variant of u infixed into the top of the head of a fish. Indeed, a “pectoral fin” can be seen, just to the right of the mouth, with perhaps an additional one below the nose (though it’s much less clear if this is a pectoral fin). As has been observed for other subvariants of u, it’s not particularly obvious that this glyph should be classified as a subvariant of the “animal head” variant. Instead, it would probably be better to view it as a subvariant of the “stylized fish” variant of u. The same applies to JM.p255.#3.

o In the case of K7786 PSS-C, Boot-THToK7786&K4669.p2.para2: a rare sign to represent the syllabic sign ’u, namely the opened mouth of a howling dog, probably hinting at the sound “hoo” (or “huuuuuu”; Diego de Landa’s second sign for “u” may be a related case, cf. Bricker 1987).

o In the case of K4669 A3, it’s exactly at the spot between utzihbnajal and jawante’, i.e., between “the painting of” and the word indicating the type of the ceramic object (lak, uk’ib, etc). Syntactically, that word requires the u for the possessed object, so we know that this glyph is in fact u. Furthermore, the “fin” element can be seen on the top right, and the upturned nose is another characteristic feature of the “shark head variant” of u.

Variant: anthropomorphic head

·    The lips are a little bit on the thick side – not extremely so, but a sort of “tendency to thickness”.

·    Subvariants (3):

o A. Human-head with ear-cloth.

o B. Human-head with cross hatched elements – the two elements (top and right) are very suggestive of logogram JU’, but JU’ does not have any cross hatched areas on the face.

o C. Head of a dwarf (YAX lintel 1 B2a).

·    FK2.p17.r5.c1.#11 = MC.p157.pdfp158.r5.c1.#13 looks a little bit like RAZ Tomb 7 A8, but there it appears to be the last glyph-block, with a “3” preceding, so is unlikely to be u. Also, the Adams drawing seems to have two “centipede teeth” making it seem even less like this head variant of syllabogram u.

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Variant: skull

·    This variant is a vertically rectangular glyph, typically tripartite, with a skull as the middle element.

·    MHD assigns it the 3-character code HE8, though the two examples in the MHD Catalog are slightly atypical.

·    Bonn doesn’t seem to have declared a code for a distinctively “skull”-based variant of u.

·    Subvariants (2) – the top and bottom elements of the tripartite glyph are:

o A. “eyeballs” (looking up and down respectively), with a skull as middle element.

o B. “tassels” or some “leafy” or “wavy” elements (often resembling a ni), with a skull as middle element.

The unifying distinctive feature is the skull as the middle element of three stacked elements. There’s more variation in the “tassel” subvariant than the “eyeball” subvariant.

·    Occasionally:

o The “pupil” of the “eyeball” may lack cross-hatching (but this could also just be erosion).

o The entire circle is cross hatched, reducing the impression of an eyeball.

o Either the top or bottom element may be missing, leaving a skull and the top or bottom element.

o Both the top and bottom element may be missing (rare), leaving just a skull.

o The top and bottom element may be at the bottom (only for the “eyeball” variant), resulting in a tripartite glyph with a skull at the top and two round elements at the bottom (though these look less distinctly like eyes).

·    Is this variant of syllabogram u perhaps derived from the logogram UH, which is a skull (-h is a “weak” consonant which easily falls away)?

o If so, what are the additional elements above and/or below and what is their function?

o The “eyeballs” certainly fit in with the skull (theme of “death”), but what about the “wavy” / “leafy” / ni-like elements?

o Even though the eyeballs have a more obvious connection with the skull, what is their function/meaning here?

·    Unusual forms:

o AML (La Amelia) Panel 2 A7:

§ The transliteration of A7 u.<KUK?:CHAJAN?> is by me, not from MHD. MHD does not give a reading for either the “spiral”-based/KUK? glyph, or the “loop”-based/CHAJAN? glyph.

§ Although I’ve grouped it (visually) as being belonging to the “tassel” variant (based on there being tassel- rather than eyeball-elements above and below the skull), note that there is (unusually) a single “eyeball” in the middle of the skull – normally expected above and/or below the skull (in the “eyeball” variant).

o MQL HB glyph-block #1 has the “skull”-u rotated 90 degrees clockwise so that it’s above the CHAN and the skull looks upwards rather than to the left. This shows that the “skull”-u can be rotated, even if it doesn’t occur that often.

o PAL Palace Tablet O10 is a “hybrid” in that it has an “eyeball” above and a “wavy”/“leafy” element below the skull.

·    As is often the case with Maya glyphs, the boundary between variants can be a bit grey and arbitrary or a matter of taste / opinion. For example, TOK.p8.r2.c1 could be classed with the tripartite “two eyeball” variant, where the middle element is a skull instead of crossed bands, rather than being classed with the “skull” variant.

·    MHD statistics (2025-07-04):

o A search in MHD on “objabbr contains HE8” yields 88 hits, showing that this is by no means a rare variant.

o The sites or regions this variant is found in are AML (La Amelia), BPK, CPN, DPL, EKB (Ek Balam), IXK (Ixkun), LTZ (Lacanja-Tzeltal, MHD abbreviation, not currently (2025-07-03) recognized by Bonn), MQL, MRF (Miraflores), NAR, PAL, PMT, PNG, QRG, TNA, TPN (Tipan Chen Uitz), YAX, YXH, ZTZ (El Zotz) This shows that it was widely used in the Classic Maya world, not restricted to only some regions.

o A visual inspection of the 88 hits shows that the most “canonical” form is the tripartite one, consisting of a skull with eyeballs at the top and bottom. This is supported by the examples given above, where this subvariant occurs far more frequently than the subvariant with “wavy” / “leafy” elements at the top and bottom:

§ “eyeball” (45 hits):

·      2 eyeballs, top and bottom: 26 hits.

·      2 eyeballs, bottom: 8 hits.

·      1 eyeball, top: 4 hits.

·      1 eyeball, bottom: 7 hits.

§ “wavy” / “leafy” element: 9 hits.

§ skull only: 2 hits.

§ Indeterminate: 32 hits.

Each hit count is, of course, only approximate, as it’s sometimes hard to tell which category a glyph falls into, for example because of erosion.