·     No glyphs given in K&H, K&L, BMM9, 25EMC; i.e. of the standard 5 references I use, only TOK lists it, without pronunciation and meaning. This makes sense because:

o The others list their glyph inventories alphabetically and so don’t list glyphs with a totally unknown pronunciation.

o TOK lists its glyph inventory grouped by visual similarity (human heads, deity heads, reptile heads, mammal heads, etc) and so can list this glyph in the subsection for glyphs of a hand holding something.

·     Caution: in “ EKB MT 7”, the MT stands for “Miscellaneous Text”, not “Monument”.

·     MHD:

o It’s quite a rare glyph – searching MHD with “blcodes contains MA6” gives only 9 hits.

o MHD glosses it as “hand holding three blades?” and gives no pronunciation, tentative or otherwise, nor a meaning, tentative or otherwise.

·     The consensus opinion seems to be that the hand is holding three flints/blades, but Memo (Guillermo) Kantun thinks that they are leaves rather than flints (see below for some – perhaps outdated – arguments in support of their being flints).

·     Bíró-TCMWR thinks it’s a noun:

o Bíró-TCMWR mentions that this glyph occurs in Houston Panel F5 (Bíró-TCMWR.p82.fig69) and TIK Altar 5 #16 (Bíró-TCMWR.p83.fig71) and K1398 S8 (Bíró-TCMWR.p83.fig71).

o Bíró-TCMWR.p83.c2.fn17: [In the latter two cases] it follows intransitive verbs, k’u[h]b’aj ~ ‘he was delivered’ and ani ~ ‘he ran’. In neither case does it have any verbal suffix, and the preceding morphemes (ti ~ ‘to, from, with’ and u ~ ‘3rd person ergative pronoun’ respectively) indicate that the ‘flints-in-hand’ is a noun. Indeed, in the Houston Panel text, the first part of the glyph compound (F5a) is eroded; I suggest that once it contained a verb.

·     Sim:

o The Edwin Pearlman Collection Unprovenanced Carved Conch Shell has what might be TZAK = “conjure” as the preceding glyph. As this takes a direct object, this also argues for the logogram being a noun.

o The -laj ending on K4930 B suggests that it might be a verb. The u- in K1398 S8 partially supports that; though it could also indicate a possessed noun, for a noun beginning with a consonant (c.f. Bíró-TCMWR.p83.c2.fn17).

·     Robicsek&Hales-MHS.p86.para1-4 (in the section entitled “HIEROGLYPHIC REFERENCES”): During the course of this study, it seemed appropriate to find out if there were any references to heart sacrifice in Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. While we have yet to find a verb and/or event glyph that we can be positive refers to heart sacrifice, we did find four examples (Fig. 29) that refer to the tri-pronged claw-knife, which is connected in some way with sacrifice. These appear on an Early Classic period conch shell from the northern Peten (Fig. 29A [glyph D5]), a Bonampak-area panel (Fig. 29B), Tikal Altar 5 (Fig. 29c), and a Late Classic codex-style vase (Fig. 29D). // Of these latter examples, only Tikal Altar 5 (Figs. 17, 29C) portrays an adjacent sacrifice scene that involves the use of the tri-pronged claw-knife. Altar 5 at Tikal portrays two kneeling figures, both in the guise of GIII of the Palenque Triad (otherwise known as Jaguar God of the Underworld, Night Sun, Patron of the Month Uo, and God of Number Seven). The lefthand figure holds the tri-pronged claw-knife, while the figure on the right holds a sacrificial knife partially sheathed in (white?) cloth. Between these two, a human skull rests on a pile of long bones (femurs?)—perhaps the aftermath of the sacrifice. // Another allusion that links the tri-pronged claw-knife to sacrifice (though hieroglyphic in context), is the first example (Fig. 29A). Just prior to the tri-pronged claw-knife glyph (D5) is the "fish-in-hand" glyph or 1714 (c5), which is generally associated with blood sacrifice. // Because only two out of four hieroglyphic examples of the tri-pronged claw-knife can be linked by association to sacrificial events, we cannot as yet be sure that this is a reference to heart sacrifice. Whatever its meaning, the tri-pronged claw-knife hieroglyph definitely appears in contexts that link it with (blood) sacrifice as early as the Early Classic period.

·     Stross-MB puts forward the thesis that Maya bloodletting and the number “3” were very closely associated, in part because of traditions inherited from the Olmec. The latter in turn had this association because of the homophony of the word for “three” and the word for “cut” in Mixe-Zoquean (the culture from which the Olmec culture was at least partly derived).

·     Sim: The idea that the three parallel objects in the hand are blades of some sort is hence supported by both Robicsek&Hales-MHS and Stross-MB. However, both are quite old publications – 1974 and late 1980’s respectively – and later insights / discoveries may have decreased their validity.

·     ZenderEtAl-SSw.p51-52.pdfp17-18.col2.para-1 (in discussing TIK Altar 5): Following Lady Te’ Tuun Kaywak’s death (glyphs 10-14) we read that k’u-ba-ja ti-MRD-?we mu-ka-ja 9-AJAW-NAAH, k’u[h]baj ti ...w mu[h]kaj baluun ajaw naah, “she was put/placed in/with/as ... (and) buried in (the) nine lords house” (glyphs 15-18). There are only six examples of MRD (Macri and Looper 2003:124), which depicts a hand holding a series of stacked objects. Schele and Grube (1994:2) argue that the objects represent “flints or obsidians,” yet we note that they carry the “rough/wrinkly texture” marker which labels the skin of crocodiles, cacao pods, dried leaves, and testicles (Houston et al. 2006:16). The Tikal context is unique in providing MRD with a final phonetic complement (see Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:Fig. 23 glyph 16, Fig. 94c), which suggests the value CEW. One candidate would be Ch’ol p’ew vt. “aumentar (to increase, add to)” (Aulie and Aulie 1998:171). The presence of /p’/ in Classic times is still debatable (see Wichmann 2006), but Kaufman and Norman (1984:85) note that “[s]ome instances of /p’/ come from earlier /b’/, some from /p/,” so this verb may have appeared as bew or pew if /p’/ was not present. Other contexts of MRD include: (1) the Houston Panel, F5, u-MRD, and note texture marker (Mayer 1984:Pl. 26-27; www.wayeb.org/drawings/col_houston_panel.png); (2) the Regal Rabbit Pot, K1398, C8-D9, a-ni u-MRD yi-bi k’e-se; (3) K4930, A2, MRD-ja; (4) El Peru Stela 44 (Stanley Guenter, personal communication 2015), and; (5) Ek Balam MT 7, B5 (Grube et al. 2003:25). [Sim: this is M&L.MRD not MHD.MRD. In the revision from M&L to MHD, the principles of assigning the codes remained the same, and many codes themselves remained the same, but some changed:

o M&L.MRD = MHD.MA6 = “HH3B”, an undeciphered glyph.

o M&L.MR9 = MHD.MRD = PUK/PUUK = “scatter (fire)” (though in M&L was, at the time, tentatively read as hoch’ = “drill?”).

So the ZenderEtAl-SSw discussion about MRD are in fact to MHD.MA6 = “HH3B”.]