·    Features:

o A young man’s head in profile, facing left (almost all heads, animal or anthropomorphic, are in profile facing left, so this is a redundant observation).

o Enclosed in a plain oval cartouche (i.e. not a blood-cartouche).

o Optionally, (plaited?) hair represented by an element with an L-shape, rotated 180 degrees, with ticks on the bottom right.

o Optionally, a small circle (“beauty spot”) on the cheek (known to occur in both men and women).

·    The pronunciation and meaning of “MNA” are unknown.

·    God-GIII of the Palenque Triad has a very long, complex name, with many parts. The very last part consists of K’INICH and then two glyphs, both of which have not yet been deciphered.

o Very last part (Part 1):

§ This glyph has been assigned the code MHD.PY2 by MHD and 0239st by Bonn.

§ Neither MHD nor Bonn have given it a reading or a meaning (Bonn doesn’t currently give meanings anyway).

§ I have given it the nickname “MNA” = “Maybe Not Ajaw”.

o Very last part (Part 2):

§ This glyph has been assigned the code MHD.ZD4 by MHD and 0594st by Bonn.

§ Neither MHD nor Bonn have given it a reading or a meaning (Bonn doesn’t currently give meanings anyway).

§ I have given it the nickname “CB” (= “Chequerboard”).

§ “CB” often appears with a wa-like element at the end, but this is optional.

§ For more information see “CB”.

·    Order of reading in the deity name:

o The “MNA” glyph occurs most frequently as the last part of the name/title of God-GIII of the Palenque Triad. While his full name is very long, it is often shortened to just this glyph (“MNA”), with the chequerboard glyph (“CB”) below or to the right of it, the two glyphs being preceded by K’INICH.

o The naïve approach would be to read “MNA” as AJAW, and to view the wa-suffix as its end phonetic complement (even though it’s attached to the “CB” rather than the “MNA”). However, this may not be correct – that is to say: “MNA” might not be AJAW (hence the nickname “MNA” / “Maybe Not Ajaw”).

§ The horizontal and vertical sections of the “ajaw-band” meet more or less at right angles whereas the horizontal and vertical sections of the L-shaped element in “MNA” are more curved where they meet.

§ There appear to be (optionally) two struts (short, slightly diverging, cross-hatched bands) within the “inverted-L”, which are never seen in the “ajaw-band” of AJAW.

§ There’s a cartouche around the head. The usual AJAW doesn’t have a cartouche – there is only a cartouche when AJAW is used as a day-name, and in that context, the cartouche usually has three “blood scrolls” at the bottom. The cartouche of “MNA” has no “blood scrolls” at the bottom. (There is a variant of the day-name cartouche which consists of just the rectangle with rounded corners, no blood scrolls. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s that variant in this context, which we should view as not being a day name.)

The above are the reasons that “MNA” should probably not be read as AJAW.

§ It’s difficult to know how much weight to give to the similarities between “MNA” and AJAW and how much weight to give to the differences. The fact that the wa-element is so often present tends to favour an AJAW reading, but the fact that this wa-element is always attached to “CB” rather than to “MNA” might argue against the AJAW reading. On the other other hand, genuine end phonetic complement wa is often written separated from the reduced (“ben-ich”) AJAW, attached to the main sign of the EG itself, in the K’uhul <EG> Ajaw expression. It seems that both MHD and Bonn allow the negative factors to outweigh the positive factors, and treat “MNA” as an undeciphered glyph.

§ If “MNA” isn’t AJAW, then the wa-like element associated with “CB” might not be a wa. Instead it might be just an integral part of “CB”. [I’ve written a wa In the transliteration under the examples above just out of force of habit. But my gut feeling is that the MHD approach is the right one, and no wa should be transliterated as it’s simply part of the “CB” glyph.]

o The order of reading the two glyphs (“MNA” and “CB”) is then thrown into doubt, in the sense that it’s mainly a reading of AJAW (for “MNA”) which would cause us to read “MNA” after “CB”, despite it being above or on the left of it. If “MNA” isn’t AJAW, then it might well be read before “CB".