·      There are however some examples where the semicircle more resembles an eye (JM.p123.#3/25EMC.pdfp35.#3.2) or a tadpole (PNG Panel 3 D1, YAX Lintel 21 B5b).

·      There is even an occurrence of a full circle (PNG Stela 3 B5b) – it’s known to be HUL and not K’AL from context.

o B. Hand-based:

§ Right hand with index finger pointing to the right at a reduced variant of the “moon”.

§ There is no ja in this variant, the “ja” is a reduced form of the “moon”, and is part of the logogram.

§ Do not confuse this with the visually similar the hand-pointing variant of TZUTZ. TZUTZ points to “JEWEL” whereas HUL points to the “moon”.

25EMC.pdfp35.#3.1 is an unusual variant where the moon is absent, and the hand merely points to the right and slightly upwards.

o C. Partial moon:

§ Top: the “right half” of the complete moon-glyph (resembling ja), rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise.

§ Bottom: the “bottom half” of CHAN = “sky”.

This has a “reduced variant”, consisting of only the top (which could be considered to be the “full variant”, but with another main sign written in front of it, obscuring the bottom half and leaving the top sticking out above the additional main sign, as in the reduced forms of AJAW, NAL, etc).

o D. “Floppy pear”:

§ This is the top element of the month-name Kumk’u (K&L and TOK list this variant).

§ Dorota Bojkowska has “never” seen this variant used for writing HUL-i “to arrive” – if it does occur, then it’s quite rare.

§ Is this also Glyph-G₈ of the SS?

§ There are some doubts about whether this variant should be read as HUL – see below.

o E. Older variant (is it possible that top element is ju, collapsed with hu, and hence just acting as a syllabogram spelling or initial phonetic complement to the moon variant of HUL?):

§ Oval outline.

§ The perimeter is either an arc of touching dots or touching horseshoes.

§ Inside: “darkness”-like element:

·      Not necessarily always cross-hatched (though the absence of cross-hatching might also be due to erosion).

·      The two semi-circles can face either way:

o    To the inside (touching the point of attachment to the main sign).

o    To the outside (touching the arc of touching dots or touching horseshoes).

Do not confuse this variant of HUL with the visually similar syllabogram ju – both can consist of an outer arc of touching horseshoes:

·      The syllabogram ju has a turtle shell on the inside.

·      The logogram HUL has AK’AB on the inside.

·    Note that BíróEtAl-TCPRoT155.p168.c1.fig8 (2014) does not read the “floppy pear” variant as HUL.

 

T155	Martin Randel Stela B6	Martin Randel Stela D1

 

This is because it views the skull underneath T155 as being the syllabogram xi and as phonetic complement to T155, and hence believes that T155 is a logogram with phonetic shape CVx. However, HUL-OHL as the way to read the Kumk’u-glyph seems quite common in the epigrapher community. [Sim: is it possible that it has one pronunciation in combination with OHL in the Haab month-name and another pronunciation in the context of being Glyph-G₈?]

 

Additional variants:

                                                           

TOK.p10.r1.c1 = BMM9.p10.r2.c3 = Prager-NLfH.p1.fig1.#2                       

HUL                      HUL?                         BIX?                                                        

 

                                              

TOK.p34.r2.c3 = BMM9.p20.r2.c3                Prager-NLfH.p1.fig1.#6

HUL?                    HUL?                                     HUL?/BIX?

 

·    These are possibly additional variants of HUL, known with less confidence – they are discussed in Prager-NLfH.

·    There is a “three-circle” variant with both a full and a reduced form, though the centre circle can differ slightly between the two:

o A. Full form:

§ Top: three horizontally touching circles (medium sized):

·      Left circle: three parallel ticks on the bottom and a tiny dot on the inside of the top, in the middle.

·      Middle circle: a washer with a dotted reinforcement on the inside of the outline, or a quincunx within the simple outline of a circle.

·      Bottom circle: a tiny dot on the inside of the top, in the middle; three parallel ticks on the top (horizontal mirror image of the left circle).

Note that the left and right can also be switched, so that ticks are at the top on the left and on the bottom on the right.

§ Bottom: an inverted full form of the moon variant of ja.

o B. Reduced form: a slight variation on the three touching circles of the full form:

§ The centre circle is a washer with a dotted reinforcement on the inside of the outline, instead of the quincunx.

·    TOK reads the reduced variant with confidence as HUL, but Prager-NLfH has BIX?. TOK has HUL? for the full form while Prager-NLfH gives the reading as HUL?/BIX?. In other words, there is quite some uncertainty between HUL and BIX. Note that the meanings of HUL “arrive” and BIX “go by road, walk, travel” are quite closely related.

·    Classic Maya only had the one “generalized preposition” ti. For verbs of motion like “to arrive”, whether one arrived at from place (original location) or at a place (destination) was encoded in the verb itself:

o tal = “to arrive from” (see syllabogram-only spelling ta-li è tal/tali).

o hul = “to arrive at”.