·     K&L, TOK, 25EMC gloss the head variant as only kal, while K&H, BMM9 gloss it either implicitly or explicitly as kaloomte’ (probably because the glyph overwhelmingly occurs in the context of kaloomte’).

·     kal = “hack” + -oom = “agentive suffix” gives “hacker”; adding te’ = “tree, wood” gives “hacker of trees”. AT-YT2021-lecture22.t0:19:53-23:28: I really like this statement – it’s on a palace tablet at Palenque – and it describes the reign and death of the king Kan Bahlam. So it says: u-tz’akaj “his assembled thing, his time” – and [then] it says “fifteen”, without a suffix, probably he’ew or lat, and then wak winik-lat – “six months’ duration” – waxaklajuun haab-lat – “eighteen years’ duration”, and then it says kalaw te’ – kal means “to splinter”, te’ means “wood” – “wood splintered” (in antipassive), like “[an] activity”. So “the duration…”, so it’s: “he ‘wood-splintered’ for the duration of eighteen years, six months, and fifteen days” – i-ochbihiij – “and then he entered the road” – he died. // So they describe this royal activity as “wood-splintering”. I don’t know if you remember, we talked about it: Maya kings are Maize Gods and we have this trope, this story, of the Maize God arriving to a particular place as kaloomte’ – “wood-splinterer”. And sometimes the texts say t’abay – “he ascends” – and they describe the arrival of the Maize God to a particular place, say Tikal, [i.e.] Mutul. But sometimes they describe the Maize God as kalaw-te’ = “wood splintering”. And the idea is perhaps that the Maize God is clearing the wilderness – the forest. And it may seem like a strange verb to describe how you cut wood, but we’re talking about very large trees, and you’re not cutting them with a chainsaw, or a metal saw in general. You’re cutting them with a stone axe – ideally with a jade axe, like a hard jade axe. // So the action itself – you’re more like breaking the wood to bits. And imagine trying to break wood which is, like, five feet wide – I’ve seen trees like that. So that is seen as a kind of foundational labour investment. It’s something which has to be done only once and it’s the hardest thing to do. So we may not necessarily think of Maya kings as members of the “woodmen of the world”, who have these nice – you know – tombstones in local cemeteries. But a Maya person would have understood. They would say: “Oh, I see - there’s a kaloomte’s grave, and there’s another kaloomte’s grave”. Because there was this idea that the king – probably not like he starts every morning by grabbing his, like, jade axe and hanging out in the woods and chopping – but symbolically, he does – that’s what he does: he stands [in?] the domain of the people, the domain of agricultural fields and would kind of... [Tokovinine does not finish this thought.] // Some Mayanists lament that we don’t have enough agricultural metaphors and themes in Maya texts, but perhaps we’re just not good at spotting them. So here they literally describe the toil of kingship as wood-chopping, so: “eighteen years of wood-chopping, and then he died”. So he fulfilled his goal, his mission as a king. He extended the milpa, as we would say today: “He did milpa for eighteen years. He cleared milpa for eighteen years, and then he passed away.”

·     Variants: in principle, kaloomte’ can be written using either variant of kal with the additional of ma and TE’. In practice, one or both ma and/or TE’ can be omitted, and context enables the reading of just KAL as kaloomte’:

o That is the reason that some stylized variants can be very puzzling, because they appear to be ma:ku:TE’ or even just ku:TE’. However, these are all actually kaloomte’, with kal explicitly written and with underspelled -oom (no ma) and/or underspelled te’ (no TE’).

o Similarly, the head variant of kal can have an explicit TE’ added or omitted and still be read kaloomte’ from context (these hardly ever have an explicit ma to write the -oom part, only Martin-AMP.p78.pdfp102.fig5b has an explicit ma).

·     The reading of TOK.p36.r1.c3 as KAL + TE’ is also possible. In such a reading:

o The basic glyph for KAL would be the KAWAK + SKULL.

o The SKULL would be covered up by the TE’.

o The result would then be read as kaloomte’, with underspelled -oom.

This appears to be the TOK interpretation, though reading it as just KAL is also possible (see kal). Either interpretation still results in the whole being read as kaloomte’.

·     Note the exquisite detail (and “realism”) of the hand and axe in the Martin-AMP.p78.pdfp102.fig5b example:

o The thumb and index finger of the hand each has a fingernail.

o The axe has a “wood” property marker on the handle.

o The blade is an actual flint (TOOK’) with stone markings on it.

·     Martin-AMP.p78.fig5c says that the JM.p133.#1 = MC.p76.#3.4 example is from CPN, but not which monument. It also points out that this is a pure syllabogram-spelling, although, strictly speaking, it’s a TE’ at the end.