·    There is no word lom = “staff” in the Classic Maya inscriptions. It is only listed in the rather old sources of JM and H&S. See the following points for the explanation.

·    Also listed in H&S.p82.r3.c2 with a very similar glyph-block (also lo:mu).

·    Not listed in EB, neither under Maya lom nor English “staff”.

·    MHD searches:

o An MHD search on “bllogosyll contains lo mu” returns no hits.

o An MHD search on “bllogosyll contains lo mo” also returns no hits.

o An MHD search on “blengl contains staff” return 64 hits, but most of them are for blmaya1 = bahte’, which has “head staff” in the translation.

o Filtering these out with “blengl contains staff” and “blmaya1 does not contain bahte’” produces 11 hits, among which jasaw (“flap-staff”) and xukub? (“motmot (staff)”) and a few miscellaneous other ones, none of which are related to an l-  or -m- or -m word.

·    A Google search on "lom" "staff" "maya" "glyph" (the most promising of several I tried) yields only one or two hits to JM and H&S, and precisely one hit for an 18-page paper: The Idol-Makers in the Madrid Codex (Ciaramella; 2004). This paper has the following on p12.para2: Vail (personal communication 2001) questions my lom reading on D50ab, because "the glyphs in this position in the other clauses name either deity or animal figures." I think that Wuk Lom or "Seven Thrusts" could be a deity name or title. Montgomery (2002:179-180, 208) states that lo-m(a), (illustrated as T580:19.648, lo-mu), or lom, is "staff, spear" and cites a rare title, b'a-lom, "first staff or spear", that is "head warrior." And Kelley (1976:120) says that on D19b the collocation TVI1.159:582 appears" as the name of a deity associated sexually with the White Goddess."

·    This is an indication that the Montgomery reading was incorrect, perhaps indeed, for baah te’, though it’s hard to see how this misreading occurred.

·    Alternatively, Montgomery missed seeing – in PNG Stela 3 E3 – the little “ticks” at the 9 o’clock, 12 o’clock, and 3 o’clock positions of the upper glyph and read lo instead of te giving uch’amaw lom = “she grasped/took the staff” instead of uch’amaw tem = “she grasped/took the throne” (based, perhaps, on some modern or Colonial Maya reflexes of a word relating to “staff” which resemble lom).

·    Summary: we can safely assume that there is no inscription on which a word written lo:mu is meant to convey a Classic Maya word lom meaning “staff” (and that we hence have no reason to think that there was even a Classic Maya word lom for “staff”).