CMGG entry for sak lakal      (This article is part of the Learner's Maya Glyph Guide.)

Translation: sak lakal
Part of speech: Noun

Spellings of sak lakal

A black and white drawing of a cartoon character Description automatically generated                                                                       

Safronov                                                      Stuart                                                           Graham

BPK Sculptured Stone 5 H3                     PNG Panel 2 F’2                                          YAX Lintel 44

AJ.<SAK:la:<ka.la>>                                  AJ SAK.<la:<*la.*ka>>                                AJ:SAK:la:<ka.la>

 

·    MHD labels the Bonampak monument as BPKSS05 “Bonampak Sculptured Stone 5” whereas Beliaev&Safronov-SAaX.slide#13 labels it as Bonampak Ssc.4.

·    Beliaev&Safronov-SAaX.slide#13&26 (2009) glosses Sak Lakal as “Place of White Grasshoppers”, but I haven’t been able to find any other reference to lakal as meaning “grasshopper”:

o A Google search on "lakal" "grasshopper" "maya" does not yield any useful hits.

o Matthew Looper does not know of any papers discussing this [personal communication February 2023].

o Asked Sergei Vepretskii [September 2023].

·    Sak Lakal appears in (at least) three inscriptions:

o BPK Sculptured Stone 5: someone from Sak Lakal ordered a visit to Nahb Huk’.

o PNG Panel 2: a young vassal lord from Sak Lakal knelt in a ko’haw ritual performed by the ruler of PNG.

o YAX Lintel 44: someone from Sak Lakal was captured by Yaxuun Bahlam III.

·    MHD gives 6 hits for the search “blengl contains sak lakal”, among which the three above.

·    I think Tokovinine – in one of his lectures – also translates lakal as “grasshopper”, but I don’t have the exact reference, nor am I sure if it was in the context of Aj Sak Lakal.