·     Found in four placenames on CNC Panel 1 and two personal names (?) on YAX Lintel 10.

·     The reading WAL comes from TOK and MHD (with question mark), but Bonn gives ICHIIL in brown (which means uncertain reading).

o The Citations tab of the MHD Catalog for MHD.1GE gives the following information, for three different readings:

§ "wal" in times of: Grube, Nikolai; Lacadena Garcia-Gallo, Alfonso; Martin, Simon 2003 Notebook for the XXVIlth Maya Hieroglyphic Forum at Texas, March 2003. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, p. II-23, 11-71.

§ "lak"?: Knorozov, Yuri V. 1967 Selected Chapters from The Writing of the Maya Indians. Russian Translation Series 6. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, p. 105.

§ syllabic spelling of "i-chi-la" suggests "ich" or "ichil" 'within' at Chichen Itza. In southern lowlands, possibly "wuut-il": Stuart, David 2009 The Symbolism of Zacpeten, Attar 1. In The Kowoj: Identity Migration, and Geopolitics in Late Postclassic Peten, Guatemala, Rice, Prudence M.; Rice, Don S., ed. Pp. 317-326. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, p. 320

o The Knorozov reading (1967) is probably very outdated. Later papers and reference works (after Stuart’s 2009 paper) still opt for WAL?.

·     The roundish internal elements are not cross-hatched in TOK.p18.r5.c3 and K&L.p44.#3 but are cross-hatched in MHD.1GE and on CNC Panel 1. They are still probably the same glyph as many other elements which are not normally cross-hatched elsewhere are cross-hatched on CNC Panel 1, for example AJ (B2, B8, D9, F8, F9, G9), KAB (D7), i (A4, A10, D10, F10), ju (F4), k’a (E4), and ta (K3) – this could be an idiosyncrasy of either the carver or the polity.

·     On CNC Panel 1, the cross-hatching in the largest of the internal elements gives it some resemblance to (the reduced variant of) o. But the cross-hatched internal circle-element of o usually touches the outer edge of the glyph, whereas it is distinctly within the glyph on CNC Panel 1. Also, none of the smaller dots in the reduced variant of o are ever darkened / cross-hatched, whereas they are on CNC Panel 1. This makes them more likely to be WAL.

·     The meaning of this glyph in the PAL TI WT inscription (indeed, the whole passage it’s in) remains obscure:

o It occurs in the expression ya:<AL:[ji]ya> tu.<u:k’a[ba]> “God-GI” <ta:WAL?>.<K’AHK’:NAHB> è yahl-(a)j-iiy tu’-k’ab’ “God-GI” ta Wal? K’ahk’ Nahb’ = “it was thrown from the hand of God-GI, into the Wal? Sea”.

o The above is a slight adaptation of Stuart-TPM.p103.pdfp20. Stuart leaves the WAL as “?” (and there are other more minor differences).

o Stuart’s comment on the obscurity of the passage: If it was a heart that was thrown, we might assume that the initial event was one of sacrifice. Overall, however, this episode is poorly understood.

·     Do not confuse WAL? with the phonetically and semantically (but not visually) similar WA’ (they are distinguished by TOK and BMM9 but not by earlier works).

o WAL is a simple boulder shape, with 2-3 medium-sized to small non-touching circles vertically arranged [a noun or noun-related]

o WA’ is a complex mammal head or skull, with a “PAX”-element in the split in the middle of the top of head [a verb]

·     Do not confuse WAL? with o.

o This is perhaps more likely to happen for the CNC Panel 1 examples, where the internal circles have cross-hatching.

o This artist (=carver) is particularly fond of cross-hatching anyway: glyphs like AJ (B2, B8, D9, F8, F9, G9), KAB (D7), i (A4, A10, D10, F10), ju (F4), k’a (E4), ta (K3), etc which don’t have cross-hatching in other monuments, have cross-hatching here. So, it’s totally in line with this artist’s style, to put cross-hatching into the internal circle-elements of WAL.

o Furthermore, the “last” cross-hatched internal circle-element of o usually touches the outer edge of the glyph, whereas in CNC Panel 1, it is distinctly within the glyph.

·     Perhaps this has a semantic connection to WA’ / WAL = “to erect”, “to put upright” (also used as the 819DCDV – the “819-day-cycle dedicatory verb”).