·    Variants (4):

o A. Abstract / boulder-outline - features:

§ Top: <ka.TUUN.ka> - a “pseudo-WINIK” (i.e., not really occurring and not read as WINIK in other contexts).

§ Bottom: HAAB.

§ (Optionally) three touching or non-touching dots below the HAAB.

·      This is often indicated in CMGG transliterations with a “blue dot” (“●”) – an element which sometimes occurs at the bottom of the HAAB, but which otherwise is not a reflection of anything in the pronunciation.

·      Are there some epigraphers who consider this element to be a variant of ba, making it perhaps an end phonetic complement for (WINIK)HAAB?

§ Bonn gives sub-variants of the abstract variant – a reduced form consisting basically of the top part of the abstract form of WINIKHAAB – the “pseudo-WINIK”.

·      <ka.TUUN.ka>: 0028tt.

·      <ka.TUUN>: 0028dt.

·      Surprisingly(?), there isn’t a sub-variant <TUUN.ka>.

Bonn’s 0028tt/0028dt are the only examples I know of – the printed pedagogical sources do not give this variant, nor have I seen it in an inscription.

o B. Bird-head – features:

§ It’s well established that PIK, WINIKHAAB, HAAB each have a bird-head variant. As a rule of thumb, the bird-head has:

·      In PIK: A hand-jaw.

·      In WINIKHAAB: Neither a hand-jaw nor a bone-jaw – an “ordinary jaw” (actually, no jaw at all, the word “ordinary” is just for the sake of the mnemonic – see below).

·      In HAAB: A bone-jaw.

Mnemonic: H.O.B = Hand-jaw, Ordinary-jaw, Bone-jaw – think of a bird unable to fly, hobbling along – for PIK, WINIKHAAB, and HAAB, respectively.

§ The bird-head variant has a sub-variant consisting of the “normal” bird-head variant, but with (“redundantly”) the <ka.TUUN.ka> above it.

§ Slight aberrations:

·      MHD.SB2 is read as WINIKHAAB? even though it has a hand-jaw, normally associated with PIK.

·      K&L.p62.#4.7&9&10, 25EMC.pdfp51.#2.5, MHD.SB6 are read as WINIKHAAB(?) even though they have a bone-jaw, normally associated with HAAB.

These are probably due to the fact that these glyphs exist on monuments with precisely these characteristics but where the context in which they occur compel their reading as WINIKHAAB (instead of as PIK or HAAB), despite their uncharacteristic features. The examples above with the aberrant bone-jaw have, in addition, the “redundant” <ka.TUUN.ka> to support/reinforce the reading of WINIKHAAB. Alternatively, the bone-jaw could be viewed as “correctly” writing a HAAB, with the <ka.TUUN.ka>/pseudo-WINIK providing the WINIK and hence resulting in WINIKHAAB.

§ AT-E1168-lecture6.t0:34:55-36:55 discusses the head variants of PIK, WINIKHAAB, and HAAB. For WINIKHAAB, Tokovinine explains that:

·      It’s an eagle-like bird.

·      It’s very similar to (one of the variants of) the logogram for CHAN = “sky”.

§ Bonn doesn’t seem to have a bird-head variant for WINIKHAAB (2024-10-01).

§ Summary of distinguishing characteristics:

·      A bird-head with two o feathers:

o    The left one “outside” the main outline, like a “forehead ornament”.

o    The right one “inside” the main outline, in the top right corner.

·      Neither a hand-jaw (PIK) nor a bone-jaw (HAAB) – just a normal lower-beak, often with a mouth tendril going downwards and to the right.

·      (Optionally, but quite commonly) a “HIX-face”-like eye:

o    A small circle divided in two halves by a horizontal line.

o    Top half: “blades of grass” / a series of vertical ticks on the floor.

o    Bottom half: three non-touching dots in a triangle, pointing down (a “face”).

The ticks or the face may be absent, but that could just be because the circle is so small that these details have been lost through erosion.

·      (Optionally, but quite common) a “fringe” in the top left, above and to the left of the eye (e.g., TOK.p27.r1.c4, BMM9.p19.r6.c1, but also in many more examples). This is the glyph that can also be read as CHAN = “sky”.

·      (Optionally, but very rarely) the “darkness” property marker in the bottom right (K&L.p62.#4.1, K&L.p62.#4.11?, MHD.SB2?, K&L.p62.#4.7, SB8) – not to be used as a distinguishing characteristic; mentioned only for the sake of completeness.

o C. Anthropomorphic head – features:

§ This is simply the animated form of the abstract variant – it has the abstract variant infixed in a (somewhat) generic head – perhaps that of an old man.

§ Bonn’s 0028hs is the only example I know of – the printed pedagogical sources do not give this variant, nor have I yet seen it in an inscription. MHD doesn’t appear to have recognized such a variant (i.e., created a 3-character code for it).

o D. Full figure:

§ So far, I’ve only listed PAL PT and YAX Lintel 48 above – there are quite a few others.

·    MHD statistics (2024-10-02). These statistics are available only for the abstract and bird-head variants. This is because I’m not aware of MHD codes for the other two variants – if they even exist. And even if they did and I knew them, the number of hits for these two obscure variants would probably be extremely low anyway. Also, the three bird-head variants (SB2, SB4, SB6) are rolled into one group for convenience). The MHD search was “blcodes contains <3-character-MHD-code>”):

o Abstract/MHD.ZH1: 1,123 hits.

o Bird-head/MHD.(SB2+SB4+SB6): 324 hits (= 13+248+63 hits).

This shows that the abstract variant is far more common for writing WINIKHAAB than the bird-head variant(s), as one might expect. Furthermore, of the three bird-head variants, the “neither hand-jaw nor bone-jaw” variant of WINIKHAAB (MHD.SB4) is also overwhelmingly more common than the other two, as might also be expected. The latter statistic leads to the rule of thumb for the reading of the bird-head variants of PIK, WINIKHAAB, HAAB (i.e., H.O.B. / “Hand-jaw, ‘Ordinary’ jaw, Bone-jaw” respectively) – see above.

·    WINIKHAAB = WINIK + HAAB = literally “twenty haabs”.

·    Strictly speaking, the “abstract” form (with “two ka-combs flanking a TUUN” on top and HAAB underneath) is not a single logogram. This is the reason that some epigraphers write WINIK.HAAB, even though the “two ka-combs flanking a TUUN” isn’t (strictly speaking) WINIK. I prefer just to treat it like a sort of “fossilized” logogram, and write WINIKHAAB. (This is not a ground-breaking insight on my part – the vast majority of epigraphers do the same.)