CMGG entry for winkil?      (This article is part of the Learner's Maya Glyph Guide and Concordance.)

Translation: <class of supernatural beings?>
Part of speech: Noun

Logogram spellings of winkil?

                                                   

T84                                     MHD.ZF2.1               MHD.ZF2.2                            MHD (Grube)

                                                                                                                               KAB HP bl06b

                                            winkil?                       winkil?                                    <[yi]chi>:NAL:na

 

                                                                                                                       

Schele                                                Stuart-NST.p2.fig5               Beliaev&Tokovinine-AEdMdeC.p237.figXVIII-1               Schele

CPN Stela 10 E5                               CRN Panel 6 P2                     El Chival/Buena Vista D7-C8                                               PAL TS B14                      

LEM.<<[mi]xi?>:WINKIL>               IX.<TZ’IB:WINKIL>                UNEN[BAHLAM?] NOH:la:WINKIL                                      K’AWIIL:WINKIL

 

                                                                                                

(lost reference) = Graham                            (lost reference)      = Graham                          Mathews                                    Mathews

YAX Lintel 1 A4                                               YAX Lintel 3 D3                                                   YAX Lintel 21 B7a                     YAX Lintel 21 C6b

mi.<xi:WINKIL>                                               mi.<xi:WINKIL>                                                  CHAN:WINKIL:SUUTZ’             CHAN:WINKIL:SUUTZ’

 

·     Thompson considered T84 different enough from T86 to give it its own T-number. It has a “face rotated 90 degrees clockwise” instead of a tightly curled leaf on the left, in the variant which appears above the main sign (and in the corresponding position in all the other three rotated forms).

·     I’ve lost the sources for CPN Stela 10 E5, PAL TS B14, YAX Lintel 1, and YAX Lintel 3.

o CPN Stela 10 may be from the EMC 2020 Glyph Workshop.

o PAL TS is from neither the Schele nor the Greene drawing.

o YAX Lintel 1 and Lintel 3 may be just darker versions of the Graham drawings.

·     Reading/pronunciation:

o Many epigraphers just read this as NAL: it occurs as part of the extended name phrase of Yaxuun Bahlam IV, where in other contexts, it is confidently known that the theonym is Mixnal (but how many instances of these are because of the drawing rather than the original inscription). Note that YAX Lintel 3 context could be slightly different (no “Uhman”).

o The reading “winkil” is a proposal by David Stuart – a contraction of winik-il – mentioned in Stuart-NST (2017):

§ Stuart-NST.p3.Note2: The last sign in her name is T84, which I’ve recently presented as a logogram reading WINKIL, a term that refers to a class of human-like supernaturals and often used in names and titles of elite individuals (Stuart 2014). The translation of win(i)k-il is a bit challenging since it is an abstracted noun derived from winik, “person,” and “being” seems too general; “supernatural person” seems to be the sense of it. The woman’s name, Ix Tz’ihb Winkil, if that is the correct reading, may refer to a supernatural scribe patron.

§ Stuart-NST.p4.Thoughts: The article on the reading WINKIL has yet to be written — something I hope to get out this summer.

·     Further comments:

o Sergei Vepretskii says this is a known controversy, Dmitri Beliaev is not convinced (said during BMM - what year?).

o Memo (Guillermo) Kantun still does not accept WINKIL.

o My TTT of YAX Lintel 1 has a footnote about YAX Lintel 1 A4, YAX Lintel 3 D3, and CPN Stela 10 E5.

§ It says that in the case of CPN Stela 10 E5, “Felix Kupprat has read this as MIH:WINIKIL, with the infixed li (the “face”) providing the ‑il ending of the word”.

§ This footnote was absent in TTT’s up to an including 2020-11-26, and present in all versions from 2020-12-03 onwards, so I probably got it from the EMC 2020 glyph workshop, where I met Felix.

o At the Maya at the Lago 2022 glyph workshop, Zender confirmed that Stuart had given a presentation on WINKIL, but no one could find a paper (i.e. no one could provide a url nor say that they had a physical copy of such a paper).

o All indications are that the article promised in 2017 has not yet been written.

o Stuart-NST makes reference to Four Interesting Logograms. Paper presented at the 1st Annual Maya Dictionary Meeting, Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste, Düsseldorf, Germany (David Stuart; 2014). Stuart implies that some of the arguments for the WINKIL reading are presented there. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get hold of a copy of the paper.

o Houston-T.fig2.label: reading of WINKIL suggested by David Stuart, personal communication, 2014).

o MHD has tentatively accepted the WINKIL reading:

§ It has the code MHD.ZF2.

§ It has the reading “winkil?”

§ It notes that it is still read as (only) -nal by some epigraphers:

·       notes: Some citations refer to the superfix T0084 only.

·       Sim: this is probably in the situations where the WINIK part of the sign is covered up by something else (for example, by the xi in “Mixnal”, or by the K’AWIIL in PAL TS B14).

§ MHD statistics:

·       Searching MHD using “blcodes contains ZF2” gives 121 hits.

·       Searching MHD using “bllogosyll contains winkil” gives 120 hits (one of the ZF2’s is read as NAL, not WINKIL).

·       The one aberrant hit (to explain the discrepancy between 121 and 120) is Kabah Hieroglyphic Platform (objabbr = KABHP, glyph-block reference bl06b) where there is a “face” present, but where it is probably correctly read as nal instead of winkil because of the context, where yi and chi are present, giving yi-chi-na-<ZF2=NAL> è yichnal.

o Particularly in the extended name phrase of Yaxuun Bahlam IV it is still quite common to see “Mixnal”, which should be “Mix Winkil” if Stuart’s winkil-reading is accepted.