·     This term is found exclusively in the possessed form yeh te’ / yej te’.

·     K&H.p103.#20 (2020): ehte’ / ajte’ ye-TE’-je / [ye]TE’-je / ye-he-TE’ / ye-TE’ / ya-TE’-AJ? = y-ejte’ / y-ejte’ / y-ehte’ / y-e[h]te’ / y-ajte’ (?) n “deed, feat” (?) in possessive constructions used to introduce the agent of martial actions; follows the names of captives and introduces that of the captor. [=K&L = BMM9]

·     MHD translations this standardly as “his victim ‘lance-point’?”. The lance if from the TE’, and the -e- apparently is “point” (from EB.p62.pdfp67.#2 e = “point, edge”). It isn’t clear where “victim” comes from – perhaps implicit, from the context.

·     In two JM examples (JM.p293.#2 and JM.p293.#3), there is a je at the end, after the TE’. This is puzzling – perhaps it’s meant to attach onto the end of ye, but due to practical reasons of the ye being rather narrow in the horizontal axis, it attaches to the TE’ instead. But for the purposes of pronunciation, it’s meant to come before the TE’.

·     Both je and he are found. The former (giving yejte’) is perhaps the older form, with the latter (yehte’) arising out of the merger of -j- and -h- in the Late Classic. For example:

o YAX Lintels 60-49-37-35 – commissioned by K’inich Tatbu Skull II, who reigned from 526 to 537 AD (M&G.p120.#2) – have yejte’

o YAX Lintel 16 – almost definitely commissioned by Yaxuun Bahlam IV, who reigned from 752 to 768 AD (M&G.p128.#1) – has yehte’

·     O’Neil-OMaMaY (2011) has a discussion on the set of four lintels – YAX Lintels 60-49-37-35. These four lintels form one continuous narrative about the first 10 rulers of YAX. They were commissioned by the tenth ruler (i.e. the last on the list) – K’inich Tatbu Skull II (he was definitely not the last ruler of YAX, just the last ruler on the list). The rulers are listed in chronological order and a list of (probably) the captives of each one is given. As such, O’Neil views yejte’ as a relationship term for captors and captives. O’Neil-OMaMaY.p255.c1.para2 (my emphasis):The king list would have given context and legitimacy to K’inich Tatbu Skull II’s reign, but it also may have served as a list of military victories. In particular, the accession phrases are followed by a relationship glyph and one or more names with titles identifying them as foreigners—some of them royalty—from other Maya polities such as Piedras Negras, Bonampak, and the Snake kingdom (Martin and Grube 2008:120–121; Mathews 1997:72, 84, 91–103) (Figure 16). // Schele and Mathews (1991) interpreted these relationship glyphs as signaling royal visits on the occasion of rulers’ accessions, but more recently, multiple epigraphers—including Nahm, Martin, Grube, and Houston—explain the relationship as one of captor-captive, with the foreigners named as captives to successive rulers (Houston et al. 2008:80–82; Martin and Grube 2008:118–121; Nahm 1997, 2006), although Stuart (2007b) favors the interpretation that they were royal visitors and not captives. There is still debate regarding the decipherment of this relationship glyph. When spelled phonetically, it appears as ye-TE’-je or ye-je-TE’ (the variation being a distinct problem in its decipherment), and there is no clear translation or understanding of this word’s form or meaning (Simon Martin, personal communication 2006). Nevertheless, examination of the Hieroglyphic Stairway 1 text and other monuments indicates the captive interpretation is more probable, for some records align with captures narrated on other monuments, including the capture of the Piedras Negras heir, T’ul Chihk, also appearing on La Pasadita Lintel 1 (Houston et al. 2008:80–82; Nahm 2006:36–37):

o https://wikimili.com/en/Yo%27nal_Ahk_III: “T'ul Chiik, was captured by Yaxun B'alam IV of Yaxchilan”.

o https://sites.google.com/site/s14anth137/naranjo-01: “Piedras Negras rivaled Yaxchilan for power, which perhaps created the capture of K'inil Ajaw T'ul Chiik, the Sun Lord of Piedras Negras, at La Pasadita, one of Bird Jaguar IV's most prominent conquest[s].”.

·     The word yejte’ occurs 14 times on the continuous narrative of Lintels 60-49-37-35:

o Lintel 60: A3, C1, C5.

o Lintel 49: C1b, C6, D7.

o Lintel 37: A3, C1, C4a, D6a.

o Lintel 35: A3a, A5, C1, C5.

·     The consensus is that it’s the “captive” interpretation, with a syntax <X> yejte’/yehte’ <Y>. However, even with the acceptance of the semantic area being related to a captor and captives (rather than relating to a host and visitors), there remains one puzzling point:

o On YAX Lintels 60-49-37-35 the meaning seems to be <X> is the captor and <Y> is the captive (or captives).

o On YAX Lintel 16 the meaning seems to be <X> is the captive and <Y> is the captor.

Perhaps the flipping in syntax is a historical development. For example, if ehte’/ejte’ could mean either the verb “to capture” or the noun “captive” (in the same way as jul could mean either the verb “to piece” or the noun “spear”), then the earlier interpretation of the y- might have been the 3^rd person singular ergative of a transitive verb with initial vowel, leading to “he captured” (with fronting of the subject to before the verb), followed by one or more names of captives, while the later interpretation of the y- might have been the possessive of a noun with initial vowel, leading to “the captive of”, followed by the name of the captor. But this is just wild speculation on my part.

·     A seemingly separate use of Yeh Te’ is in the names of rulers or buildings. They can be found in MHD by doing a search on “blengl = yeejte’” because names are not translated into English, but simply transcribed. Displaying the fields “objsitecodeorigin” and “blsem” also helps to see the pattern behind these occurrences. There are 14 occurrences, and they fall into the following categories:

o Personal name:

§ Yeejte’ K’inich, ruler of Lacanja-Tzeltal / “Sak Tz’i’” (2 occurrences, one on each of two different monuments – BPK Lintel 1 and BPK Lintel 2).

§ Yeejte’ K’inich I, ruler of MTL (2 occurrences, both on one monument – Stela 1).

§ Yeejte’ K’inich II, ruler of MTL (5 occurrences, on four vases from the MTL region).

o Structure name:

§ Yeejte’ Naah: The name of a building in PAL, TIK and TZD (5 occurrences, one on each of five different monuments, three in PAL, and one each in TIK and TZD).

Note that the number of hits returned in MHD may be higher than the number of actual occurrences because hits correspond to glyph-blocks, and a single occurrence of a name may be spread over several glyph-blocks.

·     Tokovinine-OLGaS – a slide-deck presentation – mentions Yeh Te’ K’inich I & II several times, in connection with a list of rulers of Ik’a’ / MTL.

·     Sim: “The Deed of the Sun God” seems like a perfectly reasonable name.

·     Do not confuse yehte’ / yejte’ = “the deed of” with (the first word of) yet k’aba’(il) = “the namesake of”. They are visually and phonetically similar – especially when the former is underspelled, with the omission of the he or je. They are semantically very different – the main commonalities are that:

o They both are preceded by the name of a person and are followed by the name of another person.

o The initial glyph in both cases is ye.

o The final glyph is TE’ in yehte’ and te in yet k’aba’(il).