End Notes

[1] A1-B2. The LC HAAB-month is Sak, whose patron “snake” matches the patron infixed in the ISIG.

[2] B4. Calendrical calculations.

Firstly, 10-Ajaw 7-Sak is not an allowed combination. Trying 9.*.*.0.0 and 10-Ajaw *-Sak in the Bonn calendar program gives:

This shows that we need to amend the 7-Sak (as seen on the drawing) to 8-Sak.

LC = 9.18.10.0.0; 15 August 800 AD.

SS cross-checks:

·       The variant of Glyph-G and the values of the various coefficients of the SS as calculated by the Villaseñor calendar program can be cross-checked against what appears in the inscription.

·       The variant of Glyph-X as it appears on the inscription can also be cross-checked against the coefficient and ruling god of Glyph-C.

Unfortunately there are only two definite matches, one indeterminate because of erosion, and two definite mismatches. It remains a mystery to me why these SS cross-checks so often reveal a number of discrepancies.

[Sim’s very speculative musings: A mismatch in Glyph-A might be more due to epigraphers not fully understanding the correct method of calculating the theoretical value than to “mistakes” made on the part of the calendrical experts, designers or carvers of the time of the creation of the monument. For example, the modern algorithm might take the number of days in each of the 6 lunations as 29, 30, 29, 30, 29, 30 (or 30, 29, 30, 29, 30, 29) – which might have been true in general over the whole Maya region – whereas the “local standard” might have been 29, 29, 29, 30, 30, 30 (or 30, 30, 30, 29, 29, 29).]

[3] B5.

·       B5a:

o   The JGU variant here is just the eye of the JGU.

o   Unusually, there is no ja. It might be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between a “full” JGU and the presence of ja and a “reduced” JGU and the absence of ja.

·       B5b:

o   MHD is also unable to reconstruct this.

o   The drawing shows a glyph-block which is not incompatible with it being the badly eroded outline of the Glyph-X variant corresponding to Glyph-C = 2+JGU: the open mouth of AHIIN with a K’UH (=eroded circle) with a (possible) BAHLAM headdress.

[4] B6. Six Snake <something> <something> = the name of the stela.

Or could it perhaps be Six Sky <something> <something>? Here we definitely have the snake logogram, not the sky logogram but the two logograms were sometimes used interchangeably (especially later in the Late Classic?).

Stelae had a “generic” name, based on the Tzolk’in date they were raised on, and a “specific name”. The phrase “Six Snake/Sky <something> <something>” would fit semantically as the specific name, which would fit in here syntactically as well. Unfortunately, there’s no uk’aba’ present to make this absolutely clear.

[5] B7. MHD has ITZAM? _ _.

[6] A8-B8.

·       A8b (top): the element above the double horizontal bars in the middle of CHAN is quite unusual. In most instances of CHAN, we find either two vertical bars (pillars) or two vertical bars with crossed bands in between. The bold semicircle with half a dot inside is very reminiscent of the central element in lo. For this reason, I wonder if it might be the lo required for Jolow, but discontinuous from jo (as there isn’t much space in jo to infix or conflate the lo). Alternatively, there’s an underspelled -low after jo.

·       A8b (bottom): Comparing the last glyph of A8b to the glyphs at D2a (bottom) = ni, D2b (bottom) = ni, D3a (bottom) = ni, D3b (bottom) = wi shows that it could be either ni or wi (in theory, wi should have two “leaves” while ni should only have one). But neither makes sense, as there is already an end phonetic complement na for CHAN (and ni is not a suitable end phonetic complement for CHAN anyway). Note that QRG Stela F B13 also has a slightly unexpected wi under a CHAN. But in that case, we can explain the wi as a syllabogram writing K’AHK’.<TIL:CHAN:wi> è K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan (Yopaat). That explanation is not possible here, as we’re dealing with K’ahk’ Jolow Chan Yopaat. In any case, the glyph in B8b (bottom) looks more like ni than wi anyway.

·       A8 (centre): There appears to be a na-like (or li-like?) element “between” A8a and A8b.

o   MHD reads it as a na, resulting in two na’s in this glyph-block. The second na is clearly the end phonetic complement to CHAN, so this first na seems superfluous. Might it perhaps be viewed as an additional end phonetic complement to CHAN?

o   GutiérrezGonzález-PhD.p230.pdfp243 has u?. This is unlikely, given that this name is known from other inscriptions without a u-.

·       B8: The context makes <yo.*YOPAAT>+<AAT:ti> a possible transliteration, though it’s unclear how the partially eroded glyph on the top and right is YOPAAT. The middle of the top of B8 (with the “fluted” outline) could be the eroded remains of the two of three “left feelers” with “dotted protectors” typical of YOPAAT (the “fluting” being the eroded remains of the “dotted protectors”), but it’s hard to see what the eroded remains on the right might have been. Nevertheless, context enables us to read Yopaat with a fair degree of confidence. MHD also gives this transliteration.

[7] B9.

There are quite a few separate (and independent) areas of doubt here:

·       How do we know that the number in the top left of B9 is “16”, “17”, or “18”? “16” seems plausible, as the two flanking dots seem slightly more elongated and could be fillers, but do we know for sure?

o   MHD goes unequivocally for “16” (no question mark).

o   GutiérrezGonzález-PhD.p230.pdfp243 leaves more options open, with “16”/“18”, excluding, apparently, “17”, because the middle dot is unlikely to be the filler, given its slightly smaller size than the two flanking dots.

·       What are the two elements at the bottom of B9a? They could be wa, which is what both MHD and GutiérrezGonzález-PhD.p230.pdfp243 transliterate them as.

·       What is on the right of B9a, i.e., immediately to the right of TZ’AK and wa (but still within B9a)?

o   MHD declines to transliterate it at all, but reads a tentative tz’akbul? (spelled tz’ahkbul?) = “in succession” for the transcription (the tentativeness being indicated by the question mark). [Sim: is it remotely possible that the left element is (a very small) bu and the right element a (rather eroded la), giving the tz’akbul of MHD?]

o   GutiérrezGonzález-PhD.p230.pdfp243 transliterates a tentative ja?, resulting in tz’ahkaj (passive) but this seems unlikely to me.

·       What is the whole of B9b? Syntax suggests that it might be the title of which K’ahk’ Jolow Chan Yopaat is the 16^th title holder in succession? Neither MHD nor GutiérrezGonzález-PhD attempt anything here.

[8] C1b.

·       MHD does not consider the bottom half of C1b to be <pi:ji> but rather just the logogram PIK (perhaps the “ji” underneath is considered equivalent to the occasional “hi” underneath – MHD also reads the “double KAWAK with hi” just as PIK, not as PIH).

·       MHD gives IHK’:PIK:AJAW è Ihk’ Pik Ajaw = “Black bak’tun/clothes? Lord”. However, I wonder about the shared characteristics with QRG Stela E A19b – an extended name/title of the QRG ruler K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat. It shares the IHK’ but QRG Stela I C1b has no bat-head while QRG Stela E A19b has one. It’s curious that they both start with IHK’ and end with a “double KAWAK”. On the other hand, they might just be two different phrases.

[9] D1a.

·       MHD also reads the head-glyph at the bottom right of D1a as XIB.

·       There’s a small dot on the bottom left and right of the XIB. They are not transliterated by MHD and are probably ornamental only. They probably don’t contribute to the pronunciation and are shown as a blue dot ● in the transliteration here.

·       Chan Ihk’ Xib is remarkably similar to the Chan Te’ Ihk’ Xib found in other QRG inscriptions as one of the extended names/titles of K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat. As numeral classifiers are optional in many contexts of Classic Maya, it seems that this might be the same name, though here part of the extended name/title of a later ruler – K’ahk’ Jolow/Holow Chan rather than K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat. Perhaps a precedent for the use of this syntactically rather unusual name/title was set by K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat.

·       See end note under QRG Stela J G8-H8 for a partial explanation, offered by GutiérrezGonzález-PhD.

[10] D1b.

MHD gives u ko bo u a ku _ è ukobil _ = “his repetition _”.

Sim:

·       “his repetition _” = “(the) repetition of”.

·       The only reference I could find for ukobil was Looper-MHD-RM3.p17.pdfp17. It’s a fairly rare word.

o   A search in MHD on “blmaya contains ukobil” yields just 6 hits, with QRG D1b being the only instance from QRG. The other 5 are from CHN (2 hits), CRC (1 hit), NAR (1 hit), PAL (1 hit).

o   In 2 of the hits (CHN), it’s spelled u-ko-bo-li (with an explicit -l), and in the other 3 hits, it’s spelled u-ko-bo (with an underspelled -l).

o   It’s of course the existence of the non-underspelled versions of this word that we know that it’s kobil instead of just kob, with 3 instances of underspellings, when no li is written at the end.

It’s difficult to get a feel for what this glyph-block is meant to be doing, in a “global” sense. Was there an end to the clause/sentence at D1a, with this being a new clause/sentence? Sometimes, even when it’s totally unclear what the actual glyphs are saying, it’s still possible to get a general feeling for the role the glyphic text is playing in the inscription. Here, I find it very difficult to know what’s going on.

[11] C2b-D2a. Calendrical calculations:

The most obvious LC to pick for the CR = 10-Ajaw 8-Ch’en is LC = 9.15.5.0.0, not only because it is a period ending, but because the text at D2b speaks of the first hotun.

C2-D4a explicitly says that a stela was erected by K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat on LC = 9.15.0.0.0.

[12] D4b.

The transliteration is taken from MHD. MHD doesn’t know what to do with it either and glosses both the transcription and translation as ??. So this could be a CVC verb, with a third-person subject u- marker and a -jiiy verb inflection, but the reading and meaning are unknown.

[13] D5.

·       Tunesi-ANMMWKoC.p5.pdfp5.para2: It may be worthwhile to meditate on what caused the Quirigua scribes to use the Chiiknahb emblem glyph in their text [= QRG Stela I] and not, as in the present monument [= the unprovenanced looted step], the Snake emblem glyph. Quirigua Stela I was raised in AD 800, over sixty years after the event—also a stela dedication—involving Wamaaw K’awiil. Perhaps by that time the Snake lineage was residing somewhere else, in a location unknown to us at the moment, and the use of the Snake glyph would have been ambiguous to contemporary readers. To avoid misunderstanding, the scribes used the Chiiknahb emblem glyph to refer directly to the Calakmul region where Wamaaw K’awiil was from. From this point of view, the title would seem to be an ad hoc creation by Quirigua’s artists: the toponym Chiiknahb was melded with the words k’uhul ajaw “holy lord,” transforming it into an emblem glyph. Use of this emblem glyph might have been intended to make the current political situation more explicit to the reader.

·       Tunesi-ANMMWKoC.p8.pdfp8.para1: [Wamaaw K’awiil] had involved himself in the affairs of distant Quirigua and even, judging by the date, had played some part in the Quirigua rebellion against Copan (Looper 1999; Martin and Grube 2000:114).

·       Sim:

o   Tunesi-ANMMWKoC seems to have taken the L-shaped string of touching dots on the bottom left of D5b as the “blood drops” of K’UH{ul}.

o   However, close examination of the top left of D5b shows that it’s not YAX, K’AN or a spondylus shell (i.e., the entire left side of D5b is not K’UH) but rather the “(stylized) eye and top of the head” of a parrot, with the L-shaped string of touching dots forming the “beak”.

o   This makes it the “narrow rectangular variant” of syllabogram a, resulting in (Wamaw K’awiil) Chik Nahb Ajaw rather than (Wamaw K’awiil) Chik Nahb K’uhul Ajaw.

o   This means that Wamaw K’awiil was either “just a nobleman/lord from CLK” (and not the ruler of CLK) or the status of the ruler of CLK has diminished to the extent that he no longer gets the “Holy” epithet (probably the former).

o   Furthermore, even if the drops are to be read as k’uhul, this word is positioned at a rather odd place. The glyphic text would then have to be read as chiknahb k’uhul ajaw, while (if chiknahb were “being used as a sort of EG”) we would expect k’uhul chiknahb ajaw. This further argues for not reading the drops as k’uhul and merely as part of the syllabogram a as initial phonetic complement to AJAW.

[14] C6b-D6a. DN = 1.0.14.

Rather than <1:HAAB:ya> in D6a, the element at the bottom might just be the equivalent of the three medium-sized circles which HAAB sometimes rests on, which are ornamental only, and don’t contribute to the pronunciation (shown as a blue dot ● in the transliteration).

This is yet another instance where the K’IN and WINAL coefficients have to be swapped, see end note under C7.

[15] D6b.

From context, it can’t be anything else, but the first element, on the left of D6b, looks far more like IHK’ than like i.

[16] C7. Calendrical calculations:

 +  =

LC = 9.15.6.14.0; 23 April 738 AD.

The previous CR + DN matches the current CR, if we swap the K’IN and WINAL coefficients, amending DN = 1.0.14 to 1.14.0.

[17] D7.

The TTT for this glyph-block is from MHD. There’s supposed to be a verb ch’om = “to pierce” or “to hit”, of which the passive is here written ch’ohmaj; i.e.: <<ch’o.ja>:ma>.<u:TE’> = ch’o-ma-ja-u-TE’ è ch’ohmaj ute’ = “it was pierced/hit, the wood of …”. In addition, MHD offers “warrior” or “bailiff” as alternative translations of TE’.

·       ch’om:

o   Dictionary listings (in roughly chronological order of publication year):

§  EB0.p116.pdfp116.#20 (2002): ch'om- tv to hit, to pierce ch'o-ma-.

§  Not listed in JM (2002).

§  Not listed in EB (2009).

§  CMC4.p36.pdfp29 (2015): ch’om- ch’o-ma ch’om tv “to hit”.

§  K&H.p90.pdfp92 (2020): ch’om- ch’o-ma ch’om tv “to hit”.

§  K&L.p77.pdfp77 (2018): ch’om- ch’o-ma ch’om tv “to hit”.

§  BMM9.p90.pdfp77 (2019): ch’om- ch’o-ma ch’om tv “to hit”.

§  25EMC.pdfp53 (2020): ch’om “to hit”.

§  Online JM (Bíró, Mathews, eds): -ch'om- vt. hit, pierce / golpear, perforar.

§  Online JM (Helmke, ed): not listed.

Sim:

§  EB0 is the earlier version of EB by Boot.

·       EB is a major revision of EB0: the orthography is a more modern one and it gives references to the monuments/vessels where each entry can be found.

·       There is an entry for ch’om in EB0 but not in EB. This implies that Boot reconsidered, and eliminated it from the later version, as not being valid. It seems also to have been eliminated in the online version of JM, edited by Helmke. Despite this, all the other “descendent” dictionaries have retained it.

§  The CMC4, K&H, K&L, BMM9 “dictionaries” are all the “same” dictionary, so ch’om appearing in each of them is not independent confirmation of the validity of such a verb.

o   MHD statistics:

§  Passive form: a search on “blmaya1 contains ch’ohmaj” yields only 1 hit – precisely QRG Stela I D7a.

§  Active form: a search on “blmaya1 contains ch’om” yields no hits.

§  General ch’om concept:

·       A search on “bllogosyll contains ch’o” and “bllogosyll contains mo” yields no hits.

·       A search on “bllogosyll contains ch’o” and “bllogosyll contains ma” yields 15 hits, but almost all of them have the ma preceding the ch’o (not relevant to what we’re looking for). The few that have ch’o preceding the ma have another syllabogram in between (also not relevant to what we’re looking for). The only relevant hit is the ch’ohmaj of QRG Stela I D7a, already accounted for.

This means that there is no evidence in MHD for the existence of a ch’om verb, aside from this putative ch’ohmaj. This is perhaps the reason that it disappeared as an entry from EB0 to EB and also from the Helmke revision of JM.

·       That te’ can also mean warrior or bailiff seems reasonable in the light of the title Baah Te’ = Chief Wood, where “wood” stands for “spear”, and where Baah Te’ is sometimes rendered as “Head Bailiff”.

If ch’om = “to hit” is not a valid reading of this passage, then there are implications for the meaning of the passage, namely, was it really a hostile act of QRG damaging the gods of CPN?

One alternative is that D7 <something> ute’ = “<something> his spear” is just a toponym where the fire-drilling ritual took place. This works syntactically but is not semantically very plausible.

[18] C8.

The TTT is from MHD. Although the ch’a and jo are in reverse order, it’s quite clear from context that this is the passive of joch’ = “to drill”; i.e.: jo-ch’a-ja u-K’AHK’ è johch’aj uk’ahk’ = “it was drilled, the fire of …”.

[19] C8. This fire drilling on LC = 9.15.6.14.0; 23 April 738 AD is just six days before the decapitation of Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil on LC = 9.15.6.14.6; 29 April 738 AD. This fact is only implicit in this inscription, as the decapitation event is not explicitly mentioned here. However, the latter event and date are known from Stelae J and E.

[20] D8.

D8a (bottom) is an undeciphered glyph:

·       Only MHD has assigned a tentative reading – Bonn gives no reading at all, Thompson almost never assigned readings, and it’s listed in K&L (2020) in its table of “undeciphered glyphs”.

·       A search in MHD “blcodes contains ZAE” yields 6 hits – no pattern behind glyphs before or after, so it’s probably not a logogram. Instead, it feels like a syllabogram, spelling out unknown words.

o   A logogram might have shown more of a pattern because of the optional initial and final phonetic complements – perhaps one or two would have been the same complement.

o   MHD seems to have reached the same conclusion, with the tentative reading of k’i?.

·       MHD “objabbr = PALTSBD” (PAL Temple of the Sun fragment, Bodega 43a/27c) has 2 instances with u-pa-<MHD.ZAE=k’i?>.

The TTT of D8 is from MHD.

·       Transliteration:

o   There is considerable uncertainty as to the second and third glyphs of D8a.

o   MHD gives, respectively, ta? and k’i?, both with a question mark.

·       Transcription:

o   Even the transition from transliteration to transcription has some uncertainty, as the Classic Maya is rendered by MHD as utak’?, with a question mark.

o   This probably indicates that there’s no suitable/obvious candidate from the modern/colonial Maya languages or from historical reconstruction for the Classic Maya word being written at D8a.

·       Translation:

o   MHD doesn’t render the name at all and instead gives just “??”.

o   This is perhaps partly because MHD considers the word to be a separate possessed noun, with the name of the possessor only coming after it, as “Chan Ajaw”.

o   One way to get around it is to see it as part of the name of the possessor already, as I have done. This would then enable the rendering of the entire glyph block as (say) English “U-Ta(a)k’ Chan Ajaw”, sidestepping (but not solving) the problem of not having a suitable meaning for D8a.

[21] D8-D9.

·       AT-YT2021-lecture24.t0:03:46-04:23 says there are four gods involved, but it seems to me it might be as low as two gods (unless these are four CPN gods known from other inscriptions).

·       Looper-LW.p79.pdfp92.col1.para1.l+2: Chante Ajaw and K’uy Nik? Ajaw are called gods of Waxaklajun Ub’ah K’awil on QRG Stela I. [Sim: I’m not sure where the -te of Chante is read from. I only see a syllabogram a on the left of D8b, with D8b having an identical structure to (the whole of) D9, except for having CHAN = “4” above it. In particular, in both D8b and D9, the glyph on the left is syllabogram a – the “narrow, rectangular, bird-head” variant of a. Perhaps the name Chante Ajaw is known from other inscriptions and the -te is read here from context. Furthermore, NIK’ is MHD’s transliteration for the “capped AJAW”, which I transliterate as XAAK/SAAK.]