This site is too large! How do I get to what I want to find? This page is here to help. The main content pages of the site are:
Please feel free to contact us at maya.glyphs@yahoo.com with any questions or suggestions about the site, or questions about Maya glyphs.
The site will be updated from time to time (last update: 2024-11-23). To receive notifications about updates, please email us at the address above.
This page has guidance on using the website as a whole and its various components,
for example if you are looking for a glyph.
A. General: Site Notes
B. CMGG Help: CMGG General Help (on this page)
| Non-standard Conventions and Terms (PDF)
| CMGG PDFs (separate page)
C. Concordance Help: Concordance General
| Columns (Thompson images,
Bonn info, MHD info, CMGG entries)
D. Search: Searching for a Glyph
E. TTT Help (Transliteration-Transcription-Translations):
TTT Page Columns
| Individual TTTs
| Checking Your TTT
Useful Popups:
Glyph Description Vocabulary (GDV)
| CMGG Glyph-Joiner Notation
| CMGG References and Their Abbreviations
| MHD Classification System
| Maya Site Codes (MHD)
| Maya Site Codes (Bonn)
| Thompson Glyph Catalog
| MHD Glyph Catalog
| Bonn Glyph List
| Bonn Two-Letter Suffixes
(These may be handy to have for reference on the side
of your screen as you use the site, particularly as you read
CMGG entries or TTTs, look for a glyph, or use the Concordance.)
Useful Sites:
Maya Hieroglyphic Database (MHD),
| MHD Catalog,
| Bonn University TWKM Project
| Maya Calendar Calculator (Bonn)
| Maya Vase Database (Kerr)
| CMHI Online (Peabody Museum)
| FAMSI
| Mesoweb Resources
| Wayeb
| Online series:
Decipherment Blog (D. Stuart)
| Glyph Dwellers (MHD)
| Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy (Mora-Marín)
This help applies to CMGG entries linked from the Home page grids and from the last column of the Concordance table. With the exception of 3, 6, and 7, they also apply to the PDF version of CMGG.
For referenced works publicly available on the internet, a link to the work is provided. Clicking on it will either display the work immediately, or display the page of a repository, where one further click will enable the download of the work. In some cases, both possibilities are available. Some repositories may require the user to register, or may require registration and subscription (i.e. are behind a "paywall"). Finally, some referenced works may only be available via actual purchase of the said work.
In line with convention, logograms and rebuses are written in uppercase and syllabograms in lowercase. However, neither is bolded, as it's quite clear from context that this is a transliteration.
While most epigraphers use only a hyphen for a joiner between glyphs, CMGG uses the entire panoply of available symbols for joiners, so that the learner can see exactly which glyph occurs where in a glyph-block. The CMGG joiner conventions are:
"." — horizontally joined.
":" — vertically joined.
"[]" — infixed (X[Y] = X with Y inside it).
"+" — conflated (X+Y = characteristics of both X and Y).
"{}" — underspelled ({X} = X is not present in the example, but inferred).
"*" — reconstructed from context, when the glyph is too eroded.
"?" — unknown/unreadable.
None of these is new — each one of the conventions above is used by some professional epigrapher (though some are very obscure and not often used). What is new in CMGG is the use of angle brackets for grouping elements which belong together (square brackets are no longer available because they represent infixing, and curly brackets are no longer available because they represent underspelling). The examples below illustrate the usage:
In these examples, A, B, and C could themselves consist of more than a single glyph. That is where nested angle brackets come into play. For example, <X:<Y.Z>>.<B:C> would be if A in the first example was replaced by the last example, with X,Y,Z in place of A,B,C in the last example.
Thompson's original 1962 publication is available online (need to log in and borrow). It includes, for most glyphs, lists Thompson collected of where the glyphs were known to occur. Some points regarding the Thompson glyphs:
The table below summarizes possible ways to search for glyphs. More detail on some aspects is given following the table.
# | What I Know | What I'm Looking For | Solution |
---|---|---|---|
S1 | Thompson number or Bonn number | What the Thompson or Bonn glyph(s) looks like | On the Concordance page, use Ctrl-F to search for the number, using the "T" form such as T42 for Thompson numbers and four digits, such as 0042, for Bonn numbers. Some Bonn numbers have more than one glyph: click "more" under the displayed glyph to see them. |
S2 | Thompson or Bonn number, or MHD code | What the typical forms/variations of it look like | On the Home page, use Ctrl-F to search for T680 (for example). Click on the word in the last column to bring up the CMGG entry, which will have categorized rows of examples of the different forms and their variations, followed by helpful notes about them. |
S3 | Thompson or Bonn number, MHD code, or Maya word | Examples of its use on monuments, ceramics, etc. | (i) The CMGG entry examples (see previous row) are often directly or indirectly
from real-world sources and some have those sources given explicitly under the example.
(ii) Find the MHD code corresponding to the number or word (see next row). Use it to search MHD (see row S5). |
S4 | Thompson or Bonn number, or Maya word | The MHD code for it, to use in MHD searches | On the Concordance page, search for the T number or Bonn number (see row S1 above). On the row(s) where it occurs, find the MHD code(s) in the fourth column. For a word, use the Home page Use the MHD code(s) to search the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (see next row). |
S5 | MHD code | All cataloged examples of the glyph occurring in real-world inscriptions | Go to mayadatabase.org/main. Search using "blcodes contains CCC" where CCC is the MHD code. Step through the results. For more help on using the Maya Hieroglyphic Database, see here. |
S6 | Maya word or phrase | Glyph(s) for it | On the Home page, search for the word, using Ctrl-F. Click the link to open the CMGG entry which typically has many examples of the glyphs for the word. If an MHD code(s) is given for the word, you can search the MHD database for it, as in S5 above. If the word is not found, try alternative spellings or try the Concordance page, which has some words not in the CMGG. |
S7 | What a glyph / word /phrase means | What the glyph is | (i) Use Ctrl-F to search the Home page
or Concordance
for the translation.
You may be lucky and think of exactly the same word as MHD or CMGG uses for the
translation, although this cannot guaranteed.
(ii) Search the CMGG PDFs (see next row). |
S8 | Some idea of a fact or phrase about a glyph or Maya word | What the glyph and/or word is | Go the CMGG PDFs, where you can use Ctrl-F to search across (almost) all the CMGG information at once in CMGG1.pdf (it has everything except syllables and calendrical items that are separated out as CMGG0.pdf and CMGG2.pdf). |
S9 | Some idea of what the glyph looks like (maybe it had a snake?) | The glyph I'm thinking of | (i) Use the
MHD Classification System.
For example, glyphs involving snakes
have codes starting with "AC". So scan just those in the
MHD glyph list.
Except the one we were thinking of is classified as "BP" (parrot) because it's based
on the eye of a macaw (BP5a).
This is an unusual case and the MHD categories are generally very helpful, but do
just keep in mind that a glyph may in fact still
be around even if you don't find it in the category you thought.
(ii) Scan the full sets of Thompson glyphs, MHD glyphs, and Bonn glyphs. |
If you know the meaning / translation of the word, then you can search for that, although the translations given in the Home Page grid cells or last two columns of the Concordance may use different English words than you have thought of. In any case, use a case-insensitive search.
If searching the Home Page or Concordance is not yielding results, you can try searching the full CMGG PDFs: see D.7 just below.
Keep in mind, however, that, for example, something you regard as "snake-like" may be classified not as AC* but under something else, often in the groups starting with X or Z. In the case of the snake, there is a very distinctive glyph containing a snake that is classified under BP (birds - parrots) because the main form (BP5) involves a macaw, of which only the eye is given in this variant (there is a snake in its center). Also, a very few symbols given in this table have been retired, and a couple added (AAG, ZHN, maybe others), since publication.
To see all the photos at once, use the "All-in-One" link, which will show them in a scrollable list in a window on the left side of the screen, giving the URL for each photo just above it. If the URL begins with "mhd2", it means the image is in the Maya Hieroglyphic Database.
Left-clicking on a thumbnail will bring up a photo in a separate window. Each one, whether from the same or a different inscription, will by default replace the previous one. To bring up multiple photos at once, use the right mouse button to bring up the standard browser menu and open each in a new tab or window.
3D model manipulation. Clicking on a 3D Model box will bring up the model in its own browser window. 3D models are typically hosted on Sketchfab. To manipulate the 3D models, experiment with using your mouse buttons and scroll, often together with Shift, Ctrl, Alt and Win/Cmd keys. In general, move the mouse fairly slowly and there may be some lag in getting the response from the model.
For Sketchfab models, common manipulations can be achieved as follows:
Rotate: Drag left mouse button
Move: Shift + drag left mouse button
Zoom: Turn wheel on a scroll mouse; Ctrl + drag left mouse button
Change incident light angle: Alt + drag left mouse button (slowly)
If you want to be able to position the drawing and the TTT completely independently of one another, then click on the drawing of interest and the PDF link. Place them however you wish and start reading the TTT.