MAYA HIEROGLYPHS — WHORF 495 



can be read off in rough outline, as shown in the third line or trans- 

 literation. Since many of the signs can be indefinite as to vocalic 

 timbre, even when they imply a preferred inherent vowel, the vowels 

 of the utterance are here and there doubtful, although the indication 

 of definite vowels is generally much better than in Egyptian or 

 unpointed Hebrew. To a certain extent, but by no means wholly, the 

 transliteration of vowels is based on sixteenth-century Maya, which 

 can hardly have changed radically in this respect since the period 

 of the codices probably not very many centuries earlier ; and it is also 

 based partly on comparative evidence from other Mayan dialects, a 

 field of research which must of course go hand in hand with scholarly 

 and philological reading of the codices. But it must also be empha- 

 sized that the text itself contains unmistakable reference to many of 

 its vowels; thus the signs a, 6, ^, u of figure 1 are unambiguous in 

 their indication of vowels, though the position of the vowel in the 

 word may not always be clear. Thus we arrive at the transliteration, 

 namely : 



h-S-e-sa u-to-JcaJc i-g-mn-a k-ka-hato 



The position of the e in the first word is not wholly clear, since 

 this e is written inside both the h and the s signs; and another pos- 

 sible transliteration is h-e-s-sa or he-e-s-sa, to be read either hesesah 

 or hessah, which would indicate that the stem which means drilling, 

 which is has in sixteenth-century Maya, was pronounced more nearly 

 hes in the dialect of the codices. At present more evidence would be 

 needed to confirm this, and the reading hasesah seems preferable, the 

 vowel a not being indicated in the writing but a reasonable recon- 

 struction from Maya linguistic evidence. 



Under the transliteration is a reconstruction of the original sentence 

 in the light of Maya linguistics, written in the usual Americanist 

 phonetic system, and below the translation of this is a repetition of 

 the reconstruction written in the traditional Maya orthography. This 

 is included in order that Maya students may see the sentence written 

 in the way most familiar to them ; though the use of this traditional 

 spelling for hnguistic purposes is not to be recommended and im- 

 poses a handicap; indeed may breed quite misleading notions in the 

 minds of students. Thus we have for the reconstruction : 



Phonetic haSesah u-to'k-k'ak' isamma ka-ahaw 



Traditional haxezah u tooc kak Itzamna ca ahau 



Under the phonetic transcription is the literal translation : "makes 

 (or made) by drilling his burning-fire Itzmna our lord," or in 

 smoother English: "Our lord Itzamna kindles (kindled) his fire 

 with a drill." 



The first word is a derivative of the stem has meaning twisting or 

 rolling between the palms, drilling, and with the verbal inflection, 



