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How To Read Maya Hieroglyphs
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| Pros |
• pro #1 Intriguing story of the deciphering.
• pro #2 Explains linguistic and calendar terms.
• pro #3 Beautiful color plates showing actual hieroglyphs.
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| Cons |
• con #1 Cumbersome as a reference book.
• con #2 Not a typical language textbook.
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The Bottom Line -
How to Read Maya Hieroglyphs teaches students of the Ancient Maya how the language was deciphered, how it was used, and how to analyze the hieroglyphic monuments of the ancient Maya.
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Shows the recognized glyphs, how they are combined physically, and in what order they should be read.
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Explains the simple Maya counting system and how they used it for the complex calculation of the Maya long count calendar and calendar round.
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Tells the eventful history of the deciphering of Maya script.
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| Guide Review |
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How to Read Maya Hieroglyphs
by John Montgomery
This book should either please or frustrate you. The information on the Maya, one of five ancient cultures to invent its own original, functional writing system, is fascinating, but like other early writing, preserved mostly on monuments, the records cover mostly kingly deeds, rather than the minutiae of daily life or literature. The writing system is challenging and defies ordinary categories like alphabetic or syllabic. The same symbol can represent several very different things or even sounds. This would be a very difficult book to use on one's own to learn the language of the Maya, but it is filled with information to help the scholar who needs to interpret stele, or anyone interested in getting a feeling for the ancient culture.
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