Maya History by Tatiana Proskouriakoff

For expert epigraphers only

Russian-American scholar Tatiana Proskouriakoff is one of the stellar names in the field of Maya studies and was an instrumental contributor to the decipherment of the Maya’s written language. The book Maya History, a summation of her life’s work, was incomplete at the time of her death and published posthumously in 1993. Prior to Proskouriakoff, the prevailing view among Maya scholars was that the hieroglyphic carvings left behind by the Maya civilization were largely devoted to astronomical, calendrical, and mythological content. Proskouriakoff, on the other hand, proved that the Maya carvings were historical records of political events and dynastic lineages. Although the Maya’s written carvings were not completely deciphered, Proskouriakoff was able to recognize the names and titles of rulers and enough verbs to connect royal family trees and diplomatic relations between various Maya city-states. In Maya History, Proskouriakoff examines almost every Mayan stela catalogued during her lifetime, as well as lintels, staircases, and other carved monuments. She presents her findings largely in chronological order while bouncing back and forth between just about every Maya city in Guatemala and Southern Mexico.

This is an important and fascinating book, but it’s not for general readers. Here’s a typical sentence: “The second hand glyph holds a ‘hook-scroll’ (T19), associated with death expressions, and refers to a rare ahau compound such as that inscribed on a vessel from the Tzakol III burial 22 at Uaxactun (R. E. Smith 1955:2:Fig. 7)”. Proskouriakoff’s intended audience of university professors would have had access to a library of books with illustrations and photographs of Mayan stelae and texts, as well as J. Eric S. Thompson’s catalog of Maya glyphs (where one would find the “T19” mentioned above, for example). Very few illustrations of stelae are actually included in this book (though many single glyphs are pictured alone), so she’s constantly describing monuments that the reader can’t see. Dates are all presented in Maya notation (e.g. 9.12.9.17.16 5 Cib 14 Zotz’), which is no surprise, but no Gregorian equivalents are given. To fully understand everything in this book, one would need not only a faultless understanding of the Maya calendar but also a professional familiarity with all the archaeological sites discussed, or at least a wealth of PhD-level reference materials with illustrations of every stela. Proskouriakoff’s scholarship is sound, but this book could really use a publisher that will go the extra mile to illustrate it to the extent it deserves.

While Proskouriakoff outlines a great deal of Maya chronology in this book, she continually admits that much of what she is stating is speculative or unresolved. The reading of Maya hieroglyphs has no doubt come a long way since much of Maya History was written. Since then, I’m sure that many of Proskouriakoff’s conjectures have been confirmed, but probably a few have been proved erroneous. This book is really more about the process of decipherment, however, than the results. The amount of actual historical information in this book could have been summarized in a two- or three-page chronological table (unfortunately it isn’t). The bulk of the text, on the other hand, is Proskouriakoff’s explanatory examination of Maya glyphs and text.

Proskouriakoff’s Maya History is a five-star book in the history of Maya studies. For the general reader, however, it’s not a five-star reading experience. For nonacademic readers like myself looking for a deeper dive into the arcane details of this subject, I would recommend Forest of Kings by Linda Schele and David Freidel. Like Maya History, it combines historical narrative with a detailed examination of glyphs and iconography, but it’s more accessible to the general reader and more generously illustrated.
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