Writing without Words 

          What could two cultures separated from one another by hundreds of years and thousands of miles ever have in common with one another? How could the Pharaohs of Egypt, ruling their desert kingdom from the banks of the Nile River in Africa be similar to the kings of the ancient Mayan civilizations found deep in the jungles of Central America? The answer might surprise you. While the Egyptians and the Maya have many obvious differences and come from two very unique and varied cultures, they shared several interesting similarities. Some surprising commonalities between these two ancient civilizations include the construction of massive stone pyramids, the creation and use of complex astrological calendars, and even a common belief in certain traditional myths and certain aspects of their respective religions. However, one of the most intriguing similarities between ancient Egyptian and Mayan culture is their use of hieroglyphs in their writing. Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs were used in similar ways to represent language and they died in similar ways because they were closed systems that became so exclusive in their use that after conquerors arrived, they were lost. 

          First, it is important to understand hieroglyphs generally. Hieroglyphs, or using certain symbols instead of writing words, was a common practice among several civilizations in the past. For example, the ancient Babylonian empire wrote with wedge-shaped cuneiform symbols, Vikings used Nordic runes, members of the Chinese dynasties of antiquity used symbols similar to the Hanzi still used today, and several ancient American groups like the Inca, Aztec, and Olmec people all relied on glyphs in their pictorial writing systems (Hamann, 2008). There’s plenty of evidence to support the idea that several civilizations used to utilize a set of specific symbols to record their stories, traditions, laws, ceremonial rites, and communication with one another, but Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs are uniquely similar. 

          One of the main similarities between Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs is that both systems of writing use glyphs that represent physical objects like animals, parts of the human body, plants, the sun, the moon, stars, food, mountains, and much more (Hamann, 2008). Other languages like cuneiform, Norse runes, and ancient Chinese used symbols in their writing, but these symbols were mostly abstract in nature and did not represent any physical item in the real world (Hamann, 2008). In Egyptian and Mayan writing, these pictorial images largely represented what they looked like. For example, a vulture included in a series of carvings found in an Egyptian tomb could simply represent exactly what it was carved to look like: a vulture (Jespersen & Reintges, 2008). These pictorial symbols that represent exactly what they look like are called “ideograms” when they refer to Egyptian symbols and “logograms” for Mayan inscriptions (Thomas, 1893) These ideograms are one type of hieroglyph, representing an entire word. However, Egyptian and Mayan writing was much more than an overly complex game of pictionary. 

          A second type of glyph found in both Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs was used to represent sounds, rather than entire words. These glyphs are symbols found in both Egyptian and Mayan archaeological sites that do not look like a physical object (e.g., a bird), or the pictorial glyphs are used in a way that seems to suggest “that these characters were something more than mere conventional symbols” (Thomas, 1893, p. 242). When referencing these symbols in Egyptian, they are usually called “phonograms” and the Mayan symbols are usually called “syllabograms” (Thomas, 1893). These glyphs are commonly combined with other glyphs to form words or ideas because they don’t seem to hold meaning on their own. 

          The two writing systems died in a similar fashion due to the fact they were both closed systems. The Egyptian and Mayan writing systems were very well adapted to recording information with both types of glyphs, but only within their own language. In contrast, other ancient writing systems, like the Babylonian cuneiform, could be used to record information from a variety of sources (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003), instead of being limited to Babylonian. This meant that a writing system like cuneiform could be termed as an open writing system which could easily serve the needs of many diverse cultures and languages (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003). Egyptian and Mayan scripts were “far more ‘closed,’ and, in the Maya case, exceptionally clumsy in recording other languages” (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003, p. 457). The Egyptians and Mayans were both relatively isolated groups of people who had little contact with other civilizations, so their development of closed language systems is not surprising. 

          In addition to being closed, the use of the systems became more exclusive, which contributed to their decline. Archaeologists and other researchers have noted that Egyptian hieroglyphs were not used by common people of lower social classes in their day to day writing or communications but that “...the monumental, pictorial form which is now seen as emblematic of Egypt, was used essentially for display among the elite (including communication with the gods)” (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003, 439). As time progressed, it is apparent that Egyptian hieroglyphs became even more temple-oriented and Mayan glyphs, in a similar fashion, became more restricted in their use “...with a near-total attenuation of public functions. Mayan glyphs were identified, at least in their non-calendrical portion, with a religious system...similarly, Egyptian writing was closely linked to traditional religion” (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003, 467). As both Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs became more restricted in their use, another force was introduced into their culture that forever changed the way these two groups communicated: invaders. When the Roman Empire invaded Egypt they brought their own language with them, just like the Spanish conquistadors did when they arrived in the new world and set about subjecting the native American people, including the Maya. 

          With the arrival of conquerors, different writing systems were introduced into the culture, replacing the previously used hieroglyphs. The use of the native languages and hieroglyphic writing systems became highly stigmatized. Researchers have noted that both cultures now had alternative writing systems, ”often connected to dominant groups and languages...Greek in Egypt, Spanish among the Maya - that did not have problematic connections to languages and...cultures of diminished interest” (Houston, Baines, & Cooper, 2003, 467). Eventually the meaning of the Egyptian and Mayan writing system was lost, only leaving a handful of clues carved into stone monuments and painted on temple walls for future anthropologists to try and decipher their original meanings. 

          While the Mayan and Egyptian cultures seem very different from one another, the two cultures actually share several things in common with one another. One of the most interesting similarities between these two ancient civilizations is their use of a hieroglyphic writing system that was both symbolic and phonetic. Both writing systems were “closed” or, in other words, highly specific to their own language and culture. Because of this, and an increasingly exclusive use of hieroglyphs, both languages died out with the arrival of foreign conquerors. Their pyramids remain among the most visible wonders of the world in places like Giza and Chichen Itza, but their hieroglyphic systems, shrouded in mystery, easily slip into the forgotten, dusty annals of the past.

References 

Hamann, B. E. (2008). How Maya hieroglyphs got their name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in western grammatology since the fifteenth century. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 152(1), 1-68. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478468

Houston, S., Baines, J., & Cooper, J. (2003). Last writing: Script obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica. Comparative Studies on Society and History, 45(3), 430-479. doi: 10.1017/S0010417503000227 

Jespersen, B., & Reintges, C. (2008). Tractarian sätze, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the very idea of script as picture. The Philosophical Forum, 39(1), 1-19. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9191.2007.00279.x 

Thomas, C. (1893). Are the Maya hieroglyphs phonetic? American Anthropologist, 6(3), 241-270. doi: 10.1525/aa.1893.6.3.02a00020

Exercises