page_title: Ancient Maya art
section_title: Writing and bookmaking
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Maya art / Writing and bookmaking
caption_attribution_description: Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City Français&#160;: Livre maya .
context_page_description: Ancient Maya art is about the material arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture shared by a great number of kingdoms in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and western Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions existed side by side, usually coinciding with the changing boundaries of Maya polities. This civilization took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period, when the first cities and monumental architecture started to develop and the hieroglyphic script came into being. Its greatest artistic flowering occurred during the seven centuries of the Classic Period.
  Maya art forms tend to be more stiffly organized during the Early Classic and to become more expressive during the Late Classic phase. In the course of history, influences of various other Mesoamerican cultures were absorbed. In the late Preclassic, the influence of the Olmec style is still discernable, whereas in the Early Classic, the style of central Mexican Teotihuacan made itself felt, just as that of the Toltec in the Postclassic.
context_section_description: The Maya writing system consists of about 1000 distinct characters or hieroglyphs ('glyphs'), and like many ancient writing systems is a mixture of syllabic signs and logograms. This script was in use from the 3rd century BCE until shortly after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. As of now (2019), a considerable proportion of the characters has a reading, but their meaning and configuration as a text is not always understood. The books were folded and consisted of bark paper or leather leaves with an adhesive stucco layer on which to write; they were protected by jaguar skin covers and, perhaps, wooden boards. Since every diviner probably needed a book, there must have existed large numbers of them. 
  Today, three Maya books, all from the Post-Classic period, are still in existence: the Dresden, Paris, and Madrid codices. A fourth book, the Grolier, is Maya-Toltec rather than Maya and lacks hieroglyphic texts; fragmentary and of very poor workmanship, it shows many anomalies, reason for which its authenticity has long remained in  doubt. These books are largely of a divinatory and priestly nature, containing almanacs, astrological tables, and ritual programs; the Paris Codex also includes katun-prophecies. Great attention was paid to a harmonious balance of texts and (partly coloured) illustrations.
  Besides the codical glyphs, there existed a cursive script of an often dynamic character, found in wall-paintings and on ceramics, and imitated in stone on panels from Palenque (such as the 'Tablet of the 96 glyphs'). Often, written captions are enclosed in square 'boxes' of various shapes within the representation. Wall paintings may also entirely consist of texts (Ek' Balam, Naj Tunich), or, more rarely, contain astrological computations (Xultun); sometimes, written on a white stuccoed surface, and executed with particular care and elegance, these texts are like enlargements of book pages.
  Hieroglyphs are ubiquitous and were written on every available surface, including the human body. The glyphs themselves are highly detailed, and particularly the logograms are deceivingly realistic. As a matter of fact, from an art-historical point of view, they should also be viewed as art motifs, and vice versa. Sculptors at Copan and Quirigua have consequently felt free to convert hieroglyphic elements and calendrical signs into animated, dramatic miniature scenes ('full figure glyphs').
caption: Madrid Codex
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