Konstantin Samuel Rafinesque published early (often incorrect but influential) attempts to interpret Maya numerals and calendrical information from monuments such as those at Palenque—an early step toward treating Maya inscriptions as decipherable records rather than purely decorative art.
Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg found an abridged copy of Diego de Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán in Madrid archives, bringing back to scholarly attention the so-called “de Landa alphabet,” later crucial for phonetic decipherment.
Brasseur de Bourbourg published the first edition of de Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán in Paris, circulating the “de Landa alphabet” widely and making it available for subsequent decipherment efforts.
Paul Schellhas published a landmark study classifying and naming deities depicted in the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices, providing a durable reference framework for interpreting imagery and glyphic captions in the surviving Maya books.
J. Eric S. Thompson’s Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction consolidated then-current views (largely non-phonetic) and provided extensive cataloging and analysis that shaped the field—even as later breakthroughs overturned key assumptions.
In the 1950s, linguist Yuri (Yury) Knorozov demonstrated that Maya writing included phonetic (syllabic) components and that de Landa’s recorded signs functioned as a syllabary rather than a true alphabet—an essential conceptual breakthrough for reading texts.
Heinrich Berlin showed that a class of signs—later termed “emblem glyphs”—were linked to specific polities and dynasties, connecting texts to real political geography and rulership.
Tatiana Proskouriakoff’s article “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala” demonstrated that many inscriptions are historical narratives of reigns (accessions and other life events), not purely calendrical or astronomical records.
The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions (CMHI) began at Harvard’s Peabody Museum as a long-term program to photograph, draw, and publish monuments’ texts at high fidelity—an infrastructure effort that greatly expanded reliable data for decipherment.
At the First Palenque Mesa Redonda (Round Table), Linda Schele and Peter Mathews presented a then-unprecedented reconstruction of Palenque’s dynastic history, helping synthesize historical and phonetic approaches and accelerating collaborative decipherment.
David Stuart (later a MacArthur Fellow at age 18) demonstrated that many glyph variants substitute purely phonetically (not just iconographically), strengthening acceptance of a logosyllabic system and improving reading methods across texts.
Ian Graham’s Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 1: Introduction appeared as a core reference for the CMHI series, formalizing standards and tools that supported global epigraphic work.
The Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project began encoding the corpus of inscriptions into a graphics database; a major mid-1990s phase aimed to add the surviving codices, supporting broader access, search, and comparative analysis for decipherment.
David Stuart and Ian Graham published a CMHI fascicle on Piedras Negras monuments, continuing the systematic release of high-quality photographs and drawings that enable reliable epigraphic readings and cross-site comparisons.
The Maya Hieroglyphic Database (as curated, citable datasets) was made available through tDAR with catalog and text components, reflecting a mature stage of digital infrastructure supporting ongoing decipherment and linguistic/historical research.
Decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs (19th–21st centuries)
