There is no way of verifying the decipherment
of a unique inscription, and so this object has attracted numerous decipherments
, even making the news in July 2008 when its authenticity was called into question, another 'occupational hazard' for unique objects.
An entire chapter is dedicated to the influence of Thompson upon the early history of Maya hieroglyphic and iconographic decipherment
in Michael D.
In the last decade, new techniques in the decipherment
of hieroglyphs have been leading to important discoveries and revelations about the mysterious Maya.
In parallel, the decipherment
of Maya hieroglyphic writing (now known to begin not long after 400 BC, if not earlier) has progressed apace, bringing forgotten dynasties in life and making rulers like Pakal of Palenque (AD 603-83) better-known than King Arthur.
There are also some new decipherments
of old passages, even if sometimes received sense rather fades away with them (Old Babylonian Version [hereafter "OB"] II 6-7).
To a non-linguist, non-epigrapher reader, linguistic/epigraphic demonstrations that lead to decipherments
often appear sound and convincing.
The Maya script was probably the last great ancient code to be cracked (apart from the neighbouring and possibly related 'Epi-Olmec' texts on La Mojarra Stela 1 and the Tuxtla Statuette (Kaufmann & Justeson 1993)): neither Harappan nor Etruscan texts are long enough to provide the structures and checks needed to test putative decipherments
New hieroglyphic decipherments
now allow us to address several fundamental questions about the conceptual and religious underpinnings of Maya rulership.
Despite the phonetic implications of occasional decipherments
proposed by Leon de Rosny and others, the battle over whether or not the Maya system was phonetic came down to a confrontation between the great German scholar Eduard Seler and the American Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institution.
Mesoamerican scholars continue to set a thrilling pace in experimental archaeological writing, boosted by the last of the great decipherments
The latest scholarship in decipherment
as well as the competition for success receives a vivid blend of scholarly analysis and history.
The final section, on `objects', includes Peter Mathews' decipherment
of `name-tagging' on a pair of ear flares from Altun Ha, David Stuart's clarification of the Primary Standard Sequence on painted pots -- showing it to be an identification of function, ownership and sometimes the maker himself, and not the funeral chant initially surmised -- and Grube's application of the multiplex approach of the `new epigraphy' to decipher the verb tz'ap, to erect and/or dedicate a stela.
It is not, however, conducive to the kind of intellectual adventurousness and intuitive power that are often a necessary ingredient for the decipherment
of an unknown script.
But he makes the standard error of ascribing the decipherment
of Mesopotamian cuneiform to H.
Serious attempts at internal, structural analysis of the Indus script have been made by the Russians and the Parpola team, using statistics and computers, but without greatly advancing the possibilities of decipherment