The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.

Petroglyphs in Wadi Rum (Jordan)

Epigraphy (from the Greek: ἐπιγραφή epi-graphē, literally "on-writing", "inscription"^[1]) is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the writing and the writers. Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition.

A person using the methods of epigraphy is called an epigrapher or epigraphist. For example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating the trilingual inscription and finding any relevant circumstances. It is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often, epigraphy and history are competences practiced by the same person.

An epigraph is any sort of text, from a single grapheme (such as marks on a pot that abbreviate the name of the merchant who shipped commodities in the pot) to a lengthy document (such as a treatise, a work of literature, or a hagiographic prescription). Epigraphy overlaps other competences such as numismatics or palaeography. When compared to books, most inscriptions are short. The media and the forms of the graphemes are diverse: engravings in stone or metal, scratches on rock, impressions in wax, embossing on cast metal, cameo or intaglio on precious stones, painting on ceramic or in fresco. Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, such as the baking of a clay tablet in a conflagration.

Scope[link]

Epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the auxiliary sciences of history. Epigraphy also helps identify a forgery: epigraphic evidence formed part of the discussion concerning the James Ossuary.

The study of ancient handwriting, usually in ink, is a separate field, palaeography.

The character of the writing, the subject of epigraphy, is a matter quite separate from the nature of the text, which is studied in itself. Texts inscribed in stone are usually for public view and so they are essentially different from the written texts of each culture. Not all inscribed texts are public, however: in Mycenaean Greece the deciphered texts of "Linear B" were revealed to be largely used for economic and administrative record keeping. Informal inscribed texts are "graffiti" in its original sense.

History[link]

The high medieval Prüfening dedicatory inscription, composed in Latin and stamped in Roman square capitals

The science of epigraphy has been developing steadily since the 16th century. Principles of epigraphy vary culture by culture, and the infant science in European hands concentrated on Latin inscriptions at first. Individual contributions have been made by epigraphers such as Georg Fabricius (1516–1571); August Wilhelm Zumpt (1815–1877); Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903); Emil Hübner (1834–1901); Franz Cumont (1868–1947); Louis Robert (1904–1985).

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, begun by Mommsen and other scholars, has been published in Berlin since 1863, with wartime interruptions. It is the largest and most extensive collection of Latin inscriptions. New fascicles are still produced as the recovery of inscriptions continues. The Corpus is arranged geographically: all inscriptions from Rome are contained in volume 6. This volume has the greatest number of inscriptions; volume 6, part 8, fascicle 3 was just recently published (2000). Specialists depend on such on-going series of volumes in which newly discovered inscriptions are published, often in Latin, not unlike the biologists' Zoological Record— the raw material of history.

Greek epigraphy has unfolded in the hands of a different team, with different corpora. There are two. The first is Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of which four volumes came out, again at Berlin, 1825-1877. This marked a first attempt at a comprehensive publication of Greek inscriptions copied from all over the Greek-speaking world. Only advanced students still consult it, for better editions of the texts have superseded it. The second, modern corpus is Inscriptiones Graecae arranged geographically under categories: decrees, catalogues, honorary titles, funeral inscriptions, various., all presented in Latin, to preserve the international neutrality of the field of classics.

Other such series include the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum (Etruscan inscriptions), Corpus Inscriptionum Crucesignatorum Terrae Sanctae (Crusaders' inscriptions), Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, (Celtic inscriptions), Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum (Iranian inscriptions) and so forth.

Egyptian hieroglyphs were solved using the Rosetta Stone, which was a multilingual stele in Classical Greek, Demotic Egyptian and Classical Egyptian hieroglyphs. The work was done by the French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, and the British scientist Thomas Young.

The interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs was lost as a result of the Spanish Conquest of Central America. However, recent work by Maya epigraphers and linguists has yielded a considerable amount of information on this complex writing system.^[2]

See also[link]

Related fields of study[link]

Types of inscription[link]

Notable inscriptions[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Epigraphy

Look up epigraphy or inscription in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Epigraphy.

Yu Dafu
Born	(1896-12-07)December 7, 1896 Fuyang, Zhejiang, China
Died	September 17, 1945(1945-09-17) (aged 48)
Occupation	Short Story writer and Poet

Yu Dafu (simplified Chinese: 郁达夫; traditional Chinese: 郁達夫; pinyin: Yù Dáfū; Wade–Giles: Yu Ta-fu) (December 7, 1896—September 17, 1945). Born in Fuyang, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, was a modern Chinese short story writer and poet.

Early years[link]

Yu Dafu's father died when he was three, leaving the family poverty-stricken and destitute. He received a number of scholarships through the Chinese government and went on to receive a traditional Chinese education in Hangzhou. Chronologically he studied in Jiangxing-Fu Middle School (before he came to Hangzhou), Hangzhou-Fu Middle School, Yuying Academy^[1] (育英学堂, formerly of Zhejiang University).

In 1912, he entered Hangchow University (later its major part merged into Zhejiang University) preparatory through examination. He was there only for a short period before he was expelled for participation in a student strike.^[2]

He then moved to Japan, where he studied economics at the Tokyo Imperial University between 1913 and 1922, where he met other Chinese intellectuals (namely, Guo Moruo, Zhang Ziping and Tian Han). Together, in 1921 they founded the Chuangzao she 創造社 ("Creation Society"), which promoted vernacular and modern literature. One of his earlier works Chenlun 沉淪, also his most famous, published in Japan in 1921. The work had gained immense popularity in China, shocking the world of Chinese literature with its frank dealing with sex, as well as grievances directed at the incompetence of Chinese government at the time.

In 1922, he returned to China as a literary celebrity and worked as the editor of Creation Quarterly, editing journals and writing short stories. In 1923, after an attack of tuberculosis, Yu Dafu directed his attention to the welfare of the masses.

In 1927, he worked as an editor of the Hongshui literary magazine. He later came in conflict with the Communist Party of China and fled back to Japan.

Second Sino-Japanese war[link]

After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese war, he returned to China and worked as a writer of anti-Japanese propaganda in Hangzhou, and later in Zhejiang. From 1938 to 1942, he worked as a literary editor for the newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh in Singapore.

In 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore, he was forced to flee to Sumatra. Known under a different identity, he settled there among other overseas Chinese and began a brewery business with the help of the locals. Later he was forced to help the Japanese military police as an interpreter when it was discovered that he was one of the few "locals" in the area who could speak Japanese.

In 1945, he was arrested by the Kempeitai when his true identity was finally discovered. It is believed that he was executed by the Japanese shortly after the surrender of Japan.

Works[link]

• Chenlun 沉淪 "Sinking" (1921)
• Riji jiuzhong 日記九種 “Nine Diaries” (1927)
• Guoqu 過去 “The Past" (1927)
• his first novel?? (1928) (moderately successful)
• his second novel?? (1932)
• Chuben 出奔 "Flight" (1935)

His most popular work, breaking all Chinese sales records, was Jih-chi chiu-chung "Nine Diaries", which detailed his affair with the writer Wang Ying-hsin. The most critically acclaimed work is Kuo-ch'u or "The Past", written in 1927.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

• Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Yü Ta-fu"

External links[link]

• Works by Yu Dafu at Project Gutenberg

The Greek is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Bill Raymond. The Greek is the head of an international criminal organization involved in narcotics and human trafficking.^[1] The Greek is a mysterious figure involved in numerous criminal activities. His given name is never mentioned on the show, and though he is known only as "The Greek", he has stated (in the episode Port in a Storm) that he is not actually Greek. A quiet and unassuming man, the Greek prefers to keep a low profile, operating all of his business through his lieutenant Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos. His smuggling organization operated from a small diner in Baltimore for years, and while Vondas would conduct business the Greek would listen in quietly at the counter. Nick Sobotka, upon seeing the Greek identify himself, was amazed that the shadowy figure had been in plain sight the entire time.

Despite his calm appearance, the Greek is cunning and ruthless, and only interested in facts that make him more money. Series creator David Simon has said that The Greek is an embodiment of raw unencumbered capitalism.^[2] Anyone interfering in this process is eliminated immediately, and he prefers to leave victims headless and handless to hinder identification.

The Greek's smuggling operation includes importing sex trade workers, illicit drugs, stolen goods and chemicals for drug processing. He bribes union stevedores to move containers through the Baltimore port for him and uses his muscle, Sergei "Serge" Malatov, to run containers back and forth from the port to his warehouse, a front managed by "Double G" Glekas. The Greek supplies the major drug dealers in East Baltimore with pure cocaine and heroin, using Eton Ben-Eleazer to move his drugs. His chief client is Proposition Joe, but he is also affiliated with smaller drug dealing organizations like those run by "White Mike" McArdle. His sex trade interests in Baltimore include a brothel run by a madam named Ilona Petrovitch, bringing in girls from eastern Europe. He manages to avoid prosecution for his crimes because an FBI counter-terrorism agent named Kristos Koutris tips him off if a criminal investigation gets too close. It is suggested he and Vondas may serve as federal informants.

Biography[link]

Season 2[link]

The Greek began to draw police attention in Baltimore when his contact at the docks, Frank Sobotka, became the target of an investigation. At the same time a container of thirteen dead young women intended for the sex trade was discovered at the docks, triggering a high-profile homicide investigation. The container belonged to the Greek and the girls were killed by a crewman onboard the vessel that had delivered them. The ship's crew had been paying the girls for sex and when one of the girls refused, she was killed. The crewman responsible dumped her overboard and collapsed the air pipe to kill the remaining women. The Greek had Sergei track the crewman down, interrogated him personally, and had Vondas kill him.

As the investigation continued the police were able to link Eton and Sergei to the drug smuggling operation. When police began tracking containers as they left the port, The Greek and Vondas began to close down the operation temporarily by dumping their cell phones and stealing "clean" containers. Persuading Sobotka to keep the smuggling operation going he bought further protection from Agent Koutris by betraying a load of Colombian cocaine, giving him time to destroy incriminating evidence in the warehouse and Glekas' store.

The Greek recognized that the investigation was too extensive to stop and made plans to leave, sending Vondas to assure Proposition Joe that supply of drugs would continue albeit with new faces. He attempted to buy Sobotka's silence with promised legal aid for his son, but when he learned from Koutris that Frank was planning to turn informant he had the union man killed. Although Frank's nephew Nick Sobotka was able to identify The Greek in a photo and Sergei was pressured to give up the location of his hotel suite, Vondas and the Greek had already boarded a flight to Chicago. Aware that the Greek and Vondas were gone, the police left the investigation behind and moved on to the drug dealers he supplied.

Seasons 4 & 5[link]

The Greek continued to supply "Proposition Joe" Stewart, who formed an organization with other drug dealers called the New Day Co-Op to provide The Greek's product to them in exchange for reduced violence and sharing of territory. When Omar Little steals an entire shipment of heroin from the Greek's men as it is being delivered to Stewart's people, Marlo Stanfield demands a meeting with Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos in order to allay his fears that Stewart was responsible.^[3][4] Once Stanfield is satisfied, he waits for the Major Crimes Unit's investigation into his activities to cease and then moves to establish a direct relationship with Vondas and the Greek. After getting in communication with Vondas through former soldier Sergei,^[5][6] Marlo eventually sells himself as Joe's replacement by convincing the Greek that he requires an insurance policy in the form of a replacement for Proposition Joe, in the event that anything should happen to him. Realizing that Stanfield will move against Stewart regardless of his approval, the Greek accepts Marlo's proposal to act as an "insurance policy," knowing that it will mean Joe's death.^[7][8]

After Stewart's murder, Stanfield meets with Vondas to initiate their new business relationship.^[9][10] Stanfield's tenure proves short lived when he is forced into retirement by an investigation, and the other Co-Op members purchase the connection from Stanfield. In the closing scenes of the series finale, Slim Charles and Fat-Face Rick take over meeting with Vondas while the Greek listens quietly in the background.^[11][12]

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2008)

Yuriy Valentinovich Knorozov (alternatively, Knorosov; in Russian: Юрий Валентинович Кнóрозов; November 19, 1922 — March 31, 1999) was a Russian linguist, epigrapher and ethnographer, who is particularly renowned for the pivotal role his research played in the decipherment of the Maya script, the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.

Early life[link]

Knorozov was born in a village near Kharkiv in Ukraine, at that time the capital of the newly formed Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.^[1] His parents were Russian intellectuals, and his paternal grandmother had been a stage actress of national repute in Armenia.^[2]

At school, the young Yuri was a difficult and somewhat eccentric student, who made indifferent progress in a number of subjects and was almost expelled for poor and willful behaviour. However, it became clear that he was academically bright with an inquisitive temperament; he was an accomplished violinist, wrote romantic poetry and could draw with accuracy and attention to detail.^[3]

In 1940 at the age of 17, Knorozov left Kharkov for Moscow where he commenced undergraduate studies in the newly created Department of Ethnology^[4] at Moscow State University's faculty of History. He initially specialised in Egyptology.^[5]

Military service and the "Berlin Affair"[link]

Knorozov's study plans were soon interrupted by the outbreak of World War II hostilities along the Eastern Front in mid-1941. From 1943 to 1945 Knorozov served his term in the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War in the Red Army as an artillery spotter.^[6]

At the closing stages of the war in May 1945, Knorozov and his unit supported the push of the Red Army vanguard into Berlin. It was here, sometime in the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin, that Knorozov is supposed to have by chance retrieved a book which would spark his later interest in and association with deciphering the Maya script. In their retelling, the details of this episode have acquired a somewhat folkloric quality, as "...one of the greatest legends of the history of Maya research".^[7] The story has been much reproduced, particularly following the 1992 publication of Michael D. Coe's Breaking the Maya Code.^[8]

According to this version of the anecdote, when stationed in Berlin, Knorozov came across the National Library while it was ablaze. Somehow Knorozov managed to retrieve from the burning library a book, which remarkably enough turned out to be a rare edition^[9] containing reproductions of the three Maya codices which were then known—the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices.^[10] Knorozov is said to have taken this book back with him to Moscow at the end of the war, where its examination would form the basis for his later pioneering research into the Maya script.

However, in an interview conducted a year before his death, Knorozov provided a different version of the anecdote.^[11] As he explained to his interlocutor, the Mayanist epigrapher Harri Kettunen of the University of Helsinki:

Inner courtyard of the Preußische Staatsbibliothek (2005)

"Unfortunately it was a misunderstanding: I told about it [finding the books in the library in Berlin] to my colleague Michael Coe, but he didn't get it right. There simply wasn't any fire in the library. And the books that were in the library, were in boxes to be sent somewhere else. The fascist command had packed them, and since they didn't have time to move them anywhere, they were simply taken to Moscow. I didn't see any fire there."^[12]

The "National Library" mentioned in these accounts is not specifically identified by name, but at the time the library then known as the Preußische Staatsbibliothek (Prussian State Library) had that function. Situated on Unter den Linden and today known as the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), this was the largest scientific library of Germany. During the war, most of its collection had been dispersed over some 30 separate storage places across the country for safe-keeping. After the war much of the collection was returned to the library, however a substantial number of volumes which had been sent for storage in the eastern part of the country were never recovered, with upwards of 350,000 volumes destroyed and a further 300,000 missing. Of these, many ended up in Soviet and Polish library collections, and in particular at the Russian State Library in Moscow.^[13]

Resumption of studies[link]

In the autumn of 1945 after the war, Knorozov returned to Moscow State University to complete his undergraduate courses at the department of Ethnography. He resumed his research into Egyptology, and also undertook comparative cultural studies in other fields such as Sinology. He displayed a particular interest and aptitude for the study of ancient languages and writing systems, especially hieroglyphs, and he also read in medieval Japanese and Arabic literature.^[3]

While still an undergraduate at MSU, Knorozov found work at the N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology^[14] (or IEA), part of the prestigious Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Knorozov's later research findings would be published by the IEA under its imprint.

As part of his ethnographic curriculum Knorozov spent several months as a member of a field expedition to the Central Asian Russian republics of the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs (what had formerly been the Khorezm SSR, and would much later become the independent nations of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union). On this expedition his ostensible focus was to study the effects of Russian expansionary activities and "modern" developments upon the nomadic ethnic groups, of what was a far-flung frontier world of the Soviet state.

At this point the focus of his research had not yet been drawn on the Maya script. This would change in 1947, when at the instigation of his professor, Knorozov wrote his dissertation on the "de Landa alphabet", a record produced by the 16th century Spanish Bishop Diego de Landa in which he claimed to have transliterated the Spanish alphabet into corresponding Maya hieroglyphs, based on input from Maya informants. De Landa, who during his posting to Yucatán had overseen the destruction of all the codices from the Maya civilization he could find, reproduced his alphabet in a work (Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán) intended to justify his actions once he had been placed on trial when recalled to Spain. The original document had disappeared, and this work was unknown until 1862 when an abridged copy was discovered in the archives of the Spanish Royal Academy by the French scholar, Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg.

Since de Landa's "alphabet" seemed to be contradictory and unclear (e.g., multiple variations were given for some of the letters, and some of the symbols were not known in the surviving inscriptions), previous attempts to use this as a key for deciphering the Maya writing system had not been successful.

Key research[link]

the page from Diego de Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán (1853 edition by Brasseur de Bourbourg), which contained description of the de Landa alphabet which Knorozov relied upon for his breakthrough.

In 1952 Knorozov published a paper which was later to prove to be a seminal work in the field (Drevnyaya pis’mennost’ Tsentral’noy Ameriki, or "Ancient Writing of Mesoamerica".) The general thesis of this paper put forward the observation that early scripts such as ancient Egyptian and Cuneiform which were generally or formerly thought to be predominantly logographic or even purely ideographic in nature, in fact contained a significant phonetic component. That is to say, rather than the symbols representing only or mainly whole words or concepts, many symbols in fact represented the sound elements of the language in which they were written, and had alphabetic or syllabic elements as well, which if understood could further their decipherment. By this time, this was largely known and accepted for several of these, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs (the decipherment of which was famously commenced by Jean-François Champollion in 1822 using the tri-lingual Rosetta Stone artefact); however the prevailing view was that Mayan did not have such features. Knorozov's studies in comparative linguistics drew him to the conclusion that the Mayan script should be no different from the others, and that purely logographic or ideographic scripts did not exist.

Knorozov's key insight was to treat the Maya glyphs represented in de Landa's alphabet not as an alphabet, but rather as a syllabary. He was perhaps not the first to propose a syllabic basis for the script, but his arguments and evidence were the most compelling to date. He maintained that when de Landa had commanded of his informant to write the equivalent of the Spanish letter "b" (for example), the Maya scribe actually produced the glyph which corresponded to the syllable, /be/, as spoken by de Landa. Knorozov did not actually put forward many new transcriptions based on his analysis, nevertheless he maintained that this approach was the key to understanding the script. In effect, the de Landa "alphabet" was to become almost the "Rosetta stone" of Mayan decipherment.

A further critical principle put forward by Knorozov was that of synharmony. According to this, Mayan words or syllables which had the form consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) were often to be represented by two glyphs, each representing a CV-syllable (i.e., CV-CV). In the reading, the vowel of the second was meant to be ignored, leaving the reading (CVC) as intended. The principle also stated that when choosing the second CV glyph, it would be one with an echo vowel that matched the vowel of the first glyph syllable. Later analysis has proved this to be largely correct.

Critical reactions to his work[link]

Upon the publication of this work from a then hardly known scholar, Knorozov and his thesis came under some severe and at times dismissive criticism. J. Eric S. Thompson, the noted British scholar regarded by all as the leading Mayanist of his day, led the attack. Thompson's views at that time were solidly anti-phonetic, and his own large body of detailed research had already fleshed-out a view that the Maya inscriptions did not record their actual history, and that the glyphs were founded on ideographic principles. His view was the prevailing one in the field, and many other scholars followed suit.

The situation was further complicated by Knorozov's paper appearing during the height of the Cold War, and many were able to dismiss his paper as being founded on misguided Marxist-Leninist ideology and polemic. Indeed, in keeping with the mandatory practices of the time, Knorozov's paper was prefaced by a foreword written by the journal's editor which contained digressions and propagandist comments extolling the State-sponsored approach by which Knorozov had succeeded where Western scholarship had failed. However, despite claims to the contrary by several of Knorozov's detractors, Knorozov himself never did include such polemic in his writings.

Knorozov persisted with his publications in spite of the criticism and rejection of many Mayanists of the time. He was perhaps shielded to some extent from the ramifications of peer disputation, since his position and standing at the institute was not adversely influenced by criticism from Western academics.

Progress of decipherment[link]

Knorozov further improved his decipherment technique in his 1963 monograph "The Writing of the Maya Indians"^[3] and published translations of Mayan manuscripts in his 1975 work "Maya Hieroglyphic Manuscripts".

During the 1960s, other Mayanists and researchers began to expand upon Knorozov's ideas. Their further field-work and examination of the extant inscriptions began to indicate that actual Maya history was recorded in the stelae inscriptions, and not just calendric and astronomical information. The Russian-born but American-resident scholar Tatiana Proskouriakoff was foremost in this work, eventually convincing Thompson and other doubters that historical events were recorded in the script.

Other early supporters of the phonetic approach championed by Knorozov included Michael D. Coe and David Kelley, and whilst initially they were in a clear minority, more and more supporters came to this view as further evidence and research progressed.

Through the rest of the decade and into the next, Proskouriakoff and others continued to develop the theme, and using Knorozov's results and other approaches began to piece together some decipherments of the script. A major breakthrough came during the first round table or Mesa Redonda conference at the Maya site of Palenque in 1973, when using the syllabic approach those present (mostly) deciphered what turned out to be a list of former rulers of that particular Maya city-state.

Subsequent decades saw many further such advances, to the point now where quite a significant portion of the surviving inscriptions can be read. Most Mayanists and accounts of the decipherment history apportion much of the credit to the impetus and insight provided by Knorozov's contributions, to a man who had not as yet set foot outside of his native Russia, but had still been able to make important contributions to the understanding of this distant, ancient civilisation.

Later life[link]

As his theories became more widely known, Knorozov was in 1956 granted leave to attend an international convention of Mesoamerican scholars in Copenhagen. This was to be his one and only venture outside the Soviet Union for quite some time, since as a Soviet academic, Knorozov was subject to the usual restrictions placed on travel outside of the Soviet Union. Over subsequent years western Mayanists needed to travel to Leningrad to meet up with him. It was not until 1990 that he was eventually able to leave Russia again and finally visit the ancient Maya homelands and archaeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala. This was at the invitation of the Guatemalan President Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo, at a time of improved diplomatic relations between the two countries. Cerezo presented him with an honorary medal, and Knorozov was able to extend his stay in the region, visiting several of the important Maya sites such as Tikal. However, shortly after Vinicio Cerezo left office, Knorozov received threats from suspected right-wing militarist groups who were antagonistic to the indigenous Mayan peoples, and was forced to go into hiding and then leave the country.

The government of Mexico awarded him the Orden del Águila Azteca (Order of the Aztec Eagle), the highest decoration awarded by Mexico to non-citizens, which was presented to him at a ceremony at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow on November 30, 1994.

Knorozov had broad interest in, and contributed to, other investigative fields such as archaeology, semiotics, human migration to the Americas and the evolution of the mind. However, it is his contributions to the field of Maya studies for which he is best remembered.

In his very last years, Knorozov is also known^[15] to have pointed to a place in the United States as the likely location of Chicomoztoc, the ancestral land from which—according to ancient documents and accounts considered mythical by a sizable number of scholars—Indian peoples now living in Mexico are said to have come.

Knorozov died in Saint Petersburg on March 31, 1999, of pneumonia in the corridors of a city hospital, just before he was due to receive the honorary Proskouriakoff Award from Harvard University.

List of publications[link]

An incomplete listing of Knorozov's papers, conference reports and other publications, divided by subject area and type. Note that several of those listed are re-editions and/or translations of earlier papers.^[16]

Maya-related[link]

Conference papers

• "A brief summary of the studies of the ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing in the Soviet Union". Reports of the Soviet Delegations at the 10th International Congress of Historical Science in Rome ((Authorized English translation) ed.). Moscow: Akademiya Nauk SSSR. 1955. 
• "Kratkie itogi izucheniya drevney pis'mennosti Mayya v Sovetskom Soyuze". Proceedings of the International Congress of Historical Sciences (Rome, 1955). Rome. 1956. pp. 343–364. 
• "New data on the Maya written language". Proc. 32nd International Congress of Americanists, (Copenhagen, 1956). Copenhagen. 1958. pp. 467–475. 
• "La lengua de los textos jeroglificos mayas". Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists (33rd session, San José, 1958). San José, Costa Rica. 1959. pp. 573–579. 
• "Le Panthéon des anciens Maya". Proceedings of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (7th session, Moscow, 1964).. Moscow. 1970. pp. 126–232. 

Journal articles

• "Drevnyaya pis’mennost’ Tsentral’noy Ameriki. (Ancient Writings of Central America)". Sovetskaya Etnografiya 3 (2): 100–118. 1952. 
• "Pis'mennost' drevnih mayya. (Written Language of the Ancient Maya)". Sovetskaya Etnografiya 1: 94–125. 1955. 
• "New data on the Maya written language". Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 45: 209–217. 1956. 
• "Estudio de los jeroglíficos mayas en la U.R.S.S. (The Study of Maya hieroglyphics in the USSR)". Khana, Revista municipal de artes y letras (La Paz, Bolivia) 2 (17-18): 183–189. 1958. 
• "The problem of the study of the Maya hieroglyphic writing". American Antiquity 23 (3): 248–291. 1958. 
• "Problem of deciphering Mayan writing". Diogènes (Montreal) 40: 122–128. 1962. 
• "Machine decipherment of Maya script". Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 1 (3): 43–50. 1963. 
• "Aplicación de las matematicas al estudio lingüistico (Application of mathematics to linguistic studies)". Estudios de Cultura Maya (Mexico City) 3: 169–185. 1963. 
• "Principios para descifrar los escritos mayas. (Principles for deciphering Maya writing)". Estudios de Cultura Maya (Mexico City) 5: 153–188. 1965. 
• "Investigación formal de los textos jeroglíficos mayas. (Formal investigations of Maya hieroglyphic texts)". Estudios de Cultura Maya (Mexico City) 7: 153–188. 1968. 
• "Zametki o kalendare Mayya: 365-dnevnyy god". Sovetskaya Etnografiya 1: 70–80. 1973. 
• "Notas sobre el calendario maya; el monumento E de Tres Zapotes". América Latina; estudios de científicos soviéticos 3: 125–140. 1974. 
• "Acerca de las relaciones precolombinas entre América y el Viejo Mundo". América Latina; estudios de científicos soviéticos 1: 84–98. 1986. 

Books

• La antigua escritura de los pueblos de America Central. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Popular. 1954. 
• Sistema Pis'ma Drevnih Mayya. Moscow: Institut Etnografii, Akademiya Nauk SSSR. 1955. 
• Diego de Landa: Soobshchenie o delah v Yukatane, 1566. Moscow: Akademiya Nauk SSSR. 1956.  (Knorozov's doctoral dissertation)
• Pis'mennost' Indeytsev Mayya. Moscow-Leningrad: Institut Etnografii, Akademiya Nauk SSSR. 1963. 
• Tatiana Proskouriakoff (Ed.), ed. (1967). "The Writing of the Maya Indians". Russian Translation Series 4. Sophie Coe (trans.). Cambridge MA.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 
• Ieroglificheskie Rukopisi Mayya. Leningrad: Institut Etnografii, Akademiya Nauk SSSR. 1975. 
• Maya Hieroglyphic Codices. Sophie Coe (trans.). Albany NY.: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies. 1982. 
• "Comendio Xcaret de la escritura jeroglifica maya descifrada por Yuri V. Knorosov". Promotora Xcaret. Mexico City: Universidad de Quintana Roo. 1999. 
• Stephen Houston, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos and David Stuart, eds, ed. (2001). "New data on the Maya written language". The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing. Norman OK.: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 144–152. 

Others[link]

• "Preliminary Report on the Study of the Written Language of Easter Island". Journal of the Polynesian Society 66 (1): 5–17. 1957.  (on the Rongorongo script, with N.A. Butinov)
• Yuri Knorozov (ed.), ed. (1965). Predvaritel’noe soobshchenie ob issledovanii protoindiyskih tekstov. Moscow: Institut Etnografii, Akademiya Nauk SSSR.  (Collated results of a research team under Knorozov investigating the Harappan script, with the use of computers)
• "Protoindiyskie nadpisi (k probleme deshifrovki)". Sovetskaya Etnografiya 5 (2): 47–71. 1981.  (on the Harappan script of the Indus Valley civilization)

See also[link]

• Maya script
• Epigraphy
• J. Eric S. Thompson
• Tatiana Proskouriakoff

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Works by or about Yuri Knorozov in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Photograph of Y.V. Knorozov, at the Archaeology and Informatics Sector, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences