Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

political title attested from

epigraphic Epigraphy () 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 wr ...

inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the ''

tzolkʼin The tzolkʼin (, formerly and commonly tzolkin) is the 260-day Mesoamerican calendars, Mesoamerican calendar used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The tzolkʼin, the basic cycle of the Maya calendar, is a preeminent compone ...

'', the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's ''

kʼatun A ''kʼatun'' (, ) is a unit of time in the Maya calendar equal to 20 '' tuns'' or 7200 days, equivalent to 19.713 tropical years. It is the second digit on the normal Maya long count date. For example, in the Maya Long Count date 12.19.13.15.12 ...

''-ending rituals would fall.

Background

The word is known from several

Mayan languages The Mayan languages In linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and a ...

both those in pre-Columbian use (such as in Classic Maya), as well as in their contemporary descendant languages (in which there may be observed some slight variations). "Ajaw" is the modernised

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

in the standard revision of Mayan orthography, put forward in 1994 by the

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

n ''Academia de Lenguas Mayas'', and now widely adopted by Mayanist scholars. Before this standardisation, it was more commonly written as "Ahau", following the orthography of 16th-century

Yucatec Maya Yucatec Maya ( ; referred to by its speakers as or ) is a Mayan languages, Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Fra ...

in Spanish transcriptions (now ''Yukatek'' in the modernised style). In the Maya hieroglyphics

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

, the representation of the word ''ajaw'' could be as either a

logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...

, or spelled-out syllabically. In either case, quite a few

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

ic variants are known. A picture of the ruler sometimes substitutes for the more abstract day sign.

Meaning

''Ajaw'' denoted any of the leading class of nobles in a particular polity. It was not limited to a single individual, with a meaning variously rendered as "leader", "ruler", "lord", "king", or "queen", depending on the individual. Since the ''ajaw'' performed religious activities, it also designated a member of the Maya priesthood. The variant ''kʼuhul ajaw'' ("divine lord") indicates a sovereign leader of a polity, although the extent of the territory and influence controlled by an ''ajaw'' varied considerably, and ''kʼuhul ajaw'' could also be applied to persons who, in theory, recognised the overlordship of another person, dynasty, or state. When the title was given to women rulers, such as K'awiil Ajaw (640–681 AD) of

Coba Coba () is an ancient Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula, located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The site is the nexus of the largest network of stone causeways of the ancient Maya world, and it contains many engraved and sculpted stelae ...

, the term was sometimes prefixed with the sign Ix ("woman") to indicate their gender.

Earliest evidence

The archaeological site of Kʼo, associated with the Classic Maya city of Holmul located in modern-day

, boasts what may be the royal tomb of the earliest-known Mayan ruler. This tomb has been dated to 350–300 BC. It contains the earliest evidence of the institution of ajaw in the Maya Lowlands.John Tomasic and Steven Bozarth (2011)
''New Data from a Preclassic Tomb at Kʼo, Guatemala.''
Kansas.academia.edu

References

* * *

External links

'AJAW'
sound file and syllabic glyph example at John Montgomery's ''Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs,'' published online at FAMSI {{Maya Maya inscriptions Maya calendars Noble titles

Background

Meaning

Earliest evidence

See also

References

External links