[Aztlan] Russian Code Breaker

[Vladimir Pakhomov]

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (1922-1999)

The quotation from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
~~~
Knorozov, Yury Valentinovich
born Nov. 19, 1922, Kharkov, Ukraine, U.S.S.R. [now Kharkiv, Ukraine]

Knorozov also spelled Knorosov
Russian linguist, epigraphist, and ethnologist who played a major role in
the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphic writing.

Knorozov fought in the Soviet armed forces during World War II and graduated
from Moscow State University in 1948. About that time he became interested
in ancient Mayan hieroglyphs, very few of which could be deciphered, and his
researches on the problem earned him a doctorate in historical sciences in
1955. He was a senior associate for many years at the Ethnographic Institute
of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

Knorozov brought a groundbreaking new approach to the field in an article
published in the Soviet journal Sovietskaya Etnografia (“Soviet
Ethnography”) in 1952. In it he argued that the glyphs written by the
ancient Mayan Indians consist either of logograms (signs used to represent
an entire word) or of phonetic signs; in the case of the latter, each glyph
represents a consonant-vowel combination. Knorozov went on to correctly
posit that a Mayan word made up of a consonant-vowel-consonant combination
was written with two glyphs, with the vowel of the second glyph not
pronounced. Hence, the glyphs for tzu and lu were pronounced tzul, which was
the Mayan word for “dog.” Using this approach, Knorozov was able to decipher
a wide array of hitherto incomprehensible Mayan symbols. He published his
major work on the subject, Pis'mennost' Indeitsav Maiia (The Writing of the
Maya Indians), in 1963. His phonetic hypothesis earned widespread acceptance
in the 1970s and enabled many ancient Mayan inscriptions to be read in their
entirety.
~~~

Best regards from Russia,

Vladimir Pakhomov
http://pakhomov.com/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: aztlan-bounces at lists.famsi.org 
> [mailto:aztlan-bounces at lists.famsi.org] On Behalf Of Tdrop13 at aol.com
> Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 1:08 AM
> To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> Subject: [Aztlan] Russian Code Breaker
> 
> 
> I am Interested in reading about the the Russian solider who 
> in WW 2, saved  
> the Mayan Codices in the ruins of Berlin and deciphered the 
> Mayan writing, 
> your  help would be greatly appreciated, MFM.