[Aztlan] Reversed Glyphs

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Several texts in buildings are reversed, usually to accomodate
the direction in which a reader would be passing by the text
(from outside to inside the building).     Temple 11 Copan is one.
A few other texts have reading order reversed.   

There are actually THREE DISTINCT senses of reversal:
(1) order of progress from one glyph block to the next, L-Right or R-Left
(2) order of reading parts of a glyph block within the block
(3) mirroring of glyphic images

There are cases in which (1) and maybe (2) are reversed,
but individual glyphs are NOT (3) mirrored.
There are cases where a scribe attempted to mirror glyphs as in (3),
but failed, leaving one or two small clues of this (which might be of
type (2)).

There is nothing large scale and systematic and predictable.

*

One other directionality item which I can think is Stephen Houston's
observation that in court scenes on ceramics, the highest lord is seated
to our observer's right, and the visitor approaches from the left ---
UNLESS the scene is conceived as in the underworld, 
in which case directions are the reverse of what was just described.

There is also a rare more complex scene in three levels,
a higher lord, a warrior presenting captives,
and the captives themselves.
Each of these is facing the opposite direction
from the other participants one level above or below them.

Best wishes,
Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics


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