[Aztlan] More on STAR and STAR WARS

[Barb MacLeod]

Hola, Listeros,

I offer some more commentary on the 'star' and the 'destruction' ("Star Wars") signs.

The Yucatec name of the day sign Lamat (also Lambat in Tzeltal and Chuj) has not thus far been transparent, but it is helpful to note (from Thompson, 1950) that several of the highland Mayan languages (Jacaltec, Ixil, Quiche, Pokomchi) called this day K'anil, meaning 'star'. So for the Maya this day sign seems to have that meaning--no matter that it is Rabbit in Central Mexico. Not all the day signs have correspondences in meaning across Mesoamerica, but many do.

One may analyze /lamat/ as /lam/ 'sink' and /-Vt/ a noun-forming suffix, and speculate that the word means 'a thing which sinks'. By this I don't mean the lead sinkers we attach to fishing lines, but rather a reference to Venus as evening star. This planet appears not too far from the horizon in the evening sky as the sunlight fades, and then it sinks below the horizon, following the sun. So this is compatible with the 'Venus' contexts of the sign in the Dresden Codex. We also know that the Yucatec Maya called Venus /noh 'ek'/ or /chak 'ek'/ 'great star'. I don't yet know who created the word *lam-at.

The so-called "Star Wars" compound is actually made up of *three* elements: STAR, EARTH, and WATER DROPS. The best designation for it is STAR-over-EARTH. The only contexts I can think of where the water droplets are absent are on the Vases of the Seven and Eleven Gods (Kerr Numbers 2796 and 7750 respectively) where the sign appears on the bundles placed before the rows of gods who sit facing God L in the underworld on the Era Day 4 Ajaw 8 Kumk'u. But I think these signs are the same here, and they refer to the bundling/completion of 'nine destructions'. Make of that what you will, if you like the notion of sequential creations in relation to five times 5200 tuns, and then twice that. But let's not speak of precession or 2012.

I am confident that the DESTRUCTION logogram includes at a minimum the STAR part and the EARTH part, and, with the exception above, also has the WATER DROPS element. I also consider this latter to be a phonetic complement. If Erik wants to jump in and share his excellent suggested reading, then he should be the one to debut it. I am persuaded that it is a single CVC root and that it includes neither the word 'star' nor the word 'earth'. Nor is it a specific reference to flooding or submerging into water, although the Tikal Burial 116 canoe scenes (which feature the verb) suggest this. I think it means 'destruction' or 'collapse' in all contexts.

But sometimes instead of EARTH we see the name of a city, or we see the syllable /yi/ --which I understand to be a portmanteau providing the final consonant of the root (but it's not CH(')AY) plus the intransitive -i. These we may assume are superimposed on the EARTH sign. The script has many examples of this superimposition.

Lloyd has given an excellent summary of the problem epigraphers face in deciding whether an element within or attached to a sign changes its meaning. Some of these do and some do not, but there are means requiring patience and serious study to sort them out. He is also spot-on in noting that many signs may rotate without change of meaning. Usually this rotation is between prefix and superfix, or between postfix and suffix. Sometimes what one considers is which part of the affix adheres to the main sign. There really isn't a huge inventory of inverted (or rotated-180-degrees) signs with change in meaning as my earlier comment suggested. But in no case does inversion *reverse* the meaning.

In the case of the inverted moon sign appearing with some references to lunar conjunction, I suspect this is an image of the last visible waning crescent before it disappears.

Barb