mask

Photo: Michael Coe

The Isthmanian Mask

The mask above is a new discovery in the Olmec area. John Justeson of S.U.N.Y and Terrence Kaufman and the University of Pittsburg have attempted to translated the glyphs, but Stephen Houston and Michael Coe are dismayed by the limited amount of glyphs found in the text. They referred to the Phaistos Disk of Greece and the Rongo-rongo of Easter Island as having the same sparse information and notyet translated. (Mexicon, 6 xxv p. 153) Yet John and Terrence have a strong base with which to work. That is the twenty years of Maya glyph interpretation.

The mask is not a ceremonial mask because it has no eye holes nor any mouth hole. The right eye that seems to have been mutilated deliberately may be the right eye of the sun. The eye, found to be deliiberately damaged, has possibly "square" corners that in Texcoco, signifys "amazement." The text tentatively translated by John and Terrence has been determined to have a strange layout. It is read A - B - D - C - E - F. This is the correct reading.


Drawing by David Joralemon
I found that the glyph A-9, might be read as a reference to the new view of the Milky Way and the birth of the three hearth stones of the Maya. This was Linda's double penis serpent glyph, with two on the bottom and two on the top. However, here in one section, the three hearth stones appear in only one side at the top of the glyph. That would indicate, if it is the Milky Way, that the three hearthstones are only found in one version, that of Summer, or that of Winter. It has been assumed to be the Winter version and although this is correct, it actually refers to the Southern Winter Milky Way.

C-3 may be a reference to a burning comet behind the sun (on the mask as above the sun) as the "false Sun" (shown on the Chichen Itza wall mural) and stands upright in the sky as in the Nuttall (N5 Top Left) The informationabout the comet continues until D-1, blazing more intensely. Then finally going its own way.

A glyph at E-6, probably in the Nuttall as the "Falling Bird from the sky" (Rt Middle) because it is directly above a bird image at E-7.

Ten House then, may not be a date. It has the possibility of being a measure for the constellation Ophiuchus, (that is a house form) that sits ten degrees above the Equator and once the "bird" left the area reported to have been a nova by the Hawwaiians, (See Nuttall p.5 above) in the wing of Cygnus, where it was then tracked to the beak of Cygnus where the Twins of the Popol Vuh found it, it seemed to have dropped down to Ophiuchus, then passed through Scorpius. It was here that the Brazilian tribes saw it. It may have entered Lupus, the wolf. (F-4) with great teeth, being speared by the Centaur. Lupis, the wolf, with the number nine, is probably located in the ninth (F3) level of the underworld near the South Pole.

The Madrid Codex,and the mural at Chichen Itza see show a "sun" reported to be a nova with a comet (the Aztec Xolotl that saved the sun by entering the Underworld as above) attached to its tail. Here the comet is above the hand glyph (D-2) but still under the standing star (D-1). In the Madrid, the trailing comet is at the back of the Sun God glyph (p. 89-A Left) and at Chichen, it is located at the top of the wall mural. The story of the arrival of the comet can also be found in the book by Almere Kay Read, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Even the sound of the drum in this text can be equated with the arrival of the meteorites that fell from the tail of the comet. A sonic boom is a very real sound that comes with a comet that drops meteors that turn into meteorites falling on the earth.

Natives in various areas used drums, shouting, barking dogs and even firecrackers to tease the sun back into place.

This concept is related in the Popol Vuh, where The Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, with their blowguns, shot the jewel (False Sun) out of Seven Macaw's beak when he was sitting in the tree (Milky Way) where according to the Brazilan cave story, the cometappeared for the first time to be blazing. When the twins became "dentists" and removed the blue aching teeth of Seven Macaw and replaced them with white corn kernels, it illustrated with words how the star blazed in a blue color (coming toward us as a comet), then turned white and benign, even disappearing in the closed mouth of a constelltion. Hence, the comet would have died until only ordinary white stars were visible again and the true sun reappeared. Then corn could be grown in the earth again.

An eclipse of the sun by the comet is a sensible concept if Almere Read's version of the arrival of the one (as in "The Birth of the Fifth Sun") is a valid description of a comet that came too close to the earth. (Nuttall, p. 9 Middle Top) By Column F the fire seems to have gone out (as below with the Seven Macaw story in thePopol Vuh.) The mask seems to show two units where incense is offered as "appeasement."They natives probably burned incense the first time to plead with the entity to go away, then the second time, when it did disappear (D-14 and F10).

There is no reason why the glyphs could not give a measurement such as latitude along the Equator, with the Maya glyph of 13 Flint, and the glyph 5 Sun as shorthand forms referring to birth of the 5th Sun in the 13th heaven it as a level of heaven where Tlaloc, as the God of Flint, controls the area of lightning and dark clouds.

Dates do not always coincide with timelines and using the numbers as measurements instead, just may be the reason for the discrepency. There is no reason that one should not tell the story of astronomy. One does not always have to refer to the Cosmc World of make-believe. The stars are real and the heavens encompass the whole earth, not just the Maya area above Central America. To create families of star entities as humanistic creatures is also a fine way to remember the stars and where they are in the sky. Mnemonics has been used for centuries to teach both children and adults about all parts of the world they live in.

John and Terry did well in identifying the sentence sequence. Once it was determined, the glyphs could then be read visually. I was very surprised that glyphic pictures stood out so clearly once the correct sequence was established. The proper grammatical terms for the sequence has to be determined. I find that F-7 might be indicated in the Nuttall (p. 10 Rt Top) as moving away from the earth, and the people can return to their homes.

I have been told that one must read the language of the glyphs as one that was written for the people, but with so many dialects involved, the story of the glyphs must encompass all those dialects by necessity. Spelling them out is not going to cover all elements needed for comprehension.