Mayan Scribes


July 28, 2001


BROOKE GLADSTONE: Today when a celebrity gets bad press he's likely to fire his publicist. That may seem harsh, but not compared to his Mayan forefathers writing the king's press releases in the first century A.D. When he screwed up, he lost a lot more than a client. Kevin Johnston is a Maya archeologist at Ohio State University. Welcome to the show!
KEVIN JOHNSTON: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We marvel at the persuasive powers of publicists today, but back in the Maya period, the scribes, as they were known then, were responsible for preserving the power of kings! How did they do that?
KEVIN JOHNSTON: What's interesting about the Maya society, like many ancient societies and what made the writing of the scribes so powerful is that only a small portion of the society could read and write, and in these early societies, writing had tremendous power; so much so that texts were generally read aloud to assembled crowds in large public ceremonies, some of them violent, some of them not; some of them involving captives, some of them not. But these must have been very-- politically powerful and persuasive spectacles.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So were the scribes reporters or were they publicists?
KEVIN JOHNSTON:The scribes were publicists. We don't have any illusions about this information that's being reported as being objective and reliable. That is, the scribes sang the praises of the kings and that was their duty. They were there to cast the accomplishments of the kings in the most favorable light. In some cases we have conflicting records of events in the Maya lowlands which makes us suspect that the reporting is not always accurate.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: A lot of times I'll talk to fellow journalists who say oh, I think I'm just going to sell out and become a publicist. [LAUGHTER] Did scribes make a really good living?
KEVIN JOHNSTON:We know that many of them did. We know for example that scribes, almost all of them and perhaps all of them, were the kin of kings, and we've found their houses at sites like Aguateca in Guatemala, and there the, the scribes lived in grand palaces, almost as large as the palace of the kings, which tells us first of all that they were wealthy people to begin with, but also that they played a very prominent and prestigious role in Maya society.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happened when the scribe's patron monarch was overthrown?
KEVIN JOHNSTON:Well this is a very interesting event that, that occurs. It turns out that in warfare not only were kings, enemy kings, targeted for battle and not only were their courts targeted for battle, but scribes in particular were targeted for capture, and when captured they went through a series of events which are shown on Maya styli. First they were displayed publicly. They were humiliated; stripped of their clothing, although they weren't shown entirely naked. They often were shown wearing loin cloths which is nonetheless something which is humiliating for someone of an elite background. And then in a very peculiar and bizarre practice their fingers were broken - the fingernails were pulled out - and the fingers themselves were snapped, tearing the ligaments at the joints so that the hands were greatly disfigured. And then the scribes were killed. Often they underwent what we call genital sacrifice where their genitals were slashed. And then quite frequently their hearts were cut out or their heads were cut off which is a standard form of Maya execution or sacrifice. But what's interesting about these styli in the Maya case is that they emphasize not the execution, which is the end point of this sequence of events, but the act of finger-breaking.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You found a quote in a 16th century Maya dictionary assembled by the Spanish that seems to drive this point home.
KEVIN JOHNSTON:I looked up the word "fingernails" just to see what I would find -- expecting to find quite a bit -- and in fact I found one entry, and the entry's extremely interesting. It says: it's-- lists the word "fingernails," and then it gives a typical example of its usage, and translating its usage it says "I have no fingernails. I am no longer the person I used to be. I no longer have power or authority or money. I am no one." And what this seems to describe is what the mural shows -- the loss of fingernails seems to correspond to the loss of the ability to write which marks the loss of political power.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Kevin Johnston, thank you very much!
KEVIN JOHNSTON: Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Kevin Johnston is a Maya archeologist at Ohio State University.