K'U: The Divine Monkey

Abstract

In the Maya script an image of a “monkey’s head,” often referred to as the God C head, apparently had a phonetic value of k’u at the time of the Spanish invasion. The Yucatec Maya word k’uh ‘divine, deity’ also closely fits later interpretations of the same “monkey” head in the Classic Maya inscriptions. The fact that a monkey head represents the word meaning 'divine, deity, sacred, holy’ suggests that at some time the monkey was seen as something like divine, and/or the word for ‘monkey’ was at some time in the history of the script homophonous, or nearly so, with the word for ‘holy,’ allowing thus for a rebus usage (where an easily depicted thing is used to refer to a more abstract concept that sounds similar to it). Based on further investigation of this theme, it is concluded here that Mayan languages, elements of the Maya script, and some Mayan oral narratives, provide substantial evidence that the monkey may well have been held in high esteem, and also that near homophony could underlie use of a monkey image to mean ‘divine’ or similar meanings in the Maya script. The fact that a Mixean word maax ‘divinity, holy’ is nearly homophonous with a lowland Mayan word root (max, ma’ax, or ma’x) that means ‘(spider) monkey’ raises the possibility that a bilingual Mixean / Mayan speaker could use a picture of a monkey as a rebus to reference the concept of ‘divinity’, and therefore also the possibility that bilingual Mixean / Mayans were involved at some point in the development of the Maya script. The evidence is presented below, with reasons why the monkey might be so viewed, along with a short argument supporting earlier proposals of Mixe-Zoquean linguistic and graphic influence on the Maya script (cf. Stross 1982, 1983, 1990).

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