''Relación de las cosas de Yucatán'' was written by

Diego de Landa Diego de Landa Calderón, O.F.M. (12 November 1524 – 29 April 1579) was a Spanish Franciscan bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. Many historians criticize his campaign against idolatry. In particular, he burned almost al ...

around 1566, shortly after his return from

Yucatán Yucatán (, also , , ; yua, Yúukatan ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán,; yua, link=no, Xóot' Noj Lu'umil Yúukatan. is one of the 31 states which comprise the political divisions of Mexico, federal entities of Mexico. I ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. In it, de Landa catalogues Mayan words and phrases as well as a small number of

Maya hieroglyphs Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which ...

. The hieroglyphs, sometimes referred to as the

de Landa alphabet The de Landa alphabet is the correspondence of Spanish letters and glyphs written in the pre-Columbian Maya script, which the 16th-century bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa, recorded as part of his documentation of the Maya civilization. Despi ...

, proved vital to modern attempts to decipher the script. The book also includes documentation of

Maya religion The traditional Maya or Mayan religion of the extant Maya peoples of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and the Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán states of Mexico is part of the wider frame of Mesoamerican religion. As is t ...

and the

Maya people The Maya peoples () are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical reg ...

s' culture in general. It was written with the help of local

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...

princes. It contains, at the end of a long list of

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

words with Maya translations, a Maya phrase, famously found to mean "I do not want to." The original manuscript has been lost, but many copies still survive. The first published edition was produced by Charles Etienne Brasseur de Boubourg in 1864 under the title ''Relation des choses de Yucatan de Diego de Landa. Texte espagnol et traduction française en regard comprenant les signes du calendrier et de l’alphabet hiéroglyphique de la langue maya accompagné de documents divers historiques et chronologiques, avec un grammaire et un vocabulaire abrégés français-maya précédés d’un Essai sur les sources de l’histoire primitive du Mexique et de l’Amérique centrale, Etc., d’après les monuments égyptiens et de l’histoire primitive de l’Égypte d’après les monuments américains''. Colonialist scholar John Woodruff has suggested that one passage in particular stands out as the principal basis for the belief that late post-classic Maya had numerous written books: ::"These people also used special characters or letters with which they recorded in their books their histories and knowledge, as well as figures, and particular signs in those figures explained it all, and lent it meaning and understanding. We found a great number of books containing such letters, and as they did not contain an iota in which there was not superstition and falsehoods of the devil, we burned them all, which dismayed and distressed them greatly."Translation by Woodruff. The original Spanish reads: "Usavan tambien esta gente de ciertos carateres o letras con las quales escrivian en sus libros sus cosas antiguas, y sus sciencias, y con ellas, y figuras, y algunas señales en las figuras entendian sus cosas, y las davan a entender y enseñavan. Hallamosles grande numero de libros destas sus letras, y porque no tenian cosa en que no uviesse supersticion y falsedades del demonio se les quemamos todos, lo qual a maravilla sentian, y les dava pena." Currently-available English translations include

William E. Gates William Edmond Gates (December 8, 1863 – April 24, 1940) was an American Mayanist. Most of his research focused around Mayan language hieroglyphs. He also collected Mesoamerican manuscripts."Yucatán en el tiempo", Casares G. Cantón, Raúl; ...

's 1937 translation, has been published by multiple publishing houses, under the title ''Yucatan Before and After the Conquest: The Maya''.

Alfred Tozzer Alfred Marston Tozzer (July 4, 1877 – October 5, 1954) was an American anthropologist, archaeologist, linguist, and educator. His principal area of interest was Mesoamerican, especially Maya, studies. He was the husband of Margaret Castle Toz ...

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with ...

has also published a translation of the work from the

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

in 1941.

Bibliography

* ''An Interpretation of Bishop Diego De Landa's Maya Alphabet'', by Marshall Durbin (Philological and documentary studies, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 171 179) * *

References

Maya civilization Spanish-language literature about Mesoamerica 1560s books {{mexico-hist-stub

See also

Bibliography

References