Comparison of Maya and Oracle Bone Scripts

Abstract

Maya script and Oracle Bone script are described and compared in terms of relationship between glyph, sound and meaning, glyph composition and grapheme positioning. They are found to be similar in having graphemes that are pictographic and adaptable to different glyph compositions, having glyphs that are square shaped, belonging to the category of logo-syllabic scripts and having the textual device of double dots/dashes for repetition. They are different in that Oracle Bone script is more abstract and has a much higher number of glyphs, that grapheme shape and the relationship between glyph, sound and meaning is more standardized than in Maya script. Another difference is that there are many more cases in Maya where one glyph includes several words, and that Maya is closer to the syllabic end on the logo-syllabic continuum. It is suggested that these differences may be the result of differences in the conceptions of "self" (as suggested by Houston and Stuart), the languages, the degree of political centralization and the extent of public use of the scripts. It is also suggested that early writing systems may reflect how tightly morphemes are bound in language, as the agglutinative nature of Maya language may have led to the Maya script's containing more multi-word glyphs. It is surmised that the literacy rate in the two societies may have been similar.