Relación de las cosas de Yucatán
The Relacíon de las cosas de Yucatán ( German “Report on the Yucatán affairs” ) is a justification by Diego de Landa , the Bishop of Yucatán , against whom proceedings were initiated in 1566 for assaults against the indigenous Maya population. After the trial, this document disappeared in the Royal Spanish archives and was only rediscovered in Madrid in 1862 by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg .
In a missionary zeal, Diego de Landa had all of the Maya scriptures burned. In this document, de Landa tried, among other things, to reconstruct the Maya alphabet with the help of local noble informants such as Gaspar Antonio Chi or Nachi Cocom , which he did not succeed because he lacked any understanding of the Maya writing system. The so-called Landa alphabet (picture) that he handed down led many researchers astray, but ultimately played a decisive role in Yuri Knorosow's deciphering of the Mayan script in the 1950s .
expenditure
- Diego de Landa : Relacion de las cosas de Yucatán. Around 1566 ( Spanish translation , online at wayeb.org; PDF, 513 kB)
- German: Report from Yucatán. Translated by Ulrich Kunzmann, with an essay by Linda Schele et al. Mary E. Miller, ill. Ed. U. Nachw. V. Carlos Rincon; Reclam, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-379-00528-2 ; Stuttgart / Ditzingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-020528-0 .