Linda Schele

Linda Schele, 1994

Linda Schele (born October 30, 1942 in Nashville , Tennessee , † April 18, 1998 in Austin ) was a leading Mayan expert who played an important role in the deciphering project of Mayan hieroglyphs.

Schele studied education and art at the University of Cincinnati , with a bachelor's degree in 1964 and a master's degree in art in 1968. She then taught fine arts ("Studio Art") at the University of South Alabama until 1980 , most recently as a professor. Her fascination with Mayan civilization began during a visit to Palenque , which she was supposed to photograph on behalf of her university. She studied with the Mayan expert Merle Greene Robertson (1913-2011) and deciphered parts of the Palenque King List (1973) with Peter Mathews. After research as a Fellow for Pre-Columbian Studies in Dumbarton Oaks , she went to the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her PhD in 1980 ("Maya Glyphs: The Verbs", 1982). As early as 1977, however, she founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop there, which became a leading international research project on the deciphering of the Maya hieroglyphs (“Maya Meetings” in Texas). The central means of communication in Maya research were the notes she co-edited, such as in the 1980s for Copán or in the 1990s the "Texas Notes". She stayed at the University of Texas, where she was most recently "John D. Murchison Regents Professor of Art". In 1998 she died of pancreatic cancer. Before her death, she donated a professorship in Mesoamerican art at the University of Texas at Austin.

She also organized important Mayan exhibitions such as B. "The Blood of Kings - A New Interpretations of Maya Art" (with Mary Miller), which opened in 1986 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth , appeared a lot on television programs about the Maya and wrote popular science books about the Maya, some of which Bestsellers. Schele also campaigned for the inclusion of the Indian descendants of the Mayas in Guatemala and Mexico in Mayan research and organized workshops there with Nikolai Grube and Frederico Fahsen from 1988 , in which she brought them closer to the Mayan culture, which also serves to help them should to increase the sensitivity to robbery.

Schele had been married to David Schele, an Austin architect who specialized in building hospitals, since 1968.

Fonts

with Peter Mathews "The Bodega of Palenque", Chiapas, Mexico 1979
Maya Glyphs: The Verbs 1982, University of Texas Press 1994
with Mary Ellen Miller: The Blood of Kings- dynasty and ritual in Maya Art , exhibition catalog 1986
with David Freidel A Forest of Kings - the untold story of the ancient Maya , New York, Morrow 1990
with Freidel, Scheffner "The unknown world of the Maya", Albrecht Knaus 1991
with Freidel, Joy Parker Maya Cosmos - three thousand years on the Shaman's Path , Morrow 1993
with Jorge Perez de Lara Hidden Faces of the Maya 1997
with Peter Mathews The Code of Kings , 1998

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Schele, Linda
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American Maya researcher
DATE OF BIRTH	October 30, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nashville , Tennessee
DATE OF DEATH	April 18, 1998
Place of death	Austin