Monday, March 03, 2008

In Memory of Linda Schele

Linda Schele

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Linda Schele renowned decipher of Mayan Hieroglyphs.

In 1998 she died of pancreatic cancer which at the time was virtually untreatable and pretty close to 100% fatal.

During her later years she was perhaps the foremost reader of Mayan Hieroglyphs and her very untimely death was a great loss to the field.

It is interesting to note that her background was not Anthropology, Archaeology, linguistics or languages. In fact it was in Fine Arts.

Linda fell in love with the site of Palenque when she and her husband when on Christmas vacation in 1970. Within a few years Linda was writing and publishing papers on the Mayan Hieroglyphic system. Eventually getting a PhD with a paper on Mayan verbs.

Because of her Fine Arts background her understanding of the Hieroglyphic system has a "Fine Art" aesthetic cast to it.

Her Masterpiece is the Art Catalogue book The Blood of Kings, which was written to accommodate an exhibit of the same name. Many of her books are co-written with other people.

Beginning in the late 1980's Linda and others conducted workshops teaching Maya how to read the Glyphs and therefore restoring to the Maya part of their past.

Among her books are the following:

The Code of Kings, Linda Schele, Peter Mathews, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998. (A posthumous publication of Linda Schele)

Maya Cosmos, Linda Schele, Joy Parker, David Freidel, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1993.

A Forest of Kings, Linda Schele, David Freidel, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1990.

The Blood of Kings, Linda Schele, Mary Ellen Miller, George Braziller Inc., New York, 1986.
Pierre Cloutier