Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya political title attested from epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the tzolkʼin, the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's kʼatun-ending rituals would fall.

thumb|right|180px|[[Logogram for the 20th named-day of the Tzolkin Maya calendar cycle, Ajaw (this version is typical of many monumental inscriptions)]]

Background

The word is known from several Mayan languages both those in pre-Columbian use (such as in Classic Maya), as well as in their contemporary descendant languages (in which there may be observed some slight variations). "Ajaw" is the modernised orthography in the standard revision of Mayan orthography, put forward in 1994 by the Guatemalan Academia de Lenguas Mayas, and now widely adopted by Mayanist scholars. Before this standardisation, it was more commonly written as "Ahau", following the orthography of 16th-century Yucatec Maya in Spanish transcriptions (now Yukatek in the modernised style).

In the Maya hieroglyphics writing system, the representation of the word ajaw could be as either a logogram, or spelled-out syllabically. In either case, quite a few glyphic variants are known.

See also

  • Halach Uinik

References

<!--BEGIN biblio format. -->

<!-- END biblio format style -->

  • 'AJAW', sound file and syllabic glyph example at John Montgomery's Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, published online at FAMSI