On the Paired Variants of TZ'AK

Students of Maya glyphs have long known of several unusual and imaginative forms of the logogram TZ’AK (“whole, complete”) where, in place of the conventional single sign T573, scribes used various paired sets, each seemingly representing some binary relationship or opposition. These occur mostly in the “Distance Number Introducing Glyph” (DNIG) although they may appear in other known settings of TZ’AK. In a recent study Knowlton (2002) illustrates many of the paired signs, but a complete list has not been presented before now. The list below offers eleven such pairings (see Figure 1a-k), some commonplace and others obscure: