Time Line of Decipherment
1973
Unveiling
a dynasty
Concerned
that Maya research was limited to a few experts with special access to key
resources, Merle Greene Robertson, an American artist based at the Classic Maya
site of Palenque, built a center where anyone could go to study the
city's art and inscriptions. In December 1973, 30 people came to the center
at Robertson's invitation, forming the first major scholarly conference
held at a Maya site. Attendees included Robertson's assistant Linda
Schele, who had studied every Palenque inscription firsthand, and Peter
Mathews, an undergraduate who had spent the previous year assigning
Thompson's "T"-numbers to the city's inscriptions. The
duo (above, at the site) began piecing together Palenque's history using a
carving from the site called the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs, which researchers
vaguely understood to depict a line of royal accession. Within hours, and with
a combination of luck and an intimate knowledge of the glyphs, Schele and
Mathews accomplished something extraordinary: They unveiled most of
Palenque's dynastic history, including the life stories of six rulers.