Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg

Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (8 September, 1814 – 8 January, 1874) was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist. He became a specialist in Mesoamerican studies, travelling extensively in the region. His writings, publications, and recovery of historical documents contributed much to the later understanding of the region's languages, writing, history and culture (in particular, that of the Maya and Aztec).

Discovery of de Landa's work

In 1862 whilst searching through archives at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid for New World materials, he came across an abridged copy of a manuscript which had originally been written by the Spanish cleric Diego de Landa sometime around 1566. De Landa had been one of those charged with disseminating the Roman Catholic faith amongst the Maya people in Spain's new Central American possessions in the early period following the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, and had lived there for several years. His manuscript (Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán) had been written upon his enforced return to Spain, where he faced trial for illegally or improperly conducting an Inquisition ( he was later absolved, returning to the New World as the appointed Bishop of Yucatán). In the manuscript de Landa had recorded much information about the Maya peoples and customs, based on his own contemporary observations and discussions with Mayan informants. Brasseur de Bourbourg's main interest in the document, however, was a section in which de Landa reproduced what he called "an alphabet" of the as-yet undeciphered Maya hieroglyphics or writing system of the ancient Maya civilization. In this passage de Landa had annotated the Mayan symbols (or glyphs) which supposedly corresponded to the letters of the spanish alphabet, as given to him by a Maya informant who he had quizzed. Brasseur de Bourbourg realised that this could prove to be the key to unlocking the secrets of the Maya script, and he announced this discovery when republishing the manuscript (in bilingual Spanish-French edition) in late 1863, under the title, Relation des choses de Yucatán de Diego de Landa.

Related Topics:
1862 - Madrid - New World - Diego de Landa - 1566 - Roman Catholic - Maya people - Spanish conquest of Yucatán - Inquisition - Yucatán - Maya hieroglyphics - Writing system - Maya civilization - Glyph - Spanish alphabet - 1863

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However, upon initial analysis by Brasseur de Bourbourg and others the so-called "de Landa alphabet" proved to be problematic and inconsistent, and these immediate attempts to use this alphabet as a kind of "Rosetta Stone" to read the glyphs failed. Nevertheless, Brasseur de Bourbourg's uncovering of this document and de Landa's alphabet would much later prove to be vital in the eventual decipherment of the Maya glyphs. His attempts, and those of others which followed, were mislead insofar as they interpreted the signs alphabetically, whereas it was only when they were recognised to be mainly syllabic in nature that significant progress was made.

Related Topics:
De Landa alphabet - Rosetta Stone - Alphabet - Syllabic

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