Written language of Maya

The written language of Maya is the system of writing that was used by the civilization of Maya that was the greatest civilization before Columbus discovered America.

The first inscriptions refer to the 3d century BC. Written language was used before the appearance of Europeans in 16th century. And it was even used some time after the discovery of America.

The written language of Maya is the system of word and syllable signs. The term "hieroglyph" talking about Maya was used by the Europeans investigators of 18-19 centuries. They didn't understand the signs and thought they were similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Nowadays people consider that the caudexes and the classical texts were written in literal variant of the language cholti. Probably this language was used as lingua franca all over the Maya speaking world.

There were also texts written in other Maya languages especially in the language of Yucatan. There are some inscriptions of the periodical usage of written language to fix the Maya language. However the texts written in these languages were written by the researches of cholti that is why these languages were influenced by this langu/age a lot.