Maya hieroglyphs

For centuries people have been fascinated by the Maya writing which is know as hieroglyphs. The Maya didn’t write as we do, instead they used a system of around eight hundred pictures and symbols each with different meaning. Modern scientists and archaeologists have managed to work out what they all mean and this has given us a great insight into the lives of the ancient Maya people. The symbols and pictures of the Maya writing were either painted onto pottery or carved into stone tablets on the walls of buildings or on great stone columns called stelas. They also wrote in books with pages of paper made from soft bark. Only a few copies of these books have survived and one of the most important is known as the Dresden Codex, which contains precise tables of the movements of the planet Venus and the moon and describes a way of predicting a solar eclipse. The Maya also wrote about their rulers, religion, history and medicine as well as myths and legends.