![ancient mayan glyphs ancient mayan glyphs](https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Mayan-hieroglyphs.jpg)
First, glyphs do not represent just sounds or ideas, they can represent both, making it difficult to know how each glyph or cartouche should be read. Maya writing is difficult to interpret for a number of reasons. This became known as the Landa Alphabet and helped with the decipherment of the script, even though it was based on the false premise that the script was alphabetic. In about 1566, the first bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, compiled a key to the Mayan syllabary consisting of 27 Spanish letters and the Mayan glyphs with similar sounds. Named for the cities in which they are now kept, these are the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices. Many of them were destroyed by the Spanish because of their pagan religious content, but three main codices have survived. Mayan texts describe religious rituals, astronomy, and divination, and are the most valuable source of information on the ancient civilization. Mayan hieroglyphics were carved into stone monuments or pieces of bone, painted on pottery, and written on books (codices) of bark paper. But the stories were passed along orally. After the Spanish conquest of the Yucatan, indigenous people were persecuted and most Mayan books were burned. It is believed that the Maya book of creation was first written in hieroglyphics. It was originally thought that Maya writing was purely logographic because of the many hundreds of different glyphs. There are only about 30 phonetic sounds in the Maya language so a purely phonetic alphabet could in theory be written with 30 signs. The Mayan writing System (often called hieroglyphics from a vague superficial resemblance to the Egyptian writing, to which it is not related) was a combination of phonetic symbols and ideograms.