Knife.media
Monument to the Soviet ethnographer, linguist and the decipherer of the Maya hieroglyphics Yuri Knorozov will be unveiled on March 11 in the capital city of Yucatan, Mexico, where FILEY-2018 book fair is taking place, Knife.media reports.
Knorozov made impossible: without leaving USSR he managed to decipher Mayan icon-based hieroglyphic signs – folded manuscripts without binding representing a calendar and mathematical calculations. It was a scientific sensation.
Knorozov was seriously keen on shamanism since the first year of the historical department of National University of Kharkiv. Having fled the territories occupied by the Germans, he entered the department of ethnography of Lomonosov Moscow State University. This escape deprived him of a chance to compete his post-graduate degree and restricted to travel abroad. Having graduated from the university he moved to Leningrad and started to work in the Kunstkamera Museum as a researcher.
His first publication about the deciphering results came out in 1952, when the linguist was 30 years old. Knorozov defended his thesis about the Mayan code getting the degree of the doctor of historical sciences in 3 years.
Knorozov proved that the Maya hieroglyphics could be read aloud. Each of them corresponds to a syllable instead of an object as other linguists had supposed before. One of the first hookings was Cacao word: the Mayan fresco depicted a Mayan Indian holding a cup of cacao. Fortunately, this drawing had an inscription underneath.
Knorozov managed to visit the countries he had been studying for all of his life – Mexico and Guatemala, only in 1990. The Mexicans awarded him with the Order of the Aztec Eagle – the highest reward a foreigner could get.
Yuri Knorozov really loved cats. He made his cat called Asya a coauthor of his scientific works, but every time editors crossed its name out of the publications.
Russkiy Mir
