Variant: boulder form

·    Features – a “boulder outline” glyph consisting of:

o Optionally, a bold border (MC, all around, making a “cartouche”) or reinforced walls and ceiling only (JM, a “symmetric cave”).

o Inside: Typically, 9 non-touching crescents, each pointing upwards, in a 3 x 3 matrix.

§ The crescents can be non-bold (K&H) or bold (TOK.p12.r2.c3).

§ When bold, they’re fairly bloated, with no sharp tips – almost bold-u’s rather than crescents.

o Outside: Three or more stacked horseshoes, on the left and right, pointing “inwards”, i.e., pointing to the right on the left side, and pointing to the left on right side).

§ There is an equal number of horseshoes on both sides.

§ Some epigraphers refer to these horseshoes as “nubbins”.

·    Subvariants (3):

o A. Full: “horseshoes” + boulder form (e.g., K&H, as in the feature description above).

o B. Boulder form only (TOK.p12.r2.c3).

o C. “Horseshoes” only (TOK.p10.r5.c4):

§ 1. Both sides (TOK.p10.r5.c4, MHD.ZD2s.2&3&5, 0595tp).

§ 2. Left side only (0595tl).

§ 3. Right side only (0595tr).

As so often is the case with Maya glyphs, “C” can be considered a “reduced form” of “A”, or as a conflation of “A” and whatever main sign takes the central position or as a main sign “covering” the full form of nu (placed between the nu and the viewer), with just the horseshoes sticking out from either (or both) sides.

·    Note that Thompson considered the left and right reduced forms to be “rotatable” forms of a single stack of horseshoes, and hence assigned them the codes T134a and T134b respectively. He apparently didn’t realize that they’re not rotated forms of one another, but instead a (single) reduced form of the full form, with the central part missing. This full form is in fact a “main sign” and is not rotatable. This is why these stacked horseshoes never appear at the top or below a main sign; at least, not in their capacity as syllabogram nu – they do (regularly) appear underneath a main sign as a reduced form of ji.

·    Do not confuse the very reduced form of no (“C2” and “C3” above) with the visually identical “rectangular” / “horseshoe” form of ji:

o no occurs only on the left and right of main signs

o ji occurs only on the top and bottom of main signs.