Variant: boulder

·    Features – a vertically rectangular, bipartite glyph:

o Top: “butterfly”/“bowtie” variant of ma.

o Bottom – boulder outline, with, inside:

§ Top: bold curved V with dotted reinforcement below.

§ Bottom: blades of grass (optionally paired)

·    This glyph is a boulder outline with two infixed elements (a “necklace” and “blades of grass”) in common with a number of other glyphs. The list below shows the unique element infixed in the top which distinguishes them from one another:

o ba: LEM-like element.

o ma: right-side-up AJAW-face.

o t’u: KAWAK.

o tz’e: a slightly curved, bold V with “dot protector” underneath (the “dot protector” replaces the “necklace”, and the bold V can sometimes be non-bold). It’s a slightly aberrant member of the family because:

§ The element infixed in the top in all the others is roundish / boulder-outline, whereas the one in tz’e is triangular.

§ There’s a “dotted necklace” in the others (dots curved in an arc, slightly varying in size), whereas the dots in tz’e are all the same size, much smaller, and form a V.

§ All the others consist only of the boulder outline, with nothing on top, whereas tz’e has the “butterfly”/“bowtie” variant of ma on top.

o tz’u: K’IN.

o HA’: cross hatched circle.

o “IMIX”: cross hatched circle or LEM-like element (usually distinguished from HA’ by the blood cartouche).

·    Stuart-GfRaL.p3.para2.l-3 (2002) entertains the possibility that this is tz’e derived from TZ’EH (meaning “left” as in “left” vs. “right”).

·    Bonn has accepted this idea, and allows for the possibility of this glyph being either logogram TZ’EH or syllabogram tz’e.

·    MHD statistics (2026-02-27):

o A search in MHD on “blcodes contains ZZE” returns 21 hits.

§ In about half of them (10 hits), it’s used to write tz’eh k’ab = “left hand”

·      A title for a very high-ranking official in the Classic Maya administration: utz’eh k’ab <name-of-ruler> = “the Left Hand of <name-of-ruler>”.

·      This is where the glyph could be viewed as a logogram.

§ In the remaining cases (11 hits), it’s used to write:

·      The verb eetz’ (e-tz’e) = “set up”, “establish”: 2 hits and a related noun yetz’il (ye-tz’e-li) = “the establishment of”: 1 hit).

·      The name Petz’ Bahlam (pe-tz’e): 2 hits.

·      The name Ix Tz’elum (tz’e-lu-ma): 2 hits.

·      Various other words which don’t fall into any particular pattern (including one instance of tz’eh = “left” not in connection with tz’eh k’ab).

We see that it’s used for words there the sound is an initial or a final consonant, i.e., this is fully the use of this glyph as a syllabogram.