| Marc Zender (email to Alfonso Lacadena et al, June, 2000) has suggested that the fringed "blobs" underneath the parrot in this spelling from Pakal's Sarcophagus might be the syllable je. This would give a-je-ne, or Ajen for the first part of the name (construing the scroll element to be syllabic ne rather than logographic NE'). But Zender himself cautions that the subfix in question could as easily be vestigial parts of the parrot's wing. And Stanley Guenter (personal communication, 2001) points out that Seibal Stela 7 has the same bird's head with wing, in a position where it has to be simple a. |
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Note: The discovery by Nikolai Grube of this ruler's name on Santa Elena Monument 1 in the museum in Balancan, Tabasco, has added further support for the Ajen reading. The critical collocation (photograph 1, photograph 2) is heavily damaged by erosion but begins with AJ- and ends with -ne. In between is a large (and thoroughly damaged) sign. Epigraphers Simon Martin, Stanley Guenter and Marc Zender feel that it would logically be -je-, as ajen is a word that is known to be spelled out in inscriptions elsewhere. And Zender (email 2003) points out that the difference between AJ-ne and hypothetical a-je-ne is exactly the variation one sees in U-CHOK-wa and U-cho-ko-wa or AJ-K'UH-na and AJ-K'UH-hu-na, whereby vowels can go unwritten at logograph boundaries.
David Stuart (personal communications, 2002-2003) agrees that this is a good possibility. But he remains a little concerned that ajen should be spelled out so unconventionally at Palenque (as AJ-ne), especially since ajen is a lexeme we don't understand. In his upcoming monograph on the inscriptions of Palenque's Temple XIX (Stuart in prep.), he gives the ruler's name as Aj Neh Yohl Mat. |