On November 19, the genius scientist and founder of the Soviet school of Mayan studies, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, would have turned 95 years old. The great Soviet historian, ethnographer, and linguist deciphered the Maya writing when he learned that the world scientific community considered it impossible.
Witchcraft trauma
The great scientist of the 20th century was born in a village near Kharkov in 1922. According to the passport - November 19, but he himself assured that it was August 31st.
His father worked as chief engineer of the Southern Building Materials Trust, and his mother took care of the family. Yura was the youngest of five children. The future brilliant scientist graduated from only seven classes of the railway school, but even then he was distinguished by a bright character and extraordinary talent. On the one hand, he was almost expelled for bad behavior and academic failure. On the other hand, he played the violin beautifully, drew with almost photographic accuracy and had an amazing memory.
He himself half-jokingly, half-seriously talked about how he had become a code breaker due to childhood trauma. At the age of about five, he was hit on the head with a croquet ball and nearly went blind. The vision was restored. Throughout his life, Knorozov called this injury witchcraft and gave recommendations "to beat future decoders in the head."
In 1939, the young man graduated from the rabfak and entered the history faculty of the Kharkov State University named after A. M. Gorky. And then the war began. He was not taken into the army for health reasons. He built defensive structures, worked as a teacher in a distant village. And in 1943 he entered the II course of the history faculty of Moscow State University. According to the recollections of classmates, he studied with great interest: “I spent the entire scholarship on books, and then I borrowed it from everyone for food. He ate water and bread. " He was interested in "shamanic practices", Egyptology, history of the Ancient East, ethnography, linguistics. However, the dive was interrupted. In 1944 he was mobilized. He met victory near Moscow, where he served as a telephone operator in the 158th artillery regiment of the reserve of the headquarters of the commander-in-chief.
The meaning of the Maya hieroglyphs became known thanks to the Soviet scientist.
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After the war, the young man recovered at Moscow State University and again took up the absorption of knowledge. He perfectly knew literature - from antiquity to detective stories. He had an amazing memory, accurately quoting many poetic texts and prose. His thesis was devoted to the shamanic practices of Central Asia. He spent several months in the Uzbek and Turkmen SSR. But, according to his colleagues, the local shamans disappointed him a little.
Deciphered from stubbornness
According to one of the versions, in 1945 Knorozov read an article by the German researcher Paul Schellhas entitled "Deciphering the Mayan Letter - an Insoluble Problem." This became a challenge for the inquisitive mind of the young scientist.
“How is this an insoluble problem? What is created by one human mind cannot but be deciphered by another. From this point of view, unsolvable problems do not exist and cannot exist in any of the areas of science!”, Yuri Knorozov said decisively and plunged into this mystery.
The young scientist was solving the hieroglyphs already in Leningrad. Lived in the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. The room, as long as a pencil case, was crammed with books to the ceiling, and drawings of Mayan hieroglyphs hung on the walls. The only furniture was a desk and a narrow bunk. All his free time he studied writing. Nobody believed in his success. Previously, the world's luminaries were able to understand only numbers and dates.
In the United States, the Mayan school was headed by Eric Thompson. He did not succeed in deciphering and believed that the Maya alphabet did not exist: so, signs, and rare syllables. At the same time, he harshly suppressed all attempts of colleagues to continue work, bringing down a flurry of criticism and scientific press. But Yuri Knorozov did not care about the opinion of the American. According to another version, as part of the Red Army, he reached Berlin, where he saved two books from the library, engulfed in flames - "A report on affairs in Yucatan" by the Franciscan monk of the 16th century Diego de Landa and " Mayan Codes”by the Villacorta brothers. They inspired him to decipher the hieroglyphs. The scientist himself called it a stupid legend many times, claiming that other Soviet officers had brought the books. Nevertheless, it remains a mystery why the military took these particular works and how they fell into the hands of Knorozov.
Witches and Knorosivists
Yuri Valentinovich possessed extraordinary thinking and a rare analytical gift. He studied and analyzed in detail the data he had. Translated from Old Spanish "Report on Affairs in Yucatan". And immediately I realized that the alphabet of 29 characters left by the Spaniard is the key to understanding the language. Deciphered on the basis of three Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts - Parisian, Madrid and Dresden. It turned out that in all the texts there are 355 independent signs. This allowed Knorozov to determine the type of letter. He found that every Maya sign read like a syllable. Then he established the phonetic reading of some of them. In 1947, the researcher compiled a catalog of Mayan hieroglyphs, and five years later the first publication on the results of decryption was published. She was received with enthusiasm, thanks to which the young scientist was able to go to work at the Kunstkamera.
On March 29, 1955, Yuri Knorozov defended his dissertation. The talk lasted only three minutes. However, he was immediately given a doctorate in history, bypassing the candidate. The work became a scientific and cultural sensation in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. The method was called the "method of positional statistics" and was later used to decipher the letter of Easter Island and proto-Indian texts. Even at the height of the Cold War, Americans accepted its decryption principle. However, not all. Eric Thompson couldn't admit defeat. He fought his war against the Russian codebreaker. And until the end of his life he considered Knorozov's method a mistake. And he called his admirers witches flying "astride wild cats across the midnight sky on the orders of Yuri." In 1957, he sent a message to the famous archaeologist Michael Coe: "… you will live until 2000 … judge later if I was right …". The archaeologist saved the letter and reread it on the first day of 2000.
“Thompson was wrong. Knorozov turned out to be right, and now all of us who study Maya are Knorozovists,”Ko summed up.
Cat lover and humorist
Yuri Knorozov published a complete translation of the Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts in 1975. For this work in 1977 he received the USSR State Prize. It’s a paradox, but a person who deciphered the Maya scripts could not see them with his own eyes.
Knorozov with Siamese cat Asya.
He was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Perhaps they feared a self-confident, independent and eccentric genius. To many, he seemed sullen and stern. But close people noted his kindness. According to the recollections of his student, Galina Ershova, children and animals always and everywhere were drawn to him. If a child on an excursion to the Kunstkamera wanted to ask something, then of all the employees in the hall, he invariably turned to Yuri Knorozov.
The scientist adored cats all his life. His favorite was the Siamese cat Asya (Aspid). The photograph with her in her arms became canonical. He knew by name all the cats of his colleagues and friends and invariably asked about them when he met. A Mayanist always had dried valerian root or a bunch of cat grass in his pocket. At the same time, he always gave funny nicknames to those people who liked him. He had a good sense of humor. So, he called the gatherings of the Mayan sabbats. And my favorite picture was the image of a giant lizard, which is torn to pieces by small creatures. He called it "Meeting of the Academic Council."
In anticipation of the day when he could see the remains of the Mayan civilization, Knorozov continued to work hard. He married, raised a daughter, fended off attacks from critics, swindlers and ill-wishers.
Only in 1990, at the invitation of the President of Guatemala, the scientist finally saw the remains of the Mayan civilization. His dream has come true! At the age of 68, he himself climbed to the top of the Great Jaguar pyramid in Tikal. This was followed by trips to Mexico, where he visited the places that he read and wrote about - Palenque, Bonampak, Yaxchilan, Chichen Itza, La Venta, Monte Alban, Teotihuacan, Xochicalco.
In 1995, at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow, he was awarded the silver Order of the Astek Eagle. These orders are awarded by the Mexican government to foreign nationals for exceptional service to Mexico. Receiving the order, the Russian scientist said in Spanish: "Mi corazón siempre es mexicano" - "I always remain a Mexican in my heart." This award mattered more to him.
In 1999 he was gone. Yuri Knorozov suffered a stroke and pulmonary edema followed. At the hospital, the world famous scientist was put into a corridor in a hospital bed.
Only in 2004 a monument in the style of Mayan architecture appeared on the grave of the last decoder of the 20th century.