Linda Schele

Linda Schele ( born October 30, 1942 in Nashville, Tennessee, † April 18, 1998 at Austin ) was a leading Mayan expert who played a significant role in Entzifferungsprojekt of Mayan hieroglyphs.

Schele studied education and art at the University of Cincinnati with a bachelor's degree in 1964 and a master's degree in art in 1968. Thereafter she taught until 1980 Visual Arts ( " Studio Art " ) at the University of South Alabama, most recently as a professor. On a visit to Palenque, which was to photograph them on behalf of their university, began her fascination with the Mayan civilization. She studied with the Mayan expert Merle Green Robertson ( * 1913) and deciphered with Peter Mathews parts of the list of kings of Palenque ( 1973). After research as a Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, she went to the University of Texas at Austin, where she attained a doctorate 1980 ( " Maya Glyphs: The Verbs ", 1982). In 1977, she founded there but the Maya Hierogyphic workshop, resulting in a leading international research project on the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphs was ( " Maya Meetings" in Texas). The main means of communication of Mayan research were of her with such Notes issued in the 1980s or Copán in the 1990s, the " Texas Notes". She remained at the University of Texas, where they " John D. Murchison Regents Professor of Art" was last. In 1998 she died of pancreatic cancer. Before her death she donated for a professorship on Mesoamerican art at the University of Texas at Austin.

It also organized important exhibitions Maya, for example, " The Blood of Kings - A New Interpretation of Maya Art" ( with Mary Miller ), which opened in 1986 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, much has appeared in television broadcasts to the Mayan and wrote popular books about the Maya, some of which bestsellers. Schele advocated for the inclusion of indigenous descendants of the Mayas in Guatemala and Mexico in the Mayan research, where she organized in 1988 with Nikolai Grube and Frederico Fahsen workshops in which they this closer brought the Maya culture, which should also serve to increase the awareness of illegal excavations.

Schele was married to David Schele since 1968, an architect in Austin, who specialized in the construction of hospitals.

Writings

• With Peter Mathews " The Bodega of Palenque ," Chiapas, Mexico 1979
• Maya Glyphs: The Verbs 1982 University of Texas Press 1994
• With Mary Ellen Miller: The Blood of Kings dynasty and ritual in Maya Art, exhibition catalog, 1986
• With David Freidel A Forest of Kings - the untold story of the ancient Maya, New York, Morrow, 1990
• With Freidel, Scheffner " The unknown world of the Maya ," Albrecht Knaus 1991
• With Freidel, Joy Parker Maya Cosmos - three thousand years on the Shaman's Path, Morrow 1993
• With Jorge Perez de Lara Hidden Faces of the Maya 1997
• With Peter Mathews The Code of Kings, 1998