Maya script was the ancient writing system used by the Maya civilization.
It was the only writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas known to represent spoken language in a highly developed way. Maya writing combined logograms, which represented words or meaningful units, with phonetic signs that represented sounds. Scribes arranged signs in blocks, often pairing images with complex glyphs.
The script appears on monuments, pottery, bones, walls, and bark-paper books known as codices. Maya inscriptions recorded rulers, warfare, rituals, calendar dates, dynastic histories, and astronomical observations. The writing developed over many centuries and was used across parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.
For a long time, scholars could read only a small portion of the inscriptions. Breakthroughs by researchers including Yuri Knorozov and Tatiana Proskouriakoff helped establish phonetic reading and historical interpretation. Most surviving Maya codices were destroyed during the Spanish conquest, but inscriptions remain central evidence for Maya history.