De Landa alphabet

The de Landa alphabet is the correspondence of Spanish letters and glyphs written in the pre-Columbian Maya script, which the 16th-century bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa, recorded as part of his documentation of the Maya civilization. Despite its inaccuracies, the information provided by him would much later prove to be crucial to the mid-20th century breakthrough in the decipherment of the Maya script, starting with the work of the Soviet epigrapher and Mayanist Yuri Knorozov.