“Researchers are now moving from establishing facts about the Maya towards understanding the meaning of their rituals. The decipherment of their script has been the greatest achievement of recent years. The Maya invented what may be the most complex writing system ever devised. It had both alphabetic and pictographic characters, and the “spelling” rules seem to have been largely aesthetic. The same word could be written in a dozen ways. The new exhibition contains superb examples of the most florid, which look more like sculpture than writing.”