Dear members of the Société des Américanistes,

We are pleased to invite you to the General Assembly of the Société des Américanistes on Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 6 pm in Salle de Cours 2 of the Musée du Quai Branly.

This will be followed by a lecture presented by Olivier Le Guen, Profesor-investigador at CIESAS, Mexico:

A new approach to the prophecies of the Chilam Balam based on a reasoned translation

Existing translations of the prophecies of the so-called Chilam Balam books, whether in English (Edmonson 1982; 1986) or Spanish (Barrera Vázquez y Rendón 1948), have often suggested that the content of these writings contains an esoteric dimension, hinting at a mystical world of the Maya and their pre-Hispanic past. The reason for this “mystery” derives largely from the cryptic nature of the texts, and more precisely of their translation. In fact, if the texts appear opaque, it’s usually the result of a word-for-word translation that ignores the grammatical rules of the language.

Although recent work has uncovered some of the diphrasisms present in older texts (stelae and codices) (Raimúndez Ares 2021), the majority of prophecies are in fact adaptations of Christian texts, revisited by the Maya. As some authors have clearly described, with colonization and the onset of evangelization, some Mayans became literate and converted to Christianity, but decided to join the rebel Mayans, where they became prophets and proposed a “Mayanized” rereading of biblical texts.
In this presentation, I will attempt to show how a linguistic approach to the texts, taking into account their historical context, not only offers the possibility of an intelligible reading of the texts, but also demonstrates the agentivity of the Maya during the process of Christianization of the Yucatecan peninsula.

The conference will be held in French

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For information, the Society’s next meeting will be held on January 11.

Please present yourself directly at the museum entrance (37 quai Branly), without going through the cash desks. The Vigipirate plan requires museum security staff not to allow suitcases (even cabin bags), travel bags, backpacks, sports bags, etc. into the museum.