Overview
- The peer‑reviewed study published in Antiquity, which appeared on Thursday, July 16, 2026, presents a multispectral reconstruction of Texto 19 that includes a closing phrase translated as “así dice Sak Tahn Waax.”
- Texto 19 encodes a 2,920‑day formula that links major Maya time counts and planetary cycles, including the 20‑day uinal, the 260‑day Tzolk'in, the 365‑day Haab, the 584‑day Venus cycle and the 780‑day Mars cycle.
- The inscription was found in structure 10K‑2 at Xultun, a small chamber where researchers recorded 52 microtexts and nearby tools consistent with a scribal workshop used to draft codices and teach calculations.
- Conservation imaging and digital processing were key to the reading: multispectral photography and scanning recovered heavily faded glyphs that could not be read by eye.
- Researchers say the signed formula makes Sak Tahn Waax the first named Classic‑period Maya specialist known from a technical text and that this finding prompts further study of how Maya scientific work was produced, attributed and circulated.