The Hieroglyphs on the Library Building

The "Old God" is a universal image in Maya art, and represents wisdom, experience, and respect accorded the elders of all American native people. Among the Maya pantheon, the most important is Itzamnaaj (pronounce "Eat-Sahm-Nah), the patron of learning and writing. He usually wears an obsidian-mirror diadem on his forehead and sometimes appears as his alter-ego, the Celestial Bird Itsam-ye.

The image on the LRC building's elevator shaft was designed by painting instructor Roberto Salas, and was adapted from an illustration in the Dresden Codex, the most beautiful and rare of Maya books (only four Maya manuscripts survive today; all the rest were burned by Spanish friars in 1560), which was a kind of almanac, listing eclipses, phases of Venus, the auspicious days for various tasks.

The hieroglyph repeated 14 times across the front of the building is adapted from Quirigua, Guatemala, a beautiful cast of which stands in San Diego's Museum of Man in Balboa Park. It consists of the head of a chop-fallen (nearly toothless) Old God wearing the obsidian-mirror diadem, which identifies him as Itzamnaaj. A Maya convention indicated the god's wisdom by giving them enourmous all-seeing eyes. His head is preceded by sideways T-shaped glyph elements that reads Nah, meaning "house" or "temple." Thus the glyph can be interpreted as "House of Itzamnaaj" or "Temple of Learning."

The glyph was designed in calligraphic style of ancient Maya books by Mark Van Stone, a professor of Art History at Southwestern College.