Did you know that the first person in the world to decipher the ancient Maya script was a Soviet historian? His name was Yuri Knorozov, born on November 19, 1922, in the Kharkiv region.
From a young age, Yuri knew he wanted to dedicate his life to history. He entered Kharkiv State University to study at the Faculty of History, but World War II interrupted his education and forced him to move to Moscow. There, he continued his studies at the same faculty at Moscow State University.
His interests went beyond history into ethnography, which led him to write his thesis on shamanic practices. Even then, he was fascinated by Maya writing — despite everyone around him insisting it could never be deciphered.
How a Cat Helped Crack the Maya Script
At the time, decoding the Maya hieroglyphs was considered impossible. There were no keys or reference materials to guide the work.
This meant Yuri had to do more than just decipher texts — he had to invent an entire system for working with these complex inscriptions from scratch.
He had a beloved cat named Asya, and he often said she inspired his greatest breakthrough: the method for deciphering the Maya script.
In Mexico, next to the largest Maya museum in the world, there is now a monument to Yuri Knorozov — with Asya in his arms.
Fascinating Facts
Yuri adored cats, especially Asya. He even tried several times to list her as a co-author in his research papers.
There’s a popular myth that Knorozov deciphered the Maya script without ever setting foot in the Americas.
This isn’t entirely true — during the period of his discovery, he indeed had never visited Maya lands, but in the 1990s he traveled to Guatemala and Mexico, where he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal by the president of Guatemala.
Legends swirl about ancient manuscripts and rare sources that aided his work, though no one knows how he obtained them.
Some jealous colleagues, unable to match his achievement, called him a “shaman” and claimed he had supernatural help.
For years, Western scholars refused to acknowledge Knorozov’s approach, but in the 1970s it was finally proven correct. Today, his method is used worldwide to decipher all Maya texts.
