David Stuart has published a wonderfully nerdy piece on super-massive public inscriptions comparing the the 2nd-century inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda, Turkey, vs. the ancient Maya inscription on Copan’s Great Hieroglyphic Stairway. Yep. He did that! So get your geek on and indulge in this delicious piece!
For instance, Stuart states the the inscription at Oinanda and Old Persian cuneiform cliff inscriptions of Behistun, Iran might be larger in terms of pure coverage than Copan’s…
“However, it might not be accurate to call these two old world examples single texts. The Oinoanda inscription is composed of three different treatises written by Diogenes, accompanied by smaller collected sayings and letters by Epicurus. Several texts are combined together, in other words. And at Behistun we have three parallel versions of the same text each presented in a different script and language.
“In contrast it seems that the scribes of Copan designed the final version of the Hieroglyphic Stairway as a single inscription. As I argued some years ago (Stuart 2005) the stairway text was built in two phases. An early version dedicated by the king Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil (Ruler 13) in 710 A.D. provided a lengthy treatise on Copan’s royal history, culminating the dedication of the tomb of K’ahk’ Uti’ Witz’ K’awiil (Ruler 12). A later king, K’ahk’ Yipyaj Chan K’awiil (Ruler 15), decided to update this very visible statement of history. In 755 he expanded on his predecessor’s earlier text, bridging the kingdom’s very recent turbulent history with the glories of the distant past and ultimately to the story of the court’s dynastic founder K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. The later king made a clear effort to integrate his addition seamlessly with the earlier text, both rhetorically and in aspects of visual design.”
https://decipherment.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/the-ancient-worlds-most-massive-inscription/
