Yuri Knorozov - monument in Merida

A three-meter monument captivates: a stern figure of a man with an eagle gaze emerges from the stone, and in his arms, he tenderly holds a curled-up cat. The monument's author is the Mexican sculptor Reynaldo Bolio Suarez, known by the pseudonym Pachelli.

The monument to the great Soviet and Russian linguist and ethnographer Yuri Knorozov (https://reveal.world/story/yurij-knorozov-byl-uveren-chto-on-genij-i-byl-absolyutno-prav), who was the only one in the world to decipher the writing of the ancient Maya, was unveiled in the Mexican city of Merida. The first monument appeared in Cancun in 2012. "At heart, I will always remain Mexican," the scientist said about himself.

The composition reproduces a famous black-and-white photograph in which he is captured with his Siamese beloved Aspid, familiarly called Asya. According to one of the apocryphal stories surrounding Knorozov’s life, Yuri Valentinovich repeatedly tried to list Asya as a co-author of scientific articles, but the prim editors invariably crossed out her name, not sharing the eccentric impulses of the genius. In Russia, there are still no monuments to the "Russian Champollion," except for the bas-relief on the tombstone at Kovalevsky Cemetery in Saint Petersburg. There, in 1999, the founder of the domestic school of Mayan studies found his final resting place—so far from the land of the extinct but resurrected by his mind civilization. It is no coincidence that ordinary people who consider themselves descendants of the Maya in Mexico and Guatemala, where Knorozov did visit in the 1990s, greeted the gray-haired scientist from across the ocean with great respect—as if he were a great magician.

Yuri Knorozov became famous after deciphering the writing of the ancient Maya, as well as promoting mathematical methods for studying undeciphered scripts. In 1955, he earned a Doctor of Historical Sciences degree, and in 1977 he became a laureate of the USSR State Prize. Additionally, Knorozov is a recipient of the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle and the Grand Gold Medal of the President of Guatemala.