Hieroglyphs were very impotant to the Maya. Just like Egypetians, Maya used symbols and pictures to write. Most symbols were very complex. Today there are still archeilogists finding more and more about the Mayan writing system. For Maya ruler symbols the symbol would acualey be the picture of a king. Many symbols were animals such as a jaguar, hawk or crocidle. The Maya alphabet was very different from ours. They had three letter A's, some symbols for CA, MA, CU, KU, PP, KA, TI, L`E and HA according to Bishop Landa. There were also very many variations of the Maya alphabet. In one of the early versions there was not even a Z or CH sound! Still even in the later versions T was T and D, and H was H and F. Unlike many other ancient writing systmes were each picture reprsented a whole word, the Maya had each picture stand as just one letter.