Background
Cordy was born in 1902 in Cheltenham, England. The son of a coal and copper miner, Cordy briefly studied mining engineering at the University of Arizona.
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Napoleon Cordy
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Hannibal Napoleon David Alfred Thomas Cordy was an amateur scholar in the field of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, who made some notable contributions in the 1930s and 1940s to the early study and decipherment of the Maya script, used by the pre-Columbian Maya of southern Mexico and northern Central America.
Career
His family emigrated to the United States in 1913, settling in Globe, Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1922. While working as an electrician at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power from 1922-1962, Cordy became fascinated with the Maya civilization, especially Maya hieroglyphs.
He wrote a number of articles on the subject for various publications, and was a respected contributor to the journal The Masterkey, published by the Southwest Museum in Los Los Angeles
Cordy died in Los Angeles in 1977, aged 74. She was a professor of anthropology at the University of San Diego.
He is chief archaeologist for the state of Hawaii’s Historic Preservation Division and teaches at the University of Hawaii.
Membership
He was also a founding member of the Southwestern Anthropological Association.
