Ancient Maya cities have attracted the scholarly gaze of Westerners since at least the latter part of the eighteenth century. Maya hieroglyphic writing, a complex system that combines logographic and phonetic signs to encode the complexity of language, has only recently been deciphered to the degree that it can be read with confidence. This chapter presents a report about ancient Maya writing, that discusses questions about the nature of ancient cities and writing in general. It also discusses the nature of texts in their social contexts, survey the earliest texts in the Maya Lowlands, and consider what these texts suggest about the relationship between the development of writing. The chapter focuses on the rapid rise of densely populated urban centers in the Lowland Maya Preclassic. Early Maya cities provide an interesting case study in the relationship of writing to processes of urbanization.