by Stephen Houston, Brown University

Karlštejn castle, in the Czech Republic, guards a curious relic: the skull of a Nile crocodile thought by its owner, Emperor Charles V (1316–1378), to come from a dragon. Indeed, to Charles, this might have been the very monster slain by St. George (Pluskowski 2013:118–119). Charles was something of a mystic. In Karlštejn, he devised a “quasi-theatrical journey…interwoven with the progress of sacred time” (Crossley 2000:142). But he was not alone in seeing fantastic creatures behind this or that piece of bone or tissue from far away.

Perhaps the best example is the unicorn. An image from the Rochester Bestiary (c. AD 1250) shows the only way of killing this beast (Figure 1). Don your full covering of chain mail, invite the unicorn to cradle in the lap of a virgin, and then—quickly now!—kill it with repeated thrusts of a spear (Plusowski 2004:305). At least the creature died happy, to judge from its pleased expression. In the Middle Ages, the unicorn carried symbolic value by evoking the “invincibility and humility of Christ”; to paranoid rulers, its horn had a further benefit, in that it countered, or was believed to thwart, any poisons in drink (Plusowski 2004:305). By the later Medieval period, unicorn horns appeared in greater numbers. The Doges of Venice possessed two that had been looted from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, and a horn at Windsor formed part of the royal treasure sold by Oliver Cromwell after his victory in the English Civil Wars (Humphreys 1951:380). Others were made into objects for liturgical processions (Liverpool narwhal candlestick). In 1383, an ibex horn at the shrine of St. Cuthbert in Durham was inventoried as the talon of a griffin (Plusowski 2010:207, fig.. 9.6).

By Cromwell’s time, a less beguiling certainty replaced mythic explanation. These objects were simply the tusks taken from narwhal (Monodon monoceros), toothed whales to be found cruising around the waters of Greenland. (The tusk itself, an elongated left upper incisor, grows up to 200 mm long, an inspiration to any fabulist far from that island.) The transport of horn in modest quantities to Europe followed the settlement of Greenland by Icelandic Vikings in the late 10th century AD (Plusowski 2004:297, 299, fig. 2). Confusion did not disappear entirely. As late as 1694, Pierre Pomet, chief druggist to Louis XIV of France, lumped it with other large “fish” and could not resist illustrating a rather equine “Unicorn of the Sea” (Licorne de Mer) alongside a more realistic narwhal (Figure 2).

The Classic Maya may have had their own miraculous versions of dragon skulls and unicorn horns. The presence of shark teeth, including fossilized ones of the immense Carcharocles megalodon, is attested at an Olmec site like La Venta, but also, in Classic contexts, at Palenque, El Zotz, and elsewhere (see a valuable review in Newman 2016; also Borhegyi 1961; Cuevas García 2008:670; Martos López 2009:65; for fossils in Mexico and their earlier interpretation, Mayor 2013). It is likely that these were associated with creatures the artists may never have seen, some from presumed mythic or primordial settings.

Another example can be discerned. This is the canine of a feline, probably a jaguar, that had been drilled at about AD 500–550, its top shaped into the head of a deity (Franco 1968:21, lám. V; the dimensions are inferred from its published size, “[e]l dibujo es exactamente al tamaño natural”). A drawing and photographs of the object are reconfigured here so that the drawing is oriented properly—it is inverted in the monograph (Figure 3).

The iconographic attributes make two things clear. One is that this is the head of the serpent linked to sentient, almost volitional water, the witz’ snake that may well correspond to the later Chicchan of the Ch’orti’ Maya (Figure 4, Stuart 2007).

Such creatures were impersonated by many lords and some ladies in the Classic period (for examples, although not identified as such, see Schele 1982:fig. 50). To judge from the Chicchan, the witz’ were beings tied to rain, springs and lakes, and, in their undulating, snake-like bodies, to the passage of water. More to the point, the pendant may have been regarded as the very tooth of that serpent or at least of one of them. Did the maker understand that it was a jaguar canine?  Such were uncommon but doubtless known, yet there was always the persuasive impact of imagination and a sheer wish to believe. Did its use as a pendant invoke the witz’ or show some dominion over it, even a heroic besting of the beast? The “serpent’s tooth” came from some unknown site, and these questions remain unanswerable. But the pendant does hint at wonders, powers, and fables that concern things of miraculous origin, as duly enhanced by humans.

Acknowledgements  Thanks go to David Stuart for conversations about this fascinating object.

References

Borhegyi, Stephan F. de 1961. Shark Teeth, Stingray Spines, and Shark Fishing in Ancient Mexico and Central America. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17(3): 273-296.

Crossley, Paul. 2000. The Politics of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia. In Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, edited Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis, 99–172. York Medieval Press, York.

Cuevas García, Martha. 2008. Paisaje paleontológico en Palenque. In XXI Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicos en Guatemala, 2007, edited by Juan Pedro Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo, and Héctor Mejía, 669–85. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala. Palenque fossils and sharks teeth

Franco C., José L. 1968. Objetos de hueso de la época precolombina. Cuadernos del Museo Nacional de Antropología 4. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historica, Mexico.

Houston, Stephen. 2010. Living Waters and Wondrous Beasts. In Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, Daniel Finamore and Stephen Houston, 66–79. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (MA)/Yale University Press, New Haven.

Humphreys, Humphrey. 1951. The Horn of the Unicorn. Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 8(5): 377–383. Humphreys unicorn

Martos López, L. Alberto. 2009. The Discovery of Plan de Ayutla, Mexico. In Maya Archaeology 1, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, 61–75. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco (CA).

Mayor, Adrienne. 2013. Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Rev. ed. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Newman, Sarah E. 2016. Sharks in the Jungle: Real and Imagined Sea Monsters of the Maya. Antiquity 90 (354): 1522–1536.

Pluskowski, Aleksander. 2004. Narwhals or Unicorns? Exotic Animals as Material Culture in Medieval Europe. European Journal of Archaeology 7(3): 291–313.

—. 2013. The Dragon’s Skull: How Can Zooarchaeologists Contribute to Our Understanding of Otherness in the Middle Ages? In Animals and Otherness in the Middle Ages: Perspectives Across Disciplines, edited by Francisco de Asís García García, Mónica Ann Walker Vadillo, and María V. Chico Picaza, 109–124. British Archaeological Reports International Series 2500. Archaeopress, Oxford.

Pomet, Pierre. 1694. Histoire generale des drogues, traitant des plantes, des animaux, & des mineraux…  Loyson et Pillon, Paris. Pierre Pomet

Schele, Linda. 1982. Maya Glyphs: The Verbs. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Stuart, David. 2007. Reading the Water Serpent as WITZ’. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography Witz’ reading

by Stephen Houston, Brown University

The celebrated Relación of Bishop Diego de Landa (1524–79) offers, in the edition by Alfred Tozzer—a volume in part ghosted, according to rumor, by many Harvard graduate students—a full array of horrors for those who transgressed law and custom in early Colonial Yucatan. Unchaste girls were whipped and rubbed with pepper on “another part of their body” (the eyes, privates or anus?); “offenses committed with malice…[could only be] satisfied with blood or blows,” and those who corrupted young women might expect capital punishment (Tozzer 1941: 98, 127, 231; but see Restall and Chuchiak 2002, who view the Relación as a varied and complex compilation).

Then there was stoning. If discovered, a male adulterer would be lashed to a post. The unforgiving husband then threw “a large stone down from a high place upon his head” (Tozzer 1941: 124, 215, the latter from Tozzer’s excerpt of Herrera’s Historia General). Other stones played a role in an unusually brutal form of sport attested as far afield as the Cotzumalhuapan sites and various Classic Maya sources (Chinchilla 2009: 154–56; Taube and Zender 2009:197–204). Boxers, “gladiators” even, pummeled each other with stone spheres. Sometimes there was no contest to speak of, and the violence seemed to be inflicted on helpless captives or sacrifices (Figure 1; see also Houston and Scherer 2010: 170, fig. 1).

Figure 1. Stoning of captive, to viewer’s left (K7516, photograph by Justin Kerr, copyright Kerr Associates). 

An enigmatic image, related to some unknown tale among the Classic Maya, also involves stoning (Figure 2). A figure daubed with black paint lifts a small white stone that carries the dots and circle of a “stone,” tuun. He is about to wallop a cringing lizard with distinct, backward thrust crest (David Stuart, Marc Zender, and I have read glyphs for this creature as paat, an interpretation we will present at some point). Another figure to the right is poised to jab with what may be a digging stick or coa. Misery will doubtless ensue for the lizard, a fate also awaiting a bound crocodile on a jaguar-skin throne. Maya imagery tends to skirt displays of emotion, but these creatures look downcast, frightened, hopeless.

Figure 2. Torture of mythic reptiles (photograph from Justin Kerr [K9149], copyright holder unknown). 

In our recent study of the Grolier Codex, Michael Coe, Mary Miller, Karl Taube, and I presented what seems to us (and to many others) overwhelming evidence for the authenticity of the manuscript (Coe et al. 2015). While working on that project, I was beset with a growing sense of bafflement. Why did anyone question the Codex to begin with? On dissection, the objections seemed ill-founded and argued.

Here is another piece of evidence (Figure 3). Page 9 of the Grolier shows a mountain deity grasping a stone, a point made also by John Carlson (2014: 5). Perceptive as ever, Karl Taube, who authored this part of our essay, noted that such weapons were used as punishment (Coe et al. 2015: 154). But beyond castigation, there is surely a martial aspect to the pages of the Grolier, of spearing, slicing, and thrusting with atlatl darts. Death by hand-held stone is a particularly messy way to go. The white stones must have contrasted vividly with the blood and gore that streaked them.

Figure 3.  Grolier Codex, page 9 (drawing by Nicholas Carter, Coe et al. 2015: fig. 41). 

What we did not emphasize enough, perhaps, was that other scenes of such execution or torture were simply not known or understood in the Classic corpus when the Grolier was found in the early to mid-1960s. Almost all the images documented by Justin Kerr and presented here were not recognized as such until a few years ago. That applies equally to most of the imagery interpreted by Chinchilla Mazariegos, Taube, and Zender as boxing or sacrifice with hand-held stones.

I am confident that such evidence will only accumulate as our understanding deepens and the Grolier continues to release its secrets.

References

Carlson, John B. 2014. The Grolier Codex: An Authentic 13th-Century Maya Divinatory Venus Almanac: New Revelations on the Oldest Surviving Book on Paper in the Ancient Americas. The Smoking Mirror 22(4): 2–7.

Coe, Michael, Stephen Houston, Mary Miller, and Karl Taube. 2015. The Fourth Maya Codex. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, 116–67. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo. 2009. Games, Courts, and Players at Cotzumalhuapa, Guatemala. In Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, edited by Heather Orr and Rex Koontz, 139–160. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.

Houston, Stephen, and Andrew Scherer. 2010. La ofrenda máxima: el sacrificio humano en la parte central del área maya. In Nuevas Perspectivas Sobre el Sacrificio Humano entre los Mexicas, edited by Leonardo López Luján and Guilhem Olivier, 169–193. UNAM/INAH, Mexico City.

Restall, Matthew, and John F. Chuchiak. 2002. A Reevaluation of the Authenticity of Fray Diego de Landa’s Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan. Ethnohistory 49(3): 651–669.

Taube, Karl, and Marc Zender. 2009. American Gladiators: Ritual Boxing in Ancient Mesoamerica. In Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, edited by Heather Orr and Rex Koontz, 161–220. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.

Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941. Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan: A Translation. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology 18. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

Figure 1. Spellings of tz’ihb, “writing, painting” (tz’i-bi and tz’i-ba)

Many years ago I wrote on the decipherment of the word tz’ihb, “writing, painting,” in ancient Maya texts (Stuart 1987, 1990). This usually appears in the hieroglyphs as the syllabic sequences tz’i-bi or tz’i-ba, two spellings that probably reflect slight differences in pronunciation and morphology (Figure 1). “Painting” glyphs appear in a variety of settings, including the title for scribes and painters, aj tz’ihb, as well as in glyphs that introduce artists’ signatures (“it is the painting of…”). The most common appears of the term is in the Dedicatory Formula on vessels and other painted objects, where tz’ihbaal specifies the thing’s mode of decoration (painted vs. carved).

From time to time we also find a well-known and visually transparent logogram with the likely reading TZ’IHB (Figure 2, with the -ba suffix), showing a hand daintily holding a brush or stylus (Stuart 1987:2-3). The position of the fingers replicates the distinctive “pinky up” hand gesture that served as a standard representation for artisans, including stone-carvers as well (see Stone and Zender 2011:115)(Figure 3). The logogram’s clear visual connection to the imagery of scribes or painters was recognized long ago, when the Tikal-area bowl on which it appears (K772) was first published (see Robicsek and Hales 1983:135).

Figure 2. The title Aj Tz’ihb, “Painter,” from K772. Detail of photograph by Justin Kerr.

Figure 3. The “dainty hands” of Maya painters and carvers. Left, detail of a scribe from an unprovenced vase; Right, detail of the Emiliano Zapata Panel, Palenque region.

Assigning the hand-with-brush sign a TZ’IHB value has always seemed very reasonable on the face of it, but it is important to note that the sign is very rare, and no confirmation of via a phonetic substitution has ever been found (of course, the -ba suffix on the title in Figure 2 is highly suggestive). I have long been struck by the rarity of the sign, which seems especially odd considering the high frequency of tz’ihb in the Dedicatory Formula.  At any rate, until now this “writing” sign, like many in Maya epigraphy, remained a reasonable yet unconfirmed hypothesis, a good example of a graphically transparent sign (Note 1).

Figure 4. A possible early example of TZ’IHB from San Bartolo, Pinturas Complex,  Xbalanque phase, ca. 300 BCE. Photograph by D. Stuart.

We can point to only a handful of examples of this probable TZ’IHB logogram  One especially important example appears in a Late Preclassic text from San Bartolo, dating to approximately 300 BCE (Figure 4). Again the context of the surrounding glyphs in unclear, making a solid reading of TZ’IHB difficult. But the similarity to later forms from the Classic period make the identification likely — note the-ever so-slightly extended pinky finger at the right of the sign (see Tedlock 2010:26-27). Of course finding a sign for “writing” or “painting” as early as 300 BCE has important implications for considering the origins of writing itself in the Maya area.

With the recent discovery of a new text at La Corona, Guatemala, we can I think confirm the long-suspected reading. Block 9 from Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 was discovered in 2012 as part of a row of inscribed stones in from of Structure 13R-10 (Ponce 2013). The block was clearly not in its original setting, having been taken by the ancient Maya from some prior monument and and re-set in HS 2 as part of a mixed assortment of sculpted stones. Block 9 records the historical date 11 Caban 10 Zotz, or 9.12.6.16.17 (May 1, 679 CE), when a royal woman from the Kaanul dynasty (the “Snake Kingdom”) arrived at La Corona to marry the local ruler named K’inich ? Yook (Freidel and Guenter 2003, Martin 2008). The very same event was already known from another La Corona text, Panel 6, where she is described as the daughter of the great Kaanul king Yuknoom Ch’een.

Figure 5. Names of a royal woman at La Corona, possibly Ix Tz’ihb Winkil. Drawings by D. Stuart.

Looking closely at her names in the two inscriptions, we see slightly different spellings (Figure 5). On HS2, shown at left, the sequence is IX-tz’i-bi-WINKIL?, perhaps for Ix Tz’ihb Winkil, “Lady Painting-Person(?)” (Note 2). This is a personal name, not a title, so I would shy away from interpreting this as some reference to the woman’s activities or court function. On Panel 6 her name appears with what looks to be a hand-like sign in place of tz’i-bi. The glyph is somewhat eroded, but a long and thin element held by the hand is just barely discernible (Figure 4b). This must be a version of our logogram reading TZ’IHB, a later variant of the sign identified on a visual basis many years ago on the bowl from the Tikal area.

This new substitution at La Corona confirms what we long suspected — that the hand-with-brush sign is the TZ’IHB logogram. And it shows us also that even when epigraphers are confident about guessing a particular reading, it is still gratifying to come across clear backing evidence for it many years later.

Notes

Note 1. Stone and Zender (2010:115) illustrate two examples of the TZ’IHB logogram, including the well-known one on on K722. Their second example shows a hand a distinctive gesture holding an inverted ocote torch, with the ‘ink’ or ‘soot’ (SIBIK) element below.  If TZ’IHB, this is an unusually elaborate version, and I wonder if it could be it a distinct sign altogether.

Note 2. The last sign in her name is T89, which I’ve recently presented as a logogram reading WINKIL, a term that refers to a class of human-like supernaturals and often used in names and titles of elite individuals (Stuart 2014). The translation of win(i)k-il is a bit challenging since it is an abstracted noun derived from winik, “person,” and “being” seems too general; “supernatural person” seems to be the sense of it. The woman’s name, Ix Tz’ihb Winkil, if that is the correct reading, may refer to a supernatural scribe patron.

References Cited

Coe, Michael D., and Justin Kerr. 1997.  The Art of the Maya Scribe. Thames and Hudson, London.

Freidel, David, and Stanley Guenter. 2003. Bearers of War and Creation. Archaeology (On-Line Features): http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/siteq2/

Martin, Simon. 2008. Wives and Daughters on the Dallas Altar. Mesoweb: http://www.mesoweb.com/articles/martin/Wives&Daughters.pdf.

Ponce, Jocelyne. 2014. La estructura 13R-10 de La Corona: Un area de actividad de la élite maya prehispánica durante el clásico tardio y terminal. In XXVI Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueologicas en Guatemala 2013, tomo II, pp. 975-986. Asociación Tikal, Guatemala.

Robicsek, Francis and Donald M. Hales. 1981. The Maya Book of the Dead: The Ceramic Codex, The Corpus of Codex Style Ceramics from the Late Classic Period. University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville.

Stone, Andrea, and Marc Zender. Reading Maya Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Maya Painting and Sculpture. Thames and Hudson, London.

Stuart, David. 1987. Ten Phonetic Syllables. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 14. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C.

_______________. 1990. Hieroglyphs on Maya Vessels. The Maya Vase Book, Volume 1. Kerr Associates, New York.

______________. 2014. Four Interesting Logograms. Paper presented at the 1st Annual Maya Dictionary Meeting, Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Tedlock, Dennis. 2010. 2000 Years of Mayan Literature. University of California Press, Berkeley.

by Simon Martin (University of Pennsylvania Museum)

Twenty years ago, I wrote a commentary on an intriguing set of codex-style vessels known as the Dynastic Vases (Martin 1997). Twelve in number, each of these cylindrical pots is painted with the same list of kings from the kaanul “Snake[-Place]” dynasty, supplying names, titles, and dates for their elevation to power.[1] The length of the sequence varies from vessel to vessel depending on its size, with the fullest version of 19 rulers appearing on the example labeled K6751 in the Kerr Archive (www.mayavase.com) (Figure 1). At least seven of their names match those seen on carved monuments, offering clear potential to draw alignments between the two sources. Indeed, beginning with a “founder” figure, the Dynastic Vases hold out the prospect of unlocking the entire early sequence of this important kingdom, constituting a record as important as the Temple of Cross Tablet has been for understanding the royal line of Palenque, or Altar Q and the Temple 26 Hieroglyphic Stairway for the sequence at Copan.

Figure 1. Roll-out image of K6751 (photograph by Justin Kerr).

As the earliest researchers to work on the Dynastic Vases realized, the chronology of the text, consisting only of Calendar Round dates without a tie to the Long Count, is flawed (Robicsek and Hales 1981:157-159). Day- and month-names are consistent, but variations in their coefficients produce a number of impossible combinations—some arising from the inventions of modern restorers, but others plainly the work of ancient scribes. Not only do coefficients for the same date vary from one vase to the next, they even differ on vases decorated by the same painter (for the identification of four such painters see Martin 1997:849-850). Corrections can be attempted, but the true value always remains in doubt. All this made it impossible to pin down an “original” error-free scheme in 1997— but the difficulties ran even deeper. Where we knew of accession dates for the kings on monuments they did not correspond to those on the vessels. Indeed, dates conflicted to such a degree in some cases that they could not be placed at any point within their respective reigns. Even worse, the kings on the vases did not appear in anything like their expected order, with two attested Snake rulers from the Early Classic missing altogether. Incomplete, scrambled, and adrift in time, there seemed to be no possibility of reconciling the painted and carved versions. There was little choice but to project the list into a deeply archaic, or even legendary, past that far predated the historical one. Of the familiar names seen on the vessels not one of them would be a character we knew, all instead forebears from which later kings took their names.

Yet, despite two decades of pessimism on the matter, I am now sure that the Dynastic Vase sequence is a historical one, and that the timeframe covered by those 19 reigns falls within the Early Classic period. This paper explains how this change of heart came about, and why the painted king list is still a long way from giving up all its secrets.

* * *

There was always one feature on K6751 that kept a potential link to the historical kings alive. Towards the end of the text, filling the positions M2-M4, there is a Distance Number that counts forward a little over 104 years to the date 2 Akbal 11 Uo (Martin 1997:862-863).[2] This count can only realistically connect the accession of Ruler 19 on 9 Imix 9 Yaxkin (K5-L5)—an event expressed, like all others, as (u)-CH’AM[K’AWIIL]-wa uch’amaw k’awiil “he takes/receives K’awiil”—to a new event given at N4. There we find what appears to be OCH-HA’[BIH]-hi ochha’bih “water (and) road-enters”—a conjoined form of the metaphors for death we otherwise see as ochbih or ochha’. Yet this verb has no subject. Where we would expect to find one we encounter the common term yu-k’i-bi yuk’ib “his drinking vessel,” followed by a personal name. If someone dies who is it? The long DN presumably rules out Ruler 19, meaning that the deceased person either goes unstated, is meant to be a reference to the vessel as a tomb offering, or refers to the vessel owner himself. As an aside, we find that person’s name on another codex-style vessel, K6754 (which has a very different narrative scene), suggesting that both pots may have come from the same looted burial.

Like all our dates, 2 Akbal 11 Uo is untethered in the Long Count. However, we might suspect that the purpose of the extended Distance Number is to connect the past with contemporary time. If so, the best fit would be 9.13.4.1.3 in 696, since this is the era in which codex-style ware was in production. While the 104-year tally does not link the two Calendar Rounds correctly, if we use it to count backwards from 696 we reach 592, which is one of the years in which 9 Imix 9 Yaxkin can be placed. The 592 date is interesting because it falls within the reign of Scroll Serpent, a Snake king with the same name as Ruler 19, seen at L6. While this whole section is far from transparent, it does give some slim suggestion that Ruler 19 might be the historical Scroll Serpent.

So the matter rested for two decades. It was not to see change until widely dispersed finds at El Peru, Naranjo, Uaxactun, and Calakmul allowed Dmitri Beliaev and myself to identify a hitherto unknown Snake king called K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil (Martin and Beliaev 2017). K6751 made an early contribution here, since Ruler 16 from the list (K1b) has a matching K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ name, demonstrating that this was a form used by the Kaanul dynasty. Elsewhere, Naranjo Stela 47 tells us that K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’—there under the name Aj Saakil—directly preceded the king known as Sky Witness (Martin et al. 2016) (see Figure 6). This is fully consistent with the historical dates we have, since K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ was active in 556, while references to Sky Witness’s reign appear between 561 and 572. The relevance of all this is that the name of Sky Witness matches that of Ruler 17 (K2b). With the known dates for Scroll Serpent falling between 579 and 611, and the sure knowledge of a different Snake king ruling before him in 573 (Martin and Grube 2000:104), we can see that Rulers 16, 17, and 19 correctly follow the sequence on the monuments (Figure 2). By now there was cause to wonder, might the painted king list be historical after all?

Figure 2. Comparison of names on K6751 with those from the monumental record (drawings by Simon Martin).

The complex story of the Snake kingdom, in which its Early Classic capital at Dzibanche (Velásquez 2004a, 2008a) shifted to one at Calakmul in the Late Classic (Martin 2005), has recently come into much greater focus. Thanks to the identification of Kaanul as a toponym at Dzibanche (Martin and Velásquez 2016:27-30) and the discovery of two remarkable texts at Xunantunich that explain the shift as the result of civil war (Helmke and Awe 2016a, 2016b), we can talk with more confidence about where the dynasty arose and why its transfer took place. If K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil was ruling at Dzibanche in 556—which all the circumstantial evidence would lead us to believe—then we are compelled to investigate Building VI Lintel 3 at the site (Martin and Beliaev 2017:5-6, Table 1). Carrying one of only two firm dates at Dzibanche, Lintel 3 records the Period Ending of 9.6.0.0.0, which took place in 554 (Figure 3). Unfortunately, it does not name its protagonist, who would have appeared on one or both of the preceding lintels, which are badly damaged in one case and destroyed in the other. However, it does record the king’s accession as a CHUM[*mu]-la-ji-ya KAL[*TE’]-ma-*li “seated into kaloomte’[-ship]”. This marks the subject’s elevation into the highest status ascribed to Classic Maya rulers, entirely in keeping with the powerful political position the Snake kingdom enjoyed at this time.

Figure 3. Dzibanche Building VI Lintel 3 (photograph by Peter Harrison).

The syntax on Lintel 3 is not entirely straightforward and this, together with the less-than-perfect preservation of the wood into which it is carved, means that there are different ways to reconstruct the two Distance Numbers that fix the accession in time. After accounting for shrinkage and erosion to the three beams I made a relatively small, seemingly unimportant, amendment of 100 days to the chronology that placed the accession to the Long Count position 9.5.16.0.8 in 550.[3] Any setting in this general timeframe would make K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ a viable candidate, but the true significance of this date emerges only after comparing its Calendar Round with the one given for the accession of Ruler 16 on K6751, since both are 7 Lamat 6 Uo (Figure 4). This cannot be coincidental and demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that Ruler 16 and K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ are not namesakes but one-in-the-same person. It would follow that Ruler 17 is the Sky Witness we see on monuments at Los Alacranes, Naranjo, Caracol, Yo’okop, Dzibanche, Resbalon, and Pol Box, and Ruler 19 the Scroll Serpent who appears at Calakmul, Palenque, Naranjo, and Caracol.[4] This allows me to say something that I could not in 1997—that the vase text does include rulers known from inscribed monuments and that the entire painted king list fits within historical time. What are the implications of this turnaround? Can the outstanding, not inconsiderable, problems be resolved?

Figure 4.  7 Lamat 6 Uo at J6 and (u)ch’am(aw) k’awiil k’ahk’ ti’ ch’ich’ at K1 on K6751 (conjoined image from a photograph courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum).

* * *

True codex-style wares were produced in the heart of the central southern lowlands, at a site in the domain of a k’uhul chatahn winik—a lordly title with deep roots in this region—which was under the direct influence of Calakmul. Three Dynastic Vase sherds have been found at Calakmul itself, demonstrating that the listing was directly pertinent to the regime there, doubtless naming the ancestors to which its kings traced their origin and legitimacy (Delvendahl 2005; Martin 2008a, 2012:140; García Barrios 2012:85-87). This is important when we think about the meaning of these lists to a contemporary audience. Their primary purpose was not documentation so much as lending special value and prestige to the pot, and the somewhat careless treatment of the dates must be seen in this light. The presence of at least one correct date could indicate that the Ur-text was accurate, and only garbled in the process of copying and re-copying over time.[5] We can now highlight the three major difficulties that stand between us and any comprehensive understanding of the Dynastic Vases, all arising from the divergences between painted and carved sources: (1) conflicts in the sequence, (2) missing kings, and (3) dating discrepancies. From here on we enter speculative terrain.

The scrambled order of kings on the Dynastic Vases once seemed like a significant obstacle, yet it is overcome with ease if Ruler 10 (Yuknoom Ch’een), Ruler 13 (Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’), Ruler 15 (Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’), and Ruler 18 (Yuknoom Ti’ Chan) were not the seventh century kings we know by those names but earlier namesakes instead. Indeed, the now-established sequence of Rulers 16, 17, and 19 requires that they be so. Moreover, we probably know the first of these characters, since a ruler called Yuknoom Ch’een—a predecessor to the great Late Classic king of that name—is the protagonist of the Dzibanche Captive Stairway (Nalda 2004; Velásquez 2004b, 2005) (Figure 5).[6] This monument cannot be dated with certainty, but it is appropriately early in terms of style. This is most evident in the large identifying name-glyphs the prisoners wear on the back of their belts and their unusual wavy hair, for which the closest parallel is a captive pictured on Uaxactun Stela 19, dating to 357 (Martin 2009; see Graham 1986:177-178).[7]

Figure 5. Names of the earlier and later kings using the name of Yuknoom Ch’een: a) Ruler 10, K6751 (H5); b) Yuknoom Ch’een I, Dzibanche M.5 (A3); c) Yuknoom Ch’een II, codex-style vase from Tomb 4, Calakmul Structure II; d) Yuknoom Ch’een II, Dos Pilas Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 East (photographs provided by the Los Angeles County Museum and Dorie Reents-Budet, drawings by Simon Martin).

If this problem has evaporated an important one remains, and it is our second major difficulty. The positions in the sequence occupied by Rulers 15 and 18 are precisely those where we would expect to find our missing kings Tuun K’ab Hix (537-546) and Yax Yopaat (573). Explaining their absence is a trickier proposition.

Naranjo Stela 47 explicitly describes Tuun K’ab Hix, K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil, Sky Witness, and Scroll Serpent as the chan tz’akbu(ul) k’uhul kaanul ajaw “four holy Snake[-Place] kings in order” (Martin et al. 2016:617) (Figure 6). It will be noted that there is no mention of an intervening ruler between Sky Witness and Scroll Serpent—a position taken at Dzibanche by Yax Yopaat and on K6751 by Yuknoom Ti’ Chan. This suggests that Stela 47 refers less to a strict list of successors than it does to the four overlords who directly supervised the Naranjo king during his long reign. The 18th king, whatever his identity, may not have ruled long enough to consolidate his power and for this, or some other reason, was not acknowledged as an overlord by Naranjo.

Figure 6. Four Snake kings on Naranjo Stela 47: Tuun K’ab Hix (A3b), Aj Saakil (A4a), Sky Witness (A4b), and Scroll Serpent (A5a) (drawing by Alexandre Tokovinine).

The absence of Tuun K’ab Hix is a bigger issue, since he was clearly a substantial figure who, in addition to installing that same Naranjo king in 546, lost a subordinate in a conflict with Yaxchilan in 537 and sent a daughter to marry the ruler of La Corona in 520 (Martin 2008b:4). The Dynastic Vase sequence cannot claim to represent the greatest kings of the Snake dynasty if he is omitted. A possible explanation here is that the Kaanul regime contained more than one lineage, perhaps even parallel lines that ruled from different centers (Marc Zender, pers. comm. 2017). The latter has a certain appeal because of the appearance of non-Kaanul toponym with Scroll Serpent in 593, raising the possibility of greater locational complexity to the kingdom’s history (Martin 2005:7; Martin and Velásquez 2016:26). If more than one lineage were involved, then the Dynastic Vases might represent only the branch from which the Calakmul kings claimed descent. Tuun K’ab Hix and Yax Yopaat would belong to a different patriline and be of no interest to the scribe who composed the master text of the vases. While this idea has its attractions, the twin royal seats portion of it is weakened by the appearance of Yax Yopaat at Dzibanche, where we also find evidence for K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’, Sky Witness, and Yuknoom Ch’een I. But another option is available to us. Although K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil is sometimes represented by his full name, he is more commonly identified by one or the other of its two parts—which effectively serve as alternates. The same dual-naming practice recurs in the eighth century at Calakmul, where Yuknoom Took’ K’awiil is called by a different appellative outside the city and its closest affiliates. If this were a feature repeated on the painted king list then both our missing kings might be present on K6751, but masked under different names. In this scenario Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ (Ruler 15 at J5b-I6) would be another name for Tuun K’ab Hix and Yuknoom Ti’ Chan (Ruler 18 at K4) an alternative moniker for Yax Yopaat. Without a way to confirm or contradict either option the question must remain in abeyance for the present, with the missing kings left unexplained.

This brings us to the third major difficulty, the chronological divergences between the painted and inscribed sequences. Two instances are now particularly salient. After the accession of K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ the K6751 text moves to that of Sky Witness, an event that it assigns to the Calendar Round 10 Caban 10 Pop. However, this combination does not occur within the 561-572 span we currently have for that king, with the two closest placements falling either much too early in 543 or much too late in 595. A second case comes where K6751 puts the accession of Scroll Serpent to the previously noted 9 Imix 9 Yaxkin, whereas Calakmul Stela 33 clearly states that he became an ajaw on 11 Caban 10 Ch’en (Martin 1997:862). The latter is fixed to 9.7.5.14.17 (579), while the closest point the painted version can be placed is 9.7.18.16.1 (592), some 13 years later. For the inauguration date of K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ to be entirely correct and others not simply awry, but wildly so, must give us pause.

Are we, in fact, asking the right question of the data? As we have seen, K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’s accession was not into the standard status of ajaw, but specifically into that of kaloomte’ (Figure 7a). As my colleagues David Stuart and Marc Zender (pers. comms. 2017) have urged me to consider, might these ill-fitting dates refer to separate ceremonies that mark progress to that exalted rank? This kind of statement is extremely rare and otherwise only known from Tikal, where it occurs in the inaugurations of the kings Jasaw Chan K’awiil in 682, Yik’in Chan K’awiil in 734, and Yax Nuun Ahiin II in 768 (Figure 7b). One further instance at Palenque, a differently phrased back-reference to the accession of K’inich Kan Bahlam II in 684, exhausts the list. That Dzibanche, Tikal, and Palenque were all powerful hegemons when these phrases appear gives ample reason to see this expression as indicative of special power and authority. In the case of Yik’in Chan K’awiil and K’inich Kan Bahlam, at least, other inaugural statements make clear that they became an ajaw on the same day as they acquired kaloomte’ status—there was no delayed ceremony in their cases.

Figure 7. Seating into kaloomte’[-ship]: a) Dzibanche Building IV Lintel 3 (pI2-J2a); a) Tikal Stela 21 (B10-A11) (photographs by Peter Harrison and William Coe).

Nevertheless, we do have an interesting parallel elsewhere, though to find it we must travel far from the central lowlands to the eastern periphery of the Maya world. In 724 K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat became the king of Quirigua under the auspices of Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil of Copan—an event expressed by means a selection of different verbs, including uch’am(aw) k’awiil “he receives/takes K’awiil” (Looper 2003:Fig.2.1a). But 14 years later, in 738, he seized his overlord and beheaded him. At this point he underwent a second uch’amaw k’awiil event and, although the relevant text on Stela J (H5-G6) does not say so directly, it must be at this point he begins to use the kaloomte’ title that, as a vassal, would previously have been denied to him.[8] Here is a better precedent for what could be happening on the Dynastic Vases, if under very different circumstances.

It is certainly possible that Scroll Serpent became an ajaw in 579, but a kaloomte’ only in 592—perhaps after some notable political or military accomplishment. This might also motivate the inclusion of the kaloomte’ title in his short identifying phrase on K6751, a feature only otherwise associated with Ruler 2.[9] When it comes to Sky Witness, it is clearly much harder to argue that he acquired the highest title in 595. It is true that his name appears as the protagonist of an attack on Palenque in 599, which has long been enigmatic, and conceivably the two dates are related in some way (though see Note 13). But at least until that anomaly can be explained, it is easier to interpret 10 Caban 10 Pop as a straightforward copying error.[10]

A further idea, developed from other evidence, is that at certain places and times the Classic Maya operated a system of dual-rulership, consisting of a senior and junior king. We have a number of occasions on which two contemporary characters carry full emblem glyphs, whether as father and son, or as brothers. Rather than an honorific paving the way to future power, these shared titles could indicate joint governmental responsibilities (Houston 2012:171), especially at powerful centers where administrative workloads may have been higher than most, and a greater-than-normal emphasis put on unquestioned succession.

A good example turns up at Calakmul itself, where the reigning king Yuknoom Ch’een II elevates his presumed son, Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ II, to full k’uhul kaanul ajaw status by 662, when he was just 14 years of age (Martin 2009, 2014:356). Yuknoom Ch’een, almost 62 at the time and perhaps not expecting to live too much longer, seems here to be establishing not an heir-apparency but a junior kingship. But even for co-kings closer in age one key distinction would remain: only the senior figure would carry the kaloomte’ title. On Ucanal Stela 4 we see two lords, one identified as a k’uhul k’anwitznal kaloomte’, the other as a k’uhul k’anwitznal ajaw (Martin 2014:76). Though this is a late monument, this might not be a new system but an existing one newly brought to the fore. Similarly, at Motul de San José a long-established monarch is joined by a younger partner with a full emblem glyph, someone who acquires the kaloomte’ title only after the senior king’s death (Tokovinine and Zender 2012:46). The same might be said for the young lords bearing emblems who perform on the Bonampak Murals (Houston 2012:167). All were ranked beneath the true king and kaloomte’ holder. A further instance could be relevant and lend still more credence to this scenario, since it comes from a fragment of inscribed vessel discovered at Dzibanche (Velásquez and Balanzario 2016). It names a k’uhul kaanul ajaw who is also a sukuwinik ch’ok kaloomte’ “Older Brother Prince, Kaloomte’”. We know from comparable cases at Palenque and La Corona that statements of age-seniority such as this signify that there are two brothers—one the ruler, the other the baah ch’ok destined to succeed him. In a kaloomte’-bearing kingdom that junior person would likely also be an emblem-carrying k’uhul ajaw. We find precisely this dual status held by Upakal K’inich, the younger brother and heir of K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb III of Palenque, who might better be considered his junior co-king (Miller and Martin 2004:232; Stuart 2005:40, 189).[11]

These features find an interesting and potentially important parallel in the Postclassic Maya highlands. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1909:615-617) describes an intricate structure of governance for the K’iche’ polity based at Utatlan: consisting of a supreme king as well as a king-elect, each from a separate lineage, whose sons held the ranks of major and minor “captain,” presumably a military command.[12] Each lord would advance in turn from one position to the next up the hierarchical chain (though if they were judged insufficiently capable they could be passed over). This system ensured that whoever reached ultimate power would have served in all the lower offices, and therefore have both maturity and experience in governing as well as leading armies. Postclassic Maya kingship has always been set apart from its predecessor, but perhaps this practice had deeper roots in the culture. It might not have been a ubiquitous practice for the Classic Maya but, rather a situational strategy that met the needs of particular times and circumstances.

Whether this has any relevance at all to the conundrums of Dynastic Vases remains unclear, but it is one of the few ways that the seemingly aberrant dates of K6751 might be intentional and, more or less, correct. Conceivably, their mismatched positions allude to a senior-junior kingship system for the Snake dynasty at Dzibanche—in which, after the death of the standing kaloomte’ the title passed to the current ajaw, and a new candidate was drawn into that status. The hypothesis allows for a delayed, enhanced accession, but also makes it possible that this powerful polity was continuously ruled by a monarch of the highest rank, without the lacuna that is otherwise implied by a new solo king working his way toward kaloomte’ status.[13]

But before we get too enthusiastic about this scenario, we would do well to acknowledge an impediment that might be enough to dissuade us from it—in this case at least. We must accept, for example, that junior kings could perform Period Endings, as Scroll Serpent does for 9.7.10.0.0 (583) in the retrospective text on Calakmul Stela 33 (Martin 1996). More significantly, the same inscription moves on to the 9.8.0.0.0 (593) ceremony, without mentioning the supposedly key date 9 Imix 9 Yaxkin date we have on K6751. Whether relevant or not, it should also be noted that he carries no kaloomte’ title here, or in another inscription recalling of the 593 commemoration on Calakmul Stela 8.[14]

* * *

With the 550 date now in hand, one might attempt a reconstruction of the chronology for the Dynastic Vases (though I confess some reluctance to do so, given the continuing uncertainties). The scheme set out in Table 1 works its way back in time using the minimum number of required corrections, alighting on the next available Calendar Round position in each case.[15] Since any reign longer than 52 years will slip through such a calculation, additional columns have been introduced at two points where a very long reign seems possible (there may be one other). A dating scheme without longer reigns puts the accession of the dynastic founder Skyraiser to the year 232. This is probably too conservative. If we instead count back from 550 using an average reign-length of 22.5 years—which is derived from the Copan and Palenque sequences, as well as 881 years of English and British history (Martin 1997:853-854)—we reach the year 212. Doing the same calculation from 592, the best date available for Ruler 19, would put the origin of the dynasty still earlier, to about 187. Interestingly, all of these estimates would make the Kaanul line of Dzibanche less ancient than its great rival, the Mutul dynasty of Tikal. Similar calculations performed on Tikal’s count of kings put its founding before 100 (Martin 2003:5, n.6). This differential is clear when we consider that K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’s reign as the 16th king of Dzibanche overlapped with that of Wak Chan K’awiil, who was 21st in the Tikal line.

To conclude, the Dynastic Vase sequence, against the odds and despite all its errors and unexplained anomalies, has a basis in history and presents the first 19 kings of the Snake dynasty. The texts that seemed so deficient at one time, have begun to suggest that only our understanding of them is inadequate. The direct link between this sequence and a monument at Dzibanche gives us added confidence that this city was indeed the capital of the Early Classic Snake kings, in line with the evidence of names, titles, and a Snake toponym already uncovered there. Though other options have found favor, this is good evidence that the origins of this important dynasty were in modern-day Quintana Roo, Mexico. If we can fathom the puzzles that remain—rather than be bamboozled by numerous chak chay[16]—we might yet cast some light on the structure of the Snake kingdom in its first incarnation. We must hope that future epigraphic finds, from Dzibanche and elsewhere, will ultimately unravel its secrets. If the history of research thus far is anything to go by, there will be more surprises ahead, and yet more opportunities to rethink the “Serpent State.”

Notes

[Note 1] The ending on toponyms spelled by a la suffix is as yet unknown and should properly be rendered –Vl. However, in line with recent publications this paper will from here on use Kaanul, with no implication that this is correct.

[Note 2] Here the winikhaab or “K’atun” unit has been suppressed or obscured by the i-u-ti-ya i uhtiiy “then (it) happened” verb. The spelling of the month Uo here receives the unique spelling of wo-hi woh, the form in use in Yucatan when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century (Martin 1997:854). An alternative to the Classic form IHK’-AT ihk’at that we see in other spellings in the inscriptions—even elsewhere on the Dynastic Vases (see K6751 J6b)—the terms presumably coexisted, but woh may have been the vernacular form for the vase painters. The strangeness of this section is increased by the proportions and alignment of the glyphs, which have the awkward task of filling the skewed remaining space at the end of the text. The painter seems to have stopped and restarted his work, possibly adding some part—the possessed vase and name phrase in particular—on a later occasion.

[Note 3] This scheme reconstructs a base-date of 9.5.18.13.2, 6 Ik 10 Kankin (552) from a Distance Number of 1.4.18 that counts from there to the Period Ending 9.6.0.0.0, 9 Ahau 3 Uayeb (554). A second Distance Number of 2.12.14 links the base-date (which likely marks the building’s dedication) to the preceding accession event on 9.5.16.0.8, 7 Lamat 6 Uo (550) (Martin and Beliaev 2017:Table 1).

[Note 4] This finding suggests that we take a fresh look at the Snake royal names from the Dzibanche region and specifically the potential versions of Sky Witness’s moniker. Blocks CX15-CX17 of the Resbalon Hieroglyphic Stairway, associated with a Snake emblem glyph, provide the core elements of his name in the form u-?UT[T650] CHAN-na (Martin 1997:861). Stela 3 at Pol Box gives a closely related version, with the addition of a hand-based compound that can also be recognized on Block CX14 from Resbalon (Esparza and Pérez 2009:9-10). Octavio Esparza proposed that the hand was a later-disused YUK logogram, elaborated with no and ma to represent yuknoom. The case for this is much strengthened by an inscribed bone recovered from an important burial in the Temple of the Cormorants at Dzibanche (Velásquez 2008b). This also appears to have a Sky Witness name, this time introduced by a clear yuknoom: yu[ku]-no-ma ?UT-tu[T650-CHAN]-na. Returning to Resbalon, we can now say that the fullest name appears there as ?YUK-no-ma u-?UT[T650]-CHAN K’AHK’-BAHLAM?. As Erik Velásquez (2008b) suggests, the tomb of Sky Witness—richly equipped with jade—has surely been found at Dzibanche.

[Note 5] See Carter (2016:350-351) for a discussion of some of the copying errors on the Dynastic Vases.

[Note 6] The value ?CH’EEN is represented by two logograms, one a bird’s head, the other a more variable sign that focuses on bones and dark places (Vogt and Stuart 2005:157-163). Originally, the bird was distinguished by a tri-lobed eyelid and what often looks like a bundle of sticks on its facing left-side. However, by Late Classic times both features could be dispensed with and a pared down raptor-head suffices to spell the word. Nevertheless, Figure 5c shows two faint strokes through the eye that may allude to the lobed form.

[Note 7] Several of the component blocks from this stairway carry Calendar Round dates, the clearest being 5 Chicchan 3 Yaxkin (seen twice), 6 Men 18 Pax, and perhaps 10 Chicchan? 18 Xul (see Velásquez 2004b). Even without a tie to the Long Count, calculation shows that if these positions are correct they are quite widely spaced in time, spanning in excess of 20 years. The Long Count counterparts that fit a projected reign for Ruler 10, as well as meshing with the style parameters offered by Uaxactun Stela 19, fall into the second column of potential correlations in Table 1 of this posting.

[Note 8] Altar M is the earliest known product of K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat’s reign and carries a text describing its own making in 734, four years prior to the conflict with Copan (Looper 2003:59-61). Oddly, it is owned by some other person (an ancestor or father?) and the king supervises its dedication. His titles are damaged, but appear to include the nohol kaloomte’ “South Kaloomte’” epithet he bears on Stela J (C14-D14). Nevertheless, I am reluctant to see this as evidence for his use of this high status prior to the split with Copan. Either this monument is deliberately retrospective, or indicates that K’ahk’ Tiliw had politically detached himself prior to the decisive clash.

[Note 9] We have no knowledge of this early period, but ascribing the kaloomte’ epithet to Ruler 2 (a feature of most Dynastic Vases) may serve to distinguish him from the founder as the first king to claim or be ascribed that rank.

[Note 10] The easiest amendment would be to the initial coefficient, and a number of alternatives fall within the required 556-582 range: *3 Caban 10 Pop for 9.7.1.5.17 (575), *4 Caban 10 Pop for 9.6.9.2.17 (563), *7 Caban 10 Pop for 9.7.5.6.17 (579), *8 Caban 10 Pop for 9.6.13.3.17 (567), *12 Caban 10 Pop for 9.6.17.4.17 (571), and *13 Caban 10 Pop for 9.6.5.1.17 (559). Selecting an alternative coefficient for Pop (0, 5, or 15), while keeping 10 Caban, produces no eligible results. In Table 1, I use *12 Caban for the arbitrary reason that it is the simplest copying error for 10 Caban available.

[Note 11] Additionally, there is the case presented by Naranjo Stelae 18 and 46, in which two ch’ok—certainly brothers, perhaps even twins—were promoted during the reign of their presumed father K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Chaahk (Martin et al. in press). The manner in which the order of their names is reversed on each monument, as if to avoid prioritizing one over the other, suggests that they were equals intended to be future co-rulers of some kind.

[Note 12] I am indebted to Frauke Sachse (pers. comm. 2017) for pointing out this parallel.

[Note 13] This system might also offer a way of understanding the 599 date for Sky Witness at Palenque. Theoretically, this character could be a later namesake of the 17th ruler, a sub-king of Scroll Serpent who we otherwise have no record of.

[Note 14] The later interest in Scroll Serpent could well be motivated because he was the father of Yuknoom Ch’een II (Martin and Grube 2000:106). A damaged Distance Number on Stela 33 might connect 9.8.0.0.0 to the birth of Yuknoom Ch’een on 9.8.7.2.17 (600), the king who commissioned this monument in 657.

[Note 15] Amendments were made by comparing the full range of vases in search of workable combinations (although several are so overpainted as to be worthless for this exercise), or identifying coefficients that can be considered canonical rather than exceptional. At times the process amounts to no more than guesswork. It is noticeable that necessary corrections cluster toward the early part of the sequence (i.e. Rulers 1-6 in Table 1), possibly a hint that later dates are more reliable.

[Note 16] A close relative of the herring.

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Stuart, David. 2005. The Inscriptions from Temple XIX at Palenque: A Commentary. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Tokovinine, Alexandre, and Marc Zender. 2012. Lords of Windy Water: The Royal Court of Motul de San José in Classic Maya Inscriptions. In Motul de San José: Politics, History, and Economics in a Maya Polity, edited by Antonia E. Foias and Kitty F. Emery, pp.30-66. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Velásquez García, Erik. 2004a. “Los posibles alcances territoriales de la influencia política de Dzibanché durante el Clásico temprano: nuevas alternativas para interpretar las menciones epigráficas tempranas sobre Kaan”. Paper presented at the V Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Palenque, Mexico.

_______________. 2004b. Los Escalones Jeroglíficos de Dzibanché. In Los Cautivos de Dzibanché, edited by Enrique Nalda, pp. 78-103. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

_______________. 2005. The Captives of Dzibanche. In The PARI Journal 6(2):1-4.

_______________. 2008a. Los posibles alcances territoriales de la influencia política de Dzibanché durante el Clásico temprano: Nuevas alternativas para interpretar las menciones históricas sobre la entidad política de Kan. In El Territorio Maya, Memoria de la Quinta Mesa Redonda de Palenque, edited/coordinated by Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo, pp. 323-352. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

_______________. 2008b. “En Busca de Testigo Cielo (ca. 561-572 d.C.): El Punzón de Hueso del Edificio de los Cormoranes de Dzibanché.” Paper presented at the VI Mesa Redonda de Palenque, November 16-21 2008, Palenque, Mexico.

Velásquez García, Erik, and Sandra Balanzario Granados. 2016. “Rulers of the Kanu’l Dynasty from the Perspective of Dzibanche, Quintana Roo, Mexico.” Paper presented at the 81^st Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, April 6-10, Orlando, Florida.

Vogt, Evon Z., and David Stuart. 2005. Ritual Caves Among the Ancient and Modern Maya. In In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, edited by James E. Brady and Keith M. Prufer, pp. 155-185. University of Texas Press, Austin.

by Stephen Houston, Charles Golden, and Andrew Scherer

Of late, university libraries have tended to exile books and print journals to off-campus storage. The purge makes room, as at Brown University, for “digital studios,” work spaces, and spots where students might snack on Dining Service muffins. The electronic media are new, but not the challenge of how to store portable reading material. Certain media get bulky. If valuable or spiritually precious, they require yet other forms of storage and access.

Think of the Mediterranean. Clay tablets of Linear B, in Mycenaean Greek, were nestled in baskets with small “carelessly manufactured” labels to indicate contents (Linear B) or they were found close to the resources being inventoried by tablets (Palaima and Wright 1985: 257, 260). Long-term storage does not seem to have been the aim, and, at Pylos, where such archives were studied in detail, storage was relatively limited (Palaima and Wright 1985: 259). The Romans left more overt evidence of storage. For grouping and ease of transport, papyri could be inserted into cylindrical containers known as capsa, of which a clear illustration occurs in the House of Marcus Lucretius at Pompeii (Figure 1).

Figure 1.  Fresco of instrumentum scriptorium, c. AD 45-79, House of Marcus Lucretius, Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. 

More secure storage involved cabinets with doors, of which a smattering appear in frescoes, the side of a sarcophagus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, in an early Christian context, a plate in the Codex Amiatinus from Monkwearmouth-Jarrow in northern England (Figure 2). Such armoires allowed books to be locked up and their contents arranged in ways logical to users.

Figure 2.  Upper left, papyrus and tablet storage on shelves, c. AD 200, Buzenol, Belgium (Musée du Cinquantenaire, Brussels); lower left, detail of sarcophagus showing Greek physician, c. AD 300, Ostia (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nº 48.76.1); right, Ezra the Scribe writing in front of armoire with books, AD 692 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Cod. Amiati 1, f. 5r; see also Menighini and Rea 2014: 122, 186, 206). 

These examples from the Old World raise questions about information storage elsewhere. Most Maya books, for example,are readily identified in painted imagery on polychrome pots by their jaguar-hide coverings, some more squared-off than others (see the pioneering study by M. Coe [1977]). Thickness is hard to judge, but, after looking at the proportions of bodies nearby, they could be an armful, 10–15 cm. thick at least and probably rather more than that.A constant disappointment for Mayanists is that no books survive in good shape from the Classic period (Carter and Dobereiner 2016). Were they stuffed into bags, lodged in recessed shelving (of which some occur in Maya palaces) or sequestered in temple summits?  There are no archives like those at Pylos or Roman villas with carbonized scrolls and furniture. But there is one possibility: Maya screenfold books, configured like leporello or concertina bindings in Europe, were stored in individual receptacles that highlighted their singular, precious nature. (For opera lovers: “leporello” probably derives from the long list of sexual conquests itemized by a character of that name in Mozart’s Don Giovanni).

One relevant clue is in the form of a stone box recovered from the Hun Nal Ye cave, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala (Woodfill et al. 2012: 98). Two other boxes of ceramic, each with lids, were found nearby, lodged at different levels of flowstone (Woodfill et al. 2012: fig. 6). Carved in two different phases at least, the box accords roughly with the shape of the surviving Maya codices (Woodfill et al. 2012: 98, 107): 38 cm long, 21 cm wide, 10.9 cm tall, with an internal receptacle sufficient to contain a book. By comparison, the four Maya books have the following measurements (M. Coe et al. 2015: 121, organized by relative date, earliest to latest): Grolier, average page width: 12.5 cm, greatest page height: 18.0 cm, probable page height: 23 cm; Madrid, average page width: 12.2 cm, average page height: 22.6 cm; Paris, average page width: 13.0 cm, average page height: 24.8 cm; Dresden, average page width: 9 cm, average page height: 20.5 cm. The Hun Nal Ye “coffer” obliges by showing a reference to a lunar month in both glyphic and iconographic form on its lid–a possible reference to a moon-related codex?–and images of supernaturals holding books on the sides of the box. Regrettably, when opened, the box from Hun Nal Ye yielded only the calcified femur of a tapir, doubtless not its original contents.

Figure 3. The Hun Nal Ye coffer. Photograph by Jorge Pérez de Lara. 

Other rectangular boxes, usually of ceramic, are known in the Maya region. Here is a partial list (see also Figure 4; see also Arte Primitivo 3/06/2017 auction, #191; Golden has also seen such a lidded stone box on display in the Museo Chichicastenango; see also Pillsbury et al. 2015: figs. 29, 30). The variance is wide, but so is the relative size of books in Mesoamerica. The Codex Borgia, for example, measures 27 x 27 cm, the Codex Cospi 18 x 18 cm.  There are necessary cautions, to be sure: most such boxes, when recovered in context, contained cache items of sundry sort, not the flecks of a decayed book (W. Coe 1990: 322–324). But the boxes could easily have been repurposed, a receptacle to be later cached in buildings, caves or under stelae.

Table 1:  Ceramic boxes

Princeton Art Museum, body                                    17 cm (wd) x h. 23.5 cm (ht) 

Tikal Cache 119 (excludes legs)                               35 cm (l) x 25.2 cm (wd) x 27 cm (ht)

Caracol S.D. C141C-2                                                  23 cm (l) x 16 cm (wd) x 13 cm (ht)

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2008.59  45.09 cm (l) x 27.31 cm (wd) x 35.56 cm (ht)

Christies box                                                                 23 cm (l) x 13 cm (wd) x 16 (ht)

Guaytan subfloor, tomb 1, Structure 24                  41 cm (l) x c. 23 cm (wd) x c. 18 cm (ht) (from photo, without lid)

Quirigua Stela E                                                          c. 30 cm (l) x  20 cm (wd) x 15 cm (ht)(judged from photo, unlidded)

Quirigua Zoomorph G                                                31.5 cm (l) x 20 cm (wd) x 27 cm (ht)

A sample of images gives some sense of their variety, a few like boxes, others resembling house models (Figure 4).  The first photo even shows one such box during its excavation in the North Acropolis at Tikal.

Figure 4. Ceramic boxes from Maya region: (A, B) Cache 119, from court fronting Structure 5D-26, North Acropolis (Culbert 1993: fig. 105a); (C) Caracol Structure A1 (drawing courtesy of Arlen Chase, Caracol Project, University of Nevada-Las Vegas); (D) subfloor cache, Guaytan, Guatemala (Smith and Kidder 1943: fig 41c, c’); (E) Hu Nal Ye Box (Woodfill et al. 2012: 98, photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara); (F) Quirigua Stela E cache and Zoomorph G cache (Strömsvik 1941: 81, fig. 32b, c); (G) unprovenanced, Christies Paris, May 2007, Lot 115.

And perhaps some were sealed neatly with ritual paper, as on La Florida Stela 9, although this could also have been a holder for a stingray spine (Figure 5). The point is that these books do not suggest the presence of bulk- or mass-storage. Some were kept in “bespoke” boxes, not so much Taschen-style, deluxe editions as objects of sacred meaning, to be set apart, kept apart, ritually activated, perhaps even sprinkled with incense and other offerings.

Figure 5. Detail of La Florida Stela 9 (Graham 1970: fig. 9b). 

In the tropics, however, permanent storage is hard to achieve with pounded bark paper and lime-sizing. Bugs, moisture, wear-and-tear, and flaking surfaces will all have their effects–there is, after all, a reason why no books survive entire from the Classic period. The discovery of elaborate notations on the walls of Structure 10K-2 at Xultun, Guatemala, present another interpretive possibility, of cross-media play and targeted preservation (Saturno et al. 2012; Rossi et al. 2015).

That these texts and notations relate to books seems assured. But what was that relation? Were they test jottings and compositional experiments, a unidirectional “flow” from wall to a target codex? Or was the tie to books rather more complex, even bi-directional? Houston has long felt that the Early Classic text on the walls of Uaxactun Structure BXIII had some bearing on the nature of that relation: the horizontal text, replete with archaic day signs, has the savor of a basal historical notation (Smith 1950: fig. 47). Eventful days, with pendant, explanatory texts in place, leaven those of little consequence, their contents left empty. (We are reminded of Louis XVI’s daily note when Parisians stormed the Bastille: rien, “nothing”…although, in fairness to that dullard king, this comment probably referred to how many animals he had bagged that day in hunt.)

But why were such transfers necessary? Another example has come to light in an exploration by Golden and Scherer, together with René Muñoz and Guatemalan colleagues, in Tecolote, Guatemala, an outpost of Yaxchilan on the northern borders of that kingdom (Scherer and Golden 2009; for regional context, see Scherer and Golden 2012). In its central room, Structure D3-1, viewers would tilt their heads slightly and look up at an arresting sight: what appears to be an entire, unfolded codex or, rather, one side of it (Figures 6 and 7), a leporello flattened out on the wall of a darkened room.

Figure 6. Frontal view, Structure D3-1, Tecolote; figure sits by the doorway to the “codex” room. 

Figure 7. Tecolote Structure D3-1, highlighting, in red, the unfolded “codex.” 

The quality and execution of the signs were of high order (Figure 7), although the poor preservation only offers an occasional glimpse of legible text.

More revealing are the discernible measurements of the text, with two individual glyph blocks shown here in contrastive green and blue (Figure 8). The red line marks the extension of the text, which seems to contain no images. In this respect, it is closer to the “dynastic texts” studied by Simon Martin: all-glyphic, and with some complicated stemma that involves other notations, some likely to have been on perishable media (Secrets). If a direct transfer–we have no assurance of this, of course–the “codex” measured some 35 cm high and at least 2.30 m long. Such height and length could easily have been accommodated in a few of the boxes above.

Figure 8. Mosaic tile of “codex” on wall. 

The most interesting question here is not, did the Maya copy from one medium to another, but, rather, why did they do so at all? One explanation is that these were practice pieces or compositional experiments intended for transfer to books. Nonetheless, some notations at Xultun were incised, and draft copies would probably work best on an expedient material like leaves. Meticulous painting on a plaster wall is not the obvious choice for a trial run. The goal here seems instead to have been a consultable permanence: distant parallels include the manumission texts, 1300 in total, that inscribe stones in the Delphi Sanctuary in Greece (Delphi), or small temple texts in Angkor, of a size to suggest painted precursors in dried leaves or other, small-scale formats (Khmer). That some of the Maya examples come from the final century of dynastic civilization underscores its intellectual vitality but also, perhaps, a hint of anxiety that such learning would not last.

References

Carter, Nicholas, and Jeffrey Dobereiner. 2016. Multispectral Imaging of an Early Classic Maya Codex Fragment from Uaxactun. Antiquity 90 (351): 711–725.

Chase, Diane Z., and Arlen F. Chase. 2008. ¿Qué no nos cuentan los jeroglíficos?: arqueología e historia en Caracol, Belice. Mayab 20: 93–108.

Coe, Michael. 1977. Supernatural Patrons of Maya Scribes and Artists. In Social Process in Maya Prehisotry: Studies in Honour of Sir Eric Thompson, edited by Norman Hammond, 327–347. Academic Press, London.

Coe, Michael, Stephen Houston, Mary Miller, and Karl Taube. 2015. The Fourth Maya Codex. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, 116–67. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Coe, William R. 1990. Tikal Report No. 14, Volume II: Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrance, and North Acropolis of Tikal. University Monograph 61. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Culbert, T. Patrick. 1993. Tikal Report No. 25, Part A: The Ceramics of Tikal: Vessels from the Burials, Caches, and Problematical Deposits. University Museum Monograph 81. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Graham, Ian. 1970. The Ruins of La Florida, Peten, Guatemala. In Monographs and Papers in Maya Archaeology, edited by William R. Bullard, Jr;. 425–455. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 61. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Meneghini, Roberto, and Rossella Rea, eds. 2014. La Biblitoteca Infinita i Luoghi del Sapare nel Mondo Antico. Electa, Milan.

Palaima, Thomas G., and James C. Wright. 1985. Ins and Outs of the Archives Rooms at Pylos: Form and Function in a Mycenaean Palace. American Journal of Archaeology 89: 251–262. (Palaima and Wright)

Pillsbury, Joanne, Patricia Joan Sarro, James Doyle, and Juliet Wiersema. 2015. Design for Eternity: Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Rossi, Franco D., William A. Saturno, and Heather Hurst. 2016. Maya Codex Book Production and the Politics of Expertise: Archaeology of a Classic Period Household at Xultun, Guatemala. American Anthropologist 117: 116–132.

Saturno, William A., David Stuart, Anthony F. Aveni, and Franco Rossi. 2012. Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala. Science 336(6082): 714-717.

Scherer, Andrew K., and Charles Golden. Tecolote, Guatemala: Archaeological Evidence for a Fortified Late Classic Maya Political Border. Journal of Field Archaeology 34(3): 285-305.

Scherer, Andrew K., and Charles Golden. 2012. Revisiting Maler’s Usumacinta: Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Smith, A. Ledyard. 1950. Uaxactun, Guatemala: Excavations of 1931-1937. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 588. Washington, DC.

Smith, A. Ledyard, and Alfred V. Kidder. 1943. Explorations in the Motagua Valley, Guatemala. Contributions to American Anthropology and History 41. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 546. Washington, DC.

Woodfill, Brent, Stanley Guenter, and Mirza Monterroso. 2012. Changing Patterns of Ritual Activity in an Unlooted Cave in Central Guatemala. Latin American Antiquity 23(1): 93–119.

by Stephen Houston (Brown), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Marc Zender (Tulane)

The Maya region abounds in reptiles: by one count there are as many as 240 distinct species in Guatemala alone. It would not be surprising, then, if the Classic Maya took note of them and even mentioned some in their writing. The references could even be exalted, extending to royal names or to those of high nobles. At Bonampak and sites nearby, a ruler (or two) went by the name AJ-SAK-te-le-se/TELES, Aj Sak Teles, “He, the White Lizard” (see Tokovinine 2012:65, also Bonampak Stela 1:K1 [Figure 1A]), Stela 2:G4, Lintel 3, A9 (Figure 1B), Bonampak Structure 1, Room 2, East Jamb:A1–B1 [Miller and Brittenham 2013:240], and Dumbarton Oaks Panel 2:D1-C2, L4-K5 [Figure 1C, Mathews 1980:figs. 2, 3, 7]). This term may be linked to its label in Tzotzil, teleš, for Basiliscus vittatus, a crested lizard with the surprising ability to run at a good clip over water (Laughlin 1970:335; note, however, that the compiler of this dictionary sees it as Spanish in origin, from “Andrew,” perhaps a doubtful surmise). Another lord on a late vase from Señor del Peten (or “Nuevo Veracruz”), Quintana Roo, reveals a second lizard name, also equipped with a color designation (Cortés de Brasdefer 1996): AJ-YAX-to-lo-ki?, Aj Yax Tolook, “He, the Green/Blue Lizard” (Figure 1E, see also K3026, CHAK ch’o-ko KELEEM ‘a-*la-tzi to-lo-ko 4-‘e?-*k’e? [Figure 1D]). This appears also to be a kind of basilisk lizard, tojrok in present-day Ch’orti’–for some reason, the puréed brains of this reptile appear to have been used for medicinal purposes (Hull 2016:410).

Figure 1.  Probable lizard names in Late Classic texts: A) Bonampak Stela 1:K1 (photographer unknown); B) Bonampak Stela 2:G4 (drawing by Peter Mathews; C) Dumbarton Oaks Panel 1:D1-C2 (photograph from Dumbarton Oaks); D) K3026 (courtesy Justin Kerr, copyright Justin Kerr); and E) Señor del Peten vase (Cortés de Brasdefer 1996:fig. 5). 

Another lizard name, probably also for a basilisk–was there no end to their wonder for this creature?–has recently come to light. Excavations by Tomás Barrientos, Marcello Canuto and their team at La Corona, Guatemala, recovered a remarkably preserved, all-glyphic block that the project has labelled “Element 56” (Stuart et al. 2015). Dating to April 9, AD 690, the block provides one of those minute clues, seemingly insignificant but indispensable for decipherment, that enliven and advance Maya epigraphy.  The clue appears in the name of a local ruler who was the younger brother of the preceding ruler. His name contains much of interest: CHAK-AK’, “Great or Red Turkey,” a distinct lizard head, then ku-yu, kuy, probably for a kind of owl (for discussions of these readings in other contexts, see Grube and Nahm 1994:703–704; the AK’ is suggested by an ‘a-k’a spelling at pB4–pA5 on La Corona Panel 3, in a piece held by the Israel Museum, #B95.0149, K5865; other uses of the turkey head for AK’, often without the full wattle [a hen rather than a gobbler?], come to our attention on Caracol Stela 6:C12, ya-?AK’-wa, Dos Pilas Stela 1:B2, AK’-ta-ja, and Palenque, Temple of the Inscriptions, Middle Tablet:M6, ya-AK’-wa).

Figure 2. Variant forms of royal name at La Corona, Element 56; Element 56: pF2-E3 (top) and pB1-pA2 (bottom). 

Such chains of animal names appear with celebrated personages like Kaan-Bahlam of Palenque. At La Corona, this lord’s name included two birds (the turkey and owl) and what is, to judge from its scutes and scaly skin, a reptile of some sort. La Corona ran the gamut of such references, including rulers named after a cricket, snake, and dog.) The relevant clue to the reptile is the ti syllable inserted underneath. Ordinarily, this would hardly signify, for any number of words might end in a t, with varying vowel complexity depending on the word.

But here we can draw on another “substitution set,” a sequence of signs that helps to establish controls even if the overall meaning remains opaque. This sequence embroiders several texts, most from the Early Classic period, two come from the city of Yaxchilan, Mexico, another from Caracol, Belize (Figure 3). An unhappy truth for Maya epigraphers is that we can sometimes read the sounds being spelled by signs but can not, to any persuasive degree, grope towards their meaning. So is it with this set: ‘i-ti pa-ti yi-pi ya-je-la (the ‘i alternates with a vulture plucking out the eye of a dog, perhaps some onomatopoeic name for such birds). Clearly, at least at Yaxchilan, the set forms part of a lavish string of fuller names and titles employed by certain rulers.

Figure 3. Title sequence: A) Caracol Stela 23:I1-J1 (drawing by Nikolai Grube); B) Yaxchilan Lintel 22:A1-B3 (drawing by Ian Graham); and C) Yaxchilan Lintel 47A4-D3 (drawing by Ian Graham.

The mystery of what this sequence might mean cannot be solved at this time. What is of immediate concern are the two reptile heads in place of the pa-ti. By standard, and warranted, epigraphic supposition, one alternates with the other, and the ti surely serves as a syllabic complement to a CVC or CVCVC word sign. Paat or pa’t, from the disharmonic ti, yields welcome results: a basic source on Ch’orti’ Maya, the target language for most decipherments, gives us “ah pat, lagartija (small lizard, probably the newt, or e’t)” (Wisdom n.d., though we doubt the “newt” identification), and a yet more complete compilation, by Kerry Hull, supplies “ajpat. anim. largato, largatija. lizard” (Hull 2016:41). These terms are securely cognate with a range of words for “lizard” or basilisk, ix=pa7ch or ix-pa’ch in more conventional phonological notation (Kaufman 2003:641; note that Terrence Kaufman derives the word from Mije-Sokean languages, a link that, if it exists, must have gone far back into the Preclassic period). To this Yukatek adds: (ah) pach “lagarto coronado con cresta y macho” (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:616). The internal glottal stop relates anciently to the vowel complexity attested in the Classic spelling. Most of these terms probably connect as well to words for “back, spine,” paat or paach, depending on the language. In syllabic form, the name materializes in the area of Lacanha or Bonampak (Figure 4): a lord from that area went by yi-ch’a-ki pa-ti, Yich’ak Paat/Pa’t, “Claw of the Crested Lizard,” on Piedras Negras Panel 2, and another figure, attested on an unprovenanced altar at the Art Institute of Chicago, was called a-ku[lu] pa-ti, Ahkul Paat/Pa’t, “Turtle-ish Crested Lizard” (AIC #1971.895).

Figure 4.  Other probable examples of “Crested Lizard” names:  left, Piedras Negras Panel 2:I’1–J’1 (drawing by David Stuart); and right, Art Institute of Chicago, Altar:G1 (photograph from the Art Institute of Chicago, courtesy Richard Townsend, drawing by David Stuart). 

This crested lizard, probably some variant of a basilisk, figures in a number of images (Figure 5). The most elaborate shows an enigmatic scene in which two reptiles are being brutalized by black-painted figures, one caparisoned as a water bird–a digging stick seems to serve as a weapon for one tormentor, while the other slings rocks. A miserable-looking crocodile sits nearby on a throne, his arms bound around his back. Evidence of a feast–a tamale bowl and pulque vase (see the white froth)–complete the image, although the reptiles do not appear to relish the moment. Has a party been interrupted, will they be included, after suitable butchering and cooking, as part of the meal?

Figure 5. Probable paat or pa’t lizards: A) Stoning and torture of captured crocodile and paat/pa’t lizard; and B) paat/pa’t lizard on primordial mountain (K6547, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin).     

The link of basilisks and drinking bowls marks one final image, on a late 6th-century, early 7th-century bowl from Altun Ha, Belize (Figure 6).  The lizard with flowery ornament on its brow long tail and dotted crest occurs in a watery scene that also contains the sign for musk or mead, the latter perhaps being the more likely connotation (cf. Figure 3B, 3C above; for another sign of musk or mead, Pendergast 1990:fig. 152a).  Leaning over slightly, his arm rises in servitude–was this tied in some way to the tableau of torture, either as prelude or epilogue?  Many of these bowls display pizotes or monkeys, the creatures most likely to poach succulent cacao pods, or they highlight birds of a pleasant, watery world (see Taube’s contribution to Ogata et al. 2006).  Whether any of these associations explain the royal name at La Corona remains a subject for future thought.

Figure 6. Bowl from Burial C-16, Altun Ha (Pendergast 1982:fig. 106d).  

Acknowledgements  Warm thanks go to the Universidad del Valle and Tulane teams, directed by Tomás Barrientos and Marcello Canuto, for granting access to the La Corona panel.

References

Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo, Juan Ramón Bastarrachea, and William Brito Sansores. 1980 Diccionario Maya Cordemex. Ediciones Cordemex, Mérida, Yucatan.

Cortés de Brasdefer, Fernando. A Maya Vase from “El Señor del Petén.” Mexicon 18(1): 6.

Grube, Nikolai, and Werner Nahm. A Census of Xibalba: A Complete Inventory of Way Characters on Maya Ceramics. In The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 4, edited by Justin Kerr, 686–715. Kerr Associates, New York.

Hull, Kerry. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Kaufman, Terrence S. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. On-line resource at http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf.

Laughlin, Robert M. 1975. The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Number 19. Washington, DC.

Mathews, Peter. 1980. Notes on the Dynastic Sequence of Bonampak, Part 1. In Third Palenque Round Table, 1978, Part 2, edited by Merle G. Robertson, 60–73. Proceedings of the Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, June 11–18, 1978. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Ogata, Nisao, Arturo Gómez-Pompa, and Karl A. Taube. 2006. The Domestication and Distribution of Theobroma cacao L. in the Neotropics. In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, edited by Cameron L. McNeil, 69–89. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Pendergast, David M. 1982. Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964–1970, Volume 2. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Pendergast, David M. 1990. Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964–1970, Volume 3. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Stuart, David, Marcello Canuto, Tomás Barrientos, and Maxime Lamoureax St-Hillaire. 2015. Preliminary Notes on Two Recently Discovered Inscriptions from La Corona, Guatemala. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography. La Corona block

Tokovinine, Alexandre. 2012. Carved Panel. In Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine, 58–67. Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Number 4. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

Wisdom, Charles. 1950. Materials of the Chorti Language. Middle American Cultural Anthropology Microfilm Series 5, item 28. University of Chicago Library. [Retyped by Brian Stross]

by Stephen Houston, Brown University

A fraternity of animals awaits visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There, on a page of the Indian epic, the Rāmāyaṇama, monkeys and bears gather as part of Rama’s army, soon to attack Rāvaṇa, his mortal enemy (Figure 1, Jain-Neubauer 1981:55, fig. 21). Commissioned in the early 1700s by some Rajput prince, the miniature had a devotional use, but it also served to entertain and instruct, as revealed “on special occasions” to “the eyes of connoisseurs” (Jain-Neubauer 1981:9). The lateral flow of events is consistent with these paintings. Yet there, in grinning vignette, a monkey peers out at us. His bear and monkey companions are quite stolid by comparison, for the most part looking stiffly at the enemy fortress to the left. A few stroke and clutch each other in worry or maybe they yearn to claw their way into battle.

Figure 1. Detail of Pahari miniature, Rāvaṇa sends out Śuka to spy on Rāma’s army, c. AD 1725–30, Guler State, India, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 17.2745 (photograph by Basile Baudez). 

The grinning monkey has broken the “fourth wall.” He has penetrated the divide between those inside a text, image or performance and those outside. In a sense, the spectator has become a participant. Shakespeare deployed this effect in various plays, as did Thornton Wilder in Our Town and Martin Scorsese in Goodfellas. The director Konstantin Stanislavski, father of “method acting,” and a fixture of avant-garde productions from my college years, used it to rethink modern theater.

Literary theory and cinematic studies might see the fourth wall as a “meta-reference,” an actor’s awareness that he or she exists within a work of art. There are others, those outside, who look on. As the wall crumbles, they are coaxed into the “storyworld” of a text or image (Kukkonen 2013:65), and a particular time, space, and frame reach out to enfold the viewer. The results may vary, but one can imagine responses like empathy, surprise or amusement. There is another subtlety too. In the Indian miniature, viewers may believe this is a flat painting, no monkeys present. Yet, in a word devised by the philosopher Tamar Gendler, they alieve that world of bears and heroic kings to be true and accessible (Gendler 2008). We see the monkey, and he sees us. Most likely, of course, viewers know there is no assembly of animal warriors. They are happy, however, to suspend that notion, the better to immerse themselves in the story. People can feel and believe several things at once.

Most Maya narrative images are of distinct if related storyworlds. In them, the viewer is distanced, a witness at best. [Note 1] There are exceptions, to be sure, ones that transport the spectator across the fourth wall. A monkey might look out from a perch on a mythic mountain, as cheeky as any Rajput beast, or an owl from under the bed of a cuckolded god. Indeed, owls are often shown this way. Perhaps the Maya did so to emphasize their sight or to evoke the en face conventions of the distant city of Teotihuacan [some of the earliest glyphs with frontal owls occur in personal names linked to that far place]; Figure 2A, B). Other figures are human. One is a tortured captive looking out plaintively in an image where everyone else seems to ignore the viewer (Figure 2C). By implication, the people in charge could not care less (to my mind, Maya art hints at a faint sense of disdain for the viewer, almost a devaluing of their status [but see Note 1]). Another presents a high-ranking subordinate who spells out gesturally, with fussy precision, how such minions should pose (Figure 2D). Even his hat is slightly risible, and the image in general expresses an important record of one major kingdom abasing itself before another.

Figure 2. Breaking through the fourth wall: A) Berlin Vase (K6547); B) birds under bed (K1182); C) captive in tributary scene (K680); and D) emissary from Calakmul at Tikal (K5453).  

The frontal view of a face or body as a sign of misery is hardly common in Maya art. But it does appear as a consistent theme after the first years of the Late Classic period. And there is so much misery to go around: a gutted captive (with wispy mustache?), takes time from his agony to peer through the fourth wall (Figure 3A); a sacrificial baby lies uncomfortably on its belly, face contorted to the viewer (Figure 3C); a possible captive lolls his head, a bound figure just barely visible to the right (Figure 3D); and a cuckolded god of the hunt languishes–is he ill?–while a deer carries off his probable wife (Figure 3E). Among the few glyphs with such faces is the head of a dead person with eyes closed, mouth in a rictus (Figure 3B, final sign).

Figure 3  Misery and pain in frontal view: A) captive on a sacrificial altar (K8351); B) head of deceased person as syllable na, AJ-pa-sa-hi-na, name of ‘its’aat, Xcalumkin-area, Campeche, Mexico (Kimbell Art Museum, K8017; cf. Xcalumkin Lintel 1:M1–N1); C) baby splayed for sacrifice (K1247); D) exhausted captive (?, K1645);  and (E) cuckolded hunting god (K1559).

The convention does not just appear on pottery. Panel 4 from Piedras Negras intensifies the discomfort by showing a captive who not only looks out at the viewer but hangs his head upside down, a frequent position for trophy heads on warrior’s bodies (Figure 4). Mary Miller pointed out to me long ago that Maya artists had a far freer and more innovative hand in playing with depictions of captives. Logically, those bodies were also the way to experiment with displays of emotion (Houston 2001). Was there a hint of pity in these images or was it simply Schadenfreude?

Figure 4. Piedras Negras Panel 4, detail, AD 658 (photograph by Teobert Maler). 

Accentuating the frame of a scene–or escaping its limitations–brings up an important feature of Maya imagery. There is a sustained intent to preserve and maintain clarity, to be complete and also, with texts, completely legible or viewable. Yet a change occurs in the visual culture of the Maya during the AD 600s. A fascination seems to grow for the ocular experience itself, with what the eye can see from a particular vantage point, with how materials respond to gravity, a body mass slumps, a cloth folds and wrinkles, how feathers wave to wind or movement. Has sketching begun, practices analogous to the minute, preparatory observations by Dürer or da Vinci of a certain textile or flexed hand? This ocular culture, if it can be described as such, engenders a kind of illusionism, a playful interest in implying the existence of glyphs behind images, bodies that move out of frame but are still held to exist off-frame. The viewer both believes (we presume) that there is no such body but, in Gendler’s term, alieves it be present. A captive’s body or foot goes off frame, in carvings by the great master Mayuy (Figures 5A, B), but the convention also operates in painting (Figure 5C).

Figure 5. Going off-frame: A) Kimbell Lintel, c. AD 783, AP 1971.07 (photograph by Justin Kerr); B) Laxtunich Lintel (photograph by James Doyle); and C) Birth Vase, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (K1247). 

In glyphs there is a witty and demanding lack of clarity, a game played with the reader who must fill in the missing parts. This is especially clear in two areas of production: the school of painters around the western side of Lake Peten Itza in northern Guatemala (involving the so-called “Ik’ site,” identified by titles clearly applicable to a number of different places in that region), and another to the north, in association with the powerful dynasty of Calakmul (Figures 6 and 7). The patterns tend to be that verbs (ak’oot) or titles (kaloomte’) get occluded or, on one vase (K1256), a bit of blood-soaked paper extends from a way spirit to the very glyph for way. The painted texts on clothing in the Bonampak murals show the same illusionistic game. They combine belief and alief, emphasizing what the viewer’s (or painter’s) eye can see (Miller and Brittenham 2013:230, Captions I-5B, I-5C, I-6B). This is not only on paintings, but, as on a panel at Dumbarton Oaks, the carved depiction of a text on the hem of a kilt or garment (Tokovinine 2012:fig. 33).

Figure 6. Glyphic “occlusion” on Ik’-site pots: A) Altar vase (photograph by Otis Imboden, courtesy of George Stuart); B) tributary scene with partial concealment of kaloomte’ title (K1728); C) feather panache over captive’s name (K1439); D) baah tz’am title and historical scene (K5418); E) jaguar ornament over dance verb (K1439); and F) panache over chocolate recipe (K764).

The examples on “codex-style” vases are far more sparing, with a very slight degree of occlusion (Figure 7). What intrigues us in both traditions of painting is that, at least notionally, the glyphs lie behind the figures depicted on these vases. There is no foregrounding of explanatory texts or captions. They are exactly the opposite of Mayuy’s framed, out-of-sight bodies. His carvings stress the clear exposition of texts over bodies; these paintings emphasize bodies and image over the text.

Figure 7. Glyphic “occlusion” on codex-style vases (photographs by Justin Kerr). 

A final example was drawn to my attention by Bryan Just (Figure 8). Found on the base of the carving of an Itzam or Old god (Martin 2016), it illustrates a novel attitude about attending to what the eye can see, not what needs to be literally and fully present for maximum legibility (see also Houston 2015:fig. 13.5). The text is one of the first known sculptor’s signatures, as well as the first labeling of a carving’s patron. But there is a striking oddity. The carving was not finished where an eye would be unable to see it while the object rested on a surface. This game of illusion, of implying rather than showing, of fascination with situated viewing, seems aesthetic but not only that: it suggests discussion about the nature of sight itself and how it might enlist active and knowledgeable minds. By breaking the fourth wall, it burrows equally into the heart.

Figure 8. Base of carving on Itzam effigy, Princeton University Art Museum, 2013–78 a-b (photograph by Justin Kerr, K3331). 

Acknowledgements   My best thanks go to Basile Baudez for drawing my attention to the image from India and its source, and to Bryan Just and David Stuart for discussion of glyphic overlay and illusionism. Justin Kerr offered all his customary generosity with rollout photographs.

[Note 1]  Free-standing sculptures, as at Copan and Tonina, are categorically different. As single figures, they rely on viewers to address the carving or to admire an eternally frozen dance, perhaps to speak with this proxy of royal or captive bodies. There is no frame to separate viewers, and a punctured (or non-existent?) fourth wall becomes central to their function. Compelling a kind of interaction, the images cannot be complete without it.

References

Gendler, Tamar S. 2008. Alief and Belief. Journal of Philosophy 105(10): 634–663.

Houston, Stephen. 2001. Decorous Bodies and Disordered Passions: Representations of Emotions among the Classic Maya. World Archaeology 33(2):206–219.

Houston, Stephen. 2016. Crafting Credit: Authorship among Classic Maya Painters and Sculptors. In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy L. Costin,  391–427. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

Jain-Neaubauer, Jutta. 1981. The Rāmāyaṇama in Pahari Miniature Painting. L. D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad.

Kukkonen, Karin. 2013. Studying Comics and Graphic Novels. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.

Martin, Simon. 2015. The Old Man of the Maya Universe: A Unitary Dimension to Ancient Maya Religion. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, 186–227. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Miller, Mary, and Claudia Brittenham. 2013. The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. University of Texas Press, Austin; INAH and CONACULTA, Mexico City.

Tokovinine, Alexandre. 2012. Carved Panel. In Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine, 68–73. Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Number 4. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

by Stephen Houston (Brown University), Karl Taube (UC-Riverside), Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach (UT-Austin), and Timothy Beach (UT-Austin)

Building sites in Hong Kong often show a collision between tradition and modernity: bamboo scaffolds, some thirty stories in height, envelop skyscrapers under construction (Figure 1; Waters 1998; also Sky-high scaffolds; Bamboo spider-men). The virtues of the material are that it is “primitive without being old-fashioned, time-saving without being insecure, and economical without being impracticable” (Waters 1998:20). Less eloquent explanations are that, unlike scaffolds of metal, bamboo can be stored in the open without risk of theft; the material is also inexpensive, sustainable, flexible, reusable (up to three times, depending on conditions of storage), quickly erected, and cantilevered with relative ease over empty spaces (Waters 1998:26, 30).

Figure 1. Bamboo scaffolding, Causeway Bay neighborhood, Hong Kong (Photograph by Claire Gribbin, Creative Commons License).

Bamboo tends to be seen as quintessentially oriental. Its tender shoots, processed to remove toxins (cyanogenic glycosides, also in cassava), find their way into many dishes, and an entire sub-genre of Chinese painting, the “Four Gentlemen” or “Noble Ones,” focuses on its depiction along with peers like the plum blossom, chrysanthemum, and orchid (bamboo embodies the summer, the others, respectively, winter, autumn, spring; see also Cahill 1997:187–192; see also Bickford 1999:147, on literary and visual traditions of bamboo and other plants; Hsü 1996:25, on links to gentlemanly virtue). The experience of a bamboo forest, as Houston has experienced it on the outskirts of Kyoto, figures among the “100 Soundscapes of Japan” under protection by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment (Torigoe 1999).

But bamboo occurs more widely than that, and with consequences for understanding the ancient Maya. According to one source, “New World bamboos account for approximately half of the total generic and specific bamboo diversity” (Clark 1990:126; for Guatemala, see McClure 1973:88, 105, 106). An ethnobotany of the Tzotzil in Zinacantán, Chiapas, accords a page to them, and gives the plants a full array of local terms: bix (the generic category, “all bamboos, reeds or sprawling, reed-like plants,” Breedlove and Laughlin 2000:150), muk’ta ne kotom, yaxal otot, antzil bix, ton bix, chanib, and k’ox ne kotom (Figure 2; re: muk’ta ne kotom, “large coati tail,” there is a ko-to-ma on La Rejolla Stela 1:I9 [files at the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Harvard University], but the context is unclear; note, too, that the term “bamboo,” evidently of Malay origin, did not enter European languages until the 1590s or later, etymology). Some grow to over 20 m long, within “ravines in the understory of tropical deciduous forests in the lower temperate and lowland areas” (Breedlove and Laughlin 2000:150). Others are cut by men but brought home to women for use in looms, or do service as banner poles or the staffs of shamans (Breedlove and Laughlin 2000:150). A vigorous shake of a staff will protect the shaman from watchdogs. Many native species are known in Guatemala (bamboo in Guatemala). Today, in the Peten, the northernmost province, workers on archaeological projects used saplings or bamboo in equal measure, depending on proximity (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2017).

Figure 2. Bamboos among the Tzotzil Maya (Breedlove and Laughlin 2000:plate 10). 

While charged with working on the stuccoes of the Diablo pyramid at El Zotz, Guatemala, one of us (Taube) noted the presence of scaffold images with unusual attributes (Taube and Houston 2015:219–221). Criss-crossed poles had cross-wise stripes (a sign of darkness or even the color red? [see Stone and Zender 2011:124–125]), symmetrical volutes at what appeared to be natural joins in the material, and signs of lashing to keep the frame solid (Figure 3A). It soon became clear that the sign appeared on a variety of so-called “accession scaffolds” ranging in date from the San Bartolo murals of c. 100 BC to stelae at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, of Late Classic date (Figure 3C; Taube and Houston 2015:fig. 5.12). Other such trussed scaffolds exist, as on Stelae 1 and 2 at Cancuen, Guatemala, but there with what appear to be ta/TAJ signs for “pine,” also a lightweight material (Maler 1908:plates 12.2, 13.1; Figure 3B). For the first set of images, Taube conjectured that the vegetal material was none other than bamboo, in which small tufts shoot directly out of the surface (the culm internodes), often at joins (Figure 4).

Figure 3. Bamboo in Maya imagery: (A) Diablo Structure F8-1 Sub IB, with cross-bands indicated (image by CAST); (B) Cancuen Stela 1, east side, with queen, pine struts cued (Maler 1908:plate 13.1); and (C) Piedras Negras Stela 11, base (drawing by David Stuart). 

 Figure 4. Bamboo: (A) trunk with tufts at natural breaks [culm nodes] (Creative Commons); and (B) curling tufts, Sagano Bamboo Forest, Arashiyama district, Kyoto, Japan (photograph by Stephen Houston).

A singular advantage of Maya text and image, where both stand in close relation, is that, if plausibly interpreted, one helps to explain the other. It is possible that two spellings buttress the reading: one comes from a tomb painting at Río Azul, the other from the name of the Temple of the Foliated Cross (or at least its interior temple) at Palenque (Figure 5; see also the spelling on the altar of Temple XXI:G10). The example at Palenque may be our best point of entry, for it appears to contain bamboo struts, as well as two other elements (a snouted being and K’AN crosses). The one missing element, other than the NAAH for “structure,” are three vertical sprouts of vegetation. That is, an epigraphic control exists in which bamboo and its glyphic referent appear to be isolable. In fuller form, as at Río Azul, another part of the sprouted glyph appears, in this case a sign with vertical lines and horizontal dots. This glyph recalls another, a slightly distinct one, with tufts rather than leaf-like extrusions, that carries a proposed reading of AK or AKAN, “grass” (Stuart 2005:180 fn.59).

Figure 5. Bamboo in imagery, possibly in text: (A) East wall of Río Azul Tomb 6 (photograph by George F. Mobley, courtesy George Stuart); (B) glyphs of the Temple of the Foliated Cross, Alfarda:H1 (drawing by Linda Schele, photographer unknown); (C) roof of interior shrine, Temple of the Foliated Cross, bamboo cross-struts with K’AN crosses, corresponding to elements of name glyph (drawing by David Stuart); and (D) wall panel from interior shrine, Temple of the Foliated Cross (drawing by Linda Schele, Schele and Mathews 1979:#302). 

But what to make of the sign that appears to refer to bamboo, the element with three vertical shoots? Pondering this evidence, Houston posited a reading of JAL because of the subfixed la syllable at Río Azul; a second such version, spelling ch’o-ko ?JAL-la yi-?cha-ni AJAW, is far later, from a jamb in Temple XIX at Palenque [Stuart 2005:fig. 20a]). Moreover, the YAX-JAL-la NAAH, “Green-blue Bamboo House” (a notional arbor?), seemed quite similar to the term for “bamboo” in Tzotzil: yaxal otoot (the latter being the word for “dwelling,” see above).

Of further interest were the following entries in Ch’orti’ Maya, the language closest to most of the inscriptions (Wisdom 1950, with the usual substitution in that language of r for l in some contexts):

harar                 ‘reed [generic], carrizo (a tall wild grass), arrow’

harar ak           ‘cane grass, reed grass [generic]; zacate amargo (tall wild carrizo-like                                                grass)’

noxi’ harar       ‘a wild cane’

…and the telling gloss,

mak te’ harar   ‘vara de bambu (lowland dwarfish bamboo)’

Makte’ is simply a term for “fence” (“enclosure-tree/wood”), here specified as to construction material. Note too that, in cognate terms, j substitutes for h in many other Mayan languages, hence har/hal equates in such cases to jal (Kaufman 1983:1158). The usual trajectory of glyphic research is for someone else to have been there first. So too here, in a lexical listing by Erik Boot (2009:26, 82). Boot however, focused on “reed,” when other plants, namely, varieties of bamboo, might have been the actual target here.

The implications for Maya civilization are potentially momentous. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. The Guinness Book of World Records mentions species known to thrust upwards at 91 cm a day (Guinness). The rhizome-dependent pattern of growth in bamboo also makes them, to many a gardener’s dislike, hard to control yet endlessly abundant under certain conditions. Was this, in fact, an overlooked resource in Mayanist research, planted, tended, harvested, and widely employed when other vegetation proved scarce because of deforestation?

In the Orient, bamboo goes into buckets and all manner of receptacles, medicines, building materials, delectable food (again, if processed). A list from a traditional village in China dizzies with possibilities: “They live in bamboo houses, eat bamboo shoots, wear bamboo hats and shoes, cook food in utensils made of bamboo culm internodes, walk over bamboo bridges or cross rivers on bamboo rafts, and farm with bamboo tools” (Yang et al. 2004:161, Table 4). Such broad use, including use in the making of musical instruments, occurs throughout the indigenous Americas (Berlin et al. 1974:131; Judziewicz et al. 1999). Utensils in some Maya imagery might have been made of this perishable material, providing, according to one proposal, the formal source of Maya cylinder vases, later reproduced in fired clay (Bruhns 1994). The segmentation of bamboo also characterizes the depiction of atlatl or spear-throwers at the beginnings of the Late Classic period (Figure 6). Bamboo would have been grown, selected for desired width, and cut to suitable length.

Figure 6. Possible use of bamboo atlatl or spear-throwers (K2036, Photograph by Justin Kerr, © Justin Kerr). 

Other thoughts intrude: were the external holes in walls at Tikal simply for ventilation, or did some serve as footings for bamboo scaffolds? The relentless assault on plaster in the tropics, with the logical need for future repair, might explain these features (Figure 6, upper left; see also Coe 1990:figs. 209, 321; also, Penn Tikal Archive, #C63-004-0021, for close-up views of Temple I and its comparable holes). That is, provision was made for continued refurbishment or washes of lime-plaster. The complete decay of some vault-struts, now seen only as holes, many round, raise the possibility that at least some of them were of bamboo. Moreover, at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, Houston and his team found bushels of bajareque, mud placed on wattle that had baked into near-ceramics by random (or set) fires in buildings. The bajareque often preserves evidence of cylindrical wattle, perhaps also of readily harvested bamboo (unfortunately, few sections are long enough to detect its distinct segmentation); a similar find, wit. Such remains were found with wattle-and-daub at Cerén, El Salvador (Lentz and Ramírez-Soza 2002:34). And if deforestation were at all relevant, as appears to be true in many places, bamboo, with its rapid in growth and varied use, might even have been cultivated.

Figure 7. Upper left, back of Structure 5D-23, 1st-B, rear elevation, holes highlighted in red (Coe 1990:fig. 129), and, lower right, bajareque, Operation PN11A-3-4 (photograph by Stephen Houston).

A chart of biosilicates extracted from the main aguada or reservoir in El Zotz, Guatemala, reveals a possible signature of this cultivation: the abundance, in the Late Classic period, of “native grasses,” which may represent the residue of bamboo (Figure 8; Beach et al. 2015:272). Bamboo has been found in late tombs in Río Bec, Mexico (Dussol et al. 2016:67), as well as in Chinikiha, also in Mexico (Trabanino and Núñez 2014: 156), but it seems also that the “great anatomic homogeneity of the monocotyledons [a flowering plant category to which bamboo belongs], as well as the lack of an anatomic reference collection specific to neotropical bamboos,” complicates their precise detection (Dusoll et al. 2016:67, for quotation, 63). Further, as archaeological residue, bamboos are fragile, preserve poorly, and “rapid combustion [of them] generally does not produce charcoal remains” (Dusoll et al. 2016:66). Another specialist underscores the problems of identification: “Poaceae pollen [in the taxonomic family that contains bamboo] is very plain in appearance via light microscopy, and the palynologist must always be careful not to confuse maize pollen with the similar-looking pollen of other grasses, aquatic grasses, or bamboos” (Morse 2009:177, citing Horn 2006:368). For his part, Kazuo Aoyama (personal communication, 2017), the most expert practitioner of microwear analysis in the Maya region, has actually tested bamboo and found it indistinguishable from other woods and pithy material in its effect on lithics (Aoyama 1989:202; Aoyama 1995:131; 1996:Tables 3.13. 3.14). Its “signature” appears to be ambiguous.

Perhaps, as has been suggested for pine, such plants were more commonly used than supposed, to be grown, moved, and traded as valued resources (Lentz et al. 2005). Its working, if discernible as to family or genus, may yet appear as residue on Maya stone tools (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2017). Or, like bamboo in many places, the plants grew to copious extent but became less salient in Maya lives as the forests (and other vegetal materials) recovered, populations declined, and need dropped. Of sufficient importance to appear in Classic art, and in dynastic and godly shrines, bamboo had receded in cultural and practical importance: it had become the stuff of shamans’ staffs yet sidelined from widespread use.

Figure 8. Diagram of biosilicates, including possible bamboo pollen from El Zotz, Guatemala (Beach et al. 2015:Fig. 12.5).

Acknowledgements  This essay benefitted greatly from discussions with David Stuart, who drew our attention to the Boot citation. Our good colleague, Jeffrey Moser, helped with sources on Chinese painting, Kazuo Aoyama commented on bamboo and microwear, Barbara Arroyo provided a key source, and Andrew Scherer offered comments on plant use in Peten, Guatemala.

References

Aoyama, Kazuo. 1989. Estudio experimental de las huellas de uso sobre material lítico de obsidiana y sílex. Mésoamerica 17:185–214.

Aoyama, Kazuo. 1995. Microwear Analysis in the Southeast Maya Lowlands: Two Case Studies at Copan, Honduras. Latin American Antiquity 6(2): 129–144.

Aoyama, Kazuo. 1996. Exchange, Craft specialization, and Ancient Maya State Formation: A Study of Chipped stone Artifacts from the Southeast Maya Lowlands. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.

Aulie, Wilbur, and Evelyn W. de Aulie. 1978. [ed. Emily F. Scharfe de Stairs] Diccionario Ch’ol de Tumbalá, Chiapas, con variaciones dialectales de Tila y Sabanilla. Mexico City: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Beach, Timothy, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Jonathan Flood, Stephen Houston, Thomas G. Garrison, Edwin Román, Steve Bozarth, and James Doyle. In Tikal: Paleoecology of an Ancient Maya City, edited by David L. Lentz, Nicholas P. Dunning, and Vernon L. Scarborough, 258–279. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berlin, Brent, Dennis E. Breedlove, and Peter H. Raven. 1974. Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification: An Introduction to the Botanical Ethnography of a Mayan-Speaking People of Highland Chiapas. Academic Press, New York.

Bickford, Maggie. 1999. Three Rams and Three Friends: The Working Lives of Chinese Auspicious Motifs. Asia Major 12(1):127–158.

Boot, Erik. 2009. The Updated Preliminary Classic Maya‐English, English‐Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings. Mesoweb Resources .pdf

Breedlove, Dennis E., and Robert M. Laughlin. 2000. The Flowering of Man: A Tzotzil Botany of Zinacantán. Abridged edition. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Bruhns, Karen O. 1994. The Original Maya Cylinder Vase? Mexicon 16(2):71.

Cahill, James. 1997. The Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). In Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, 136–195. New Haven: Yale University Press / Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Clark, Lynn G. 1990. Diversity and Biogeography of Neotropical Bamboos (Poaceae: Bambusoideae). Acta Botanica Brasilica 4(1):125–132.

Coe, William R. 1990. Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrace and North Acropolis of Tikal. Tikal Report No. 14, Volume IV. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Dussol, Lydie, Michelle Elliott, Grégory Pereira, and Dominique Michelet. 2016. The Use of Firewood in Ancient Maya Funerary Rituals: A Case Study from Río Bec (Campeche, Mexico). Latin American Antiquity 27(1):51–73.

Horn, Sally P. 2006. Pre-Columbian Maize Agriculture in Costa Rica: Pollen and Other Evidence from Lake and Swamp Sediments. In Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, edited by John E. Staller, Robert H. Tykot, and Bruce F. Benz, 367–380. Burlington, Mass.: Elsevier.

Hsü, Ginger Cheng-Shi. 1996. Incarnations of the Blossoming Plum. Ars Orientalis 26:23–45.

Hull, Kerry. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Judziewicz, Emmet, Lynn G. Clark, Ximena Londoño, and Margaret J. Stern. 1999. American Bamboos. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

Kaufman, Terrence S. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. On-line resource at http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf.

Lentz, David, and Carlos Ramírez-Soza. 2002. Cerén Plant Resources: Abundance and Diversity. In Before the Volcano Erupted: The Ancient Cerén Village in Central America, edited by Payson Sheets, 33–42. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Lentz, David, Jason Yaeger, Cynthia Robin, and Wendy Ashmore. 2005. Pine, Prestige, and Politics of the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize. Antiquity 79(305): 573–585.

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by Andrew Scherer (Brown University), Charles Golden (Brandeis University), Stephen Houston (Brown University), and James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The most complex images often require multiple sets of eyes (and minds) to probe their creation, meaning, and afterlives. Lavished with care at their making, they may, if excavated or looted, embark on journeys to far times and places, beyond any possible imagining by the patrons who commissioned them. This four-part series—on discovery, Classic-era history, color use, and cosmology (Maya Lintel II; Maya Lintel III; Maya Lintel IV)—targets an enduring enigma in Maya archaeology: a set of two lintels, notable for their preservation and elaborate iconography, seen and photographed by a colorful adventurer, Dana Lamb, in 1950 (Lamb and Lamb 1951:332). The find was of sufficient interest to appear in Ian Graham’s memoir (Graham 2010:462–467), which commented tartly on Lamb’s elastic, even tenuous relation to fact: “[t]he tale [of their discovery] is, of course, ridiculous” (Graham 2010:463). Lamb compounded that absurdity with the map emblazoned on the endpapers of his book (Figure 1). The “Lost City Area” covers half of Peten, Guatemala, the northernmost slivers of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiche, and the Alta Verapaz, and, with expansive generosity—why not throw them in too?—parts of Campeche, Chiapas, and Tabasco in Mexico.

Figure 1. The “Lost City Area” (Lamb and Lamb 1951:front endpaper).

Lamb’s photographs, which had been shared with Gordon Ekholm at the American Museum of Natural History, give some savor of the lintels and their condition at the time of discovery (Figures 2 to 4). The rough, load-bearing sections above and below the images (where such sections can be seen) make it certain that the carvings spanned doorways. They were lintels, not wall panels.

Figure 2. Laxtunich Lintel 1, top section, April 1950; the lintel has been lifted from a face-down position, its load-bearing surface still intact to the left (courtesy American Museum of Natural History). 

Figure 3. Dana Lamb with Laxtunich Lintel 1, April 1950 (courtesy American Museum of Natural History). 

Figure 4. Laxtunich Lintel 2, top section, April 1950; note the still intact, load-bearing portion to lower right and stacked stones from a collapsed vault or door jamb to upper right (courtesy American Museum of Natural History). 

The later existence of these sculptures is tragic. They were sawn up, thinned to reduce their weight—the residue most likely discarded in situ—and taken by mule or tumpline from Lamb’s “Lost City,” which he had decided to call Laxtunich, ‘”Lasch-Tu-Nich’ (phonetic spelling), the Place of Carved Stones” (Lamb and Lamb 1951:332; presumably, the neologism derived, after some shredding of phonology, from Lacandon ra’ch, “scratch” [Hofling 2014:285–286]; cf. Ch’orti’ lajchi, “scratch” [Hull 2016:241]).

Their illicit journey from Laxtunich is murky at best. According to Graham (2010:453), a guard at Yaxchilan, Mexico, “had caught sight [in about 1963] of men with mules appearing out of the bush on the opposite [Guatemalan] bank of the river…The men then unloaded the mules’ cargo of sculptured stone panels, concealed them under jungle trash, and departed…the panels remained there for several days before men returned with a boat to take them.” Scholars have long known that the lintels contain clues to their original, general location. The presence of the Yaxchilan Emblem, a supreme title of rulers, and depictions of a later king of that kingdom, Chelew Chan K’inich, places them firmly in some part of Yaxchilan territory (Zender et al. 2016:36).

Were the “panels” seen by the guard from Yaxchilan or were they another set of carvings from Guatemalan territory? What Graham can confirm is that the lintels resurfaced in the collection of the late William P. Palmer III of Falmouth, Maine, or rather, after his death, within a storage facility in Zurich, Switzerland (Graham 2010:465–466). Grainy photographs show them trimmed of their butts and backs, with an occasional scale marked by a European-style, cross-barred “7” (Mayer 1984:98–99, pls. 203, 204). Palmer, who died in 1982, aged 49, was an active collector from about 1958 to 1973 (Palmer as collector). A graduate of the University of Maine, Palmer donated a trove of Mesoamerican material to the Hudson Museum at that institution (Palmer Hudson). [Note 1] The lintels clearly ended up elsewhere. Graham (2010:515n3) believes that Panama was a way-station on their eventual path to Europe, a circuitous route designed “to obscure their source” and, presumably, to facilitate their shipment to buyers abroad. According to Graham, a possible seller might have been the Mexican economist, collector, and dealer, Dr. Josué Sáenz, from whom Palmer appears to have bought a number of pieces. At that time, in the lead-up to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, Sáenz was the President of the Mexican Olympic Committee, a highly visible position (Witherspoon 2008). He might have had fears of confiscation, electing instead to liquidate some of his investments in Pre-Columbian art. We cannot know but suspect Palmer had these (and other) Maya sculptures by about 1968 if not before.

After their appearance in those photographs, the murk deepened…until 2013 and 2015. Lamb’s carvings have since come to light. Both are now in private collections. The carving we label “Laxtunich Lintel 1,” seen again in 2015, was accessible to the extent that our team could undertake technical assays and detailed photography of its surface (the third in this series reports on that work). The other lintel, “Laxtunich Lintel 2,” was examined by Houston in 2013, if more cursorily. The re-emergence of these storied carvings occasions a fresh evaluation of their images and an inevitable attempt, given more recent fieldwork, to pin down Lamb’s journey to Laxtunich. These thoughts build on the Dana and Ginger Lamb Papers at the Sherman Library and Gardens (Sherman Library) and fieldwork by Golden and Scherer in the Sierra del Lacandόn region of Petén, Guatemala, and Chiapas, Mexico. A superb study has also appeared on the Lambs, who had fascinated, among other people, Franklin D. Roosevelt yet also managed to vex J. Edgar Hoover and his myrmidons (Huffman-Klinkowitz and Klinkowitz 2006:80–81, 83–85).

Dana and Ginger Lamb in Context

As the title suggests, the Lambs’ Quest for the Lost City (Lamb and Lamb 1951), the only primary source on the lintels, capitalized on the Maya-as-lost-civilization zeitgeist in which only the most brave and cunning adventurer-explorers could delve into the dark forests of the Maya lowlands. Certainly, the earliest detailed studies of the Maya were carried out by truly hardy chroniclers—Stephens, Charnay, Maudslay, and Maler, to name a few. These first explorers combined meticulous documentation with a healthy dose of grit to traverse the then-remote jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. By mid-twentieth century, however, the lone intrepid explorer was largely extinct (the recently deceased Ian Graham being a notable exception). Maya studies was largely in the hands of institutionally supported scientific archaeological teams, such as those supported by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Pennsylvania. Although these early scientific expeditions advanced our understanding of the ancient Maya, they did little to satisfy public hunger for tales of exotic jungle adventure.

Enter Dana and Ginger Lamb. Almost two decades prior to the publication of Quest for the Lost City, and shortly after their marriage in 1933, the couple set out on a three-year journey in a homemade canoe from California to Panama. They chronicled this voyage in their first book, Enchanted Vagabonds, published in 1938 with the help of a bookseller named June Cleveland (Huffman-Klinkowitz and Klinkowitz 2006:24–25). After its release, they embarked on a successful public speaking tour. Enchanted Vagabonds drew on the long-standing public fascination with adventure-exploration. Yet, in their tale, the Lambs offered something new and appealing. Explorers of yesteryear were for the most part privileged men from the upper crust of European and American society. Dana and Ginger were youthful, middle-class, plucky newlyweds from California, 37 and 26 years old respectively, when Enchanted Vagabonds was first published.

In many respects, Quest for the Lost City, was Enchanted Vagabonds 2.0—a follow-up story of adventure but now in the remote and treacherous forests of southern Mexico, a place populated with “mysterious” natives (the Lacandon Maya) and lost ruins. More than a ten-year gap separates the publication of Enchanted Vagabonds and Quest for the Lost City, at least some of which was spent by the Lambs traveling in Mexico. Quest for the Lost City was finally published in 1951 and remains in print today, its current paperback cover boldly proclaiming “America’s most dangerous couple explores the jungles of Central America…An Adventure Travel Classic.” The book dramatically builds to a final conclusion, the discovery of an entire “lost city,” Laxtunich itself. Quest for the Lost City was followed by a film of the same name in 1954, released by Sol Lesser Productions (Quest for Lost City). Lesser fit the bill: he had guided and promoted the Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller and later served as American producer (and Academy Award winner) for Kon-Tiki, an account of Thor Heyerdahl’s voyage across the Pacific.

For the layperson, Quest for the Lost City is a gripping page-turner. However, anyone familiar with southern Mexico will realize that, even by the mid-twentieth century, the region travelled and described by the Lambs was not nearly as vast, remote, and unknown as they report. Nearly all scholars (and many a layperson, judging by recent Amazon reviews of Quest for the Lost City), deride the book as a fabrication and the Lambs as charlatans looking to turn a profit from a credulous American audience. This sense is only heightened by the 1955 follow-up film of the same title, in which the Dana and Ginger pass off well-known and traveled sites like Yaxchilan and Palenque as ruins lost deep in the jungle. By this point, too, the heading of their stationery says it all: “Dan and Ginger Lamb, Exploration—Motion Pictures” (AMNH Files, letter to Gordon Ekholm, dated July 6, 1950). Yet there is no doubt the Lambs (or, as we will see, at least Dana) did visit an archaeological site, his “Site 5,” that at the time (and to this day) remains unknown to scholars. His notes offer the only description we have of the site, and he and his companions took the only known in situ photographs of the remarkable Laxtunich carvings.

So what exactly were the Lambs up to in southern Mexico, and where is the so-called site of Laxtunich?

In Search of Laxtunich

Lamb’s own account of visiting the site is, as Graham observed, pure claptrap. It offers swarming bugs, an overwhelming thirst, barely resolved by slurping from bejuco de agua (“we drank too much and were sick”), aqueducts and artesian wells like “miniature ‘volcanoes’,” as well as, towards nightfall, “the frightening, swelling song of a hurricane” (Lamb and Lamb 1951:330–331). And a tree fall that had, after this “titanic, terrific, stupendous, slam-bang show…carried away our beautiful temple” in one final cataclysm (Lamb and Lamb 1951:334; to be sure, on its reverse, a photograph in the AMNH archive refers to a tree fall on the lintel building). All the “beautiful stone carvings had been shattered and tossed to the jungle floor,” and the Lambs, amazed, saw that were now “on an island surrounded by a muddy sea of water” (Lamb and Lamb 1951:335). Despite a bout of malaria—”Dan, I can’t breathe. I’m burning up!”—Ginger soldiered on, trying “to lend a hand” (Lamb and Lamb 1951:332–333). After manfully carving a canoe, Dana Lamb succeeded in paddling them to safety.

Dana’s field notebook, a personal letter he wrote to Ginger, and his hand-drawn maps tell a different story. Our presumption is that, in these records, Dana offers some semblance of accuracy. That he was a compulsive fabulist is reflected in his correspondence with Ekholm a short time after his visit to Laxtunich. Lamb seems to place the discovery sometime in June, at the latest in early May, a date contradicted by his notebook, which assigns the find to April 7 (AMNH archive, letter to Ekholm, July 6, 1950; “We got in yesterday [July 5] after over a month off in the unexplored area in Guatemala”). In a marked photo of Lintel 2, he claimed it has been “found at site #5 [Laxtunich] in Guatemala in June 1950” (AMNH archive). What stratagem lay behind this pointless deceit? Nor was Ginger even present at the discovery. Was the thrill of their narrative—always a marital adventure, a cheerful collaboration of paired souls—more important than any commitment to veracity? One gathers that Lamb tended to self-grandiosity and a compulsion to rework personal experience into high drama: each event would serve its role in the script of his life.

On April 2, 1950, Dana travelled to Agua Azul, a now-abandoned airstrip on the Chiapas side of the Usumacinta River, about 7 km upstream (southeast) from the Guatemalan community of Bethel. Dana received reports of “large ruins on the Guatemalan side of the Yaxchilan Ruins” and that there “is a boy who thinks he knows where they are” (Dana Lamb, Personal Journal, April 3, 1950). On April 4, Dana and a number of local guides headed downstream in a cayuco (a canoe carved from the trunk of a tree) past Yaxchilan to a point then known as Salvamento, an area that corresponds to the first bend in the Usumacinta River north of Yaxchilan (Canter 2007:7). Dana reports the distances by river as 8.5 leagues (the equivalent of 47.2 km) from Agua Azul to Yaxchilan and 3.5 leagues (19.4 km) from Yaxchilan to Salvamento, again by river. The actual distances are closer to 35 km and 16 km respectively, the point being that, while Dana is not a bad judge of distance (it is unclear what maps he had with him when he was writing his journal), he tends to overestimate the distances covered.

After that first day’s travel Dana and his companions established a beach camp on the Guatemalan side of the river, and the next day he reports that “we hiked down river [sic] opposite an arroyo called Enenete [Anaite] then cut a trail inland almost due north” (April 5). What follows is Dana’s description of that day’s journey, edited to remove his vivid commentary on the various accomplishments and shortcomings of his travel companions:

“We found a chicley [sic] trail after going thru heavy bamboo and undergrowth for about a mile. From here the trail lead up and down thru low hills for about two miles. . .the going was not easy in the heat…at noon when we stopped for lunch there was no water…after lunch we continued on. This trail used to be wide and well traveled but has not been used in many years. So we had to cut around the fallen trees and open trail most of the way…After traveling 6 leguas [sic] we stopped for a rest and Jose and Armando said they were going ahead to scout the trail. We waited for over an hour and then they returned with a pot full of muddy water. Instead of scouting trail they had gone off to a Lechugal about a mile away for water.”

Although we do not have personal experience with the inland journey from this point on the Usumacinta River, the route Dana reports is likely the same as that described by Ron Canter (2007:7): “on the Guatemalan shore, a ravine leads east up to a small plateau 80 m above the river. From there it is a relatively easy climb NE out of the river gorge.” On his map, Canter notes the existence of a nineteenth-century trail running between La Pasadita and Centro Campesino, the area across from Yaxchilan that was home to an invader community in the first decade of this century (Figure 5). Teobert Maler (1903:104–105) notes the existence of “forest trails” connecting Tenosique to the Arroyo Yaxchilan (a stream that passes about 4.5 km to the southeast of the site of Yaxchilan on the Guatemalan side of the Usumacinta River). Indeed, our own reconnaissance attests to the existence of many overgrown logging trails running between the area of Yaxchilan and north and northeast towards La Pasadita. In 1998, Golden (et al. 1999) and a group of colleagues made the trip from Yaxchilan to La Pasadita along just such a route.

Figure 5. Excerpt of Ron Canter’s Río Usumacinta Navigation Survey (Canter).

Scherer and Omar Alcover undertook a similar journey in 2014, reaching and departing from La Pasadita via two separate logging trails. Both paths were relatively clear at the time, having been re-opened by settlers during the illegal invasion at Centro Campesino in the first decade of the new millennium (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Southern Sierra del Lacandόn National Park showing likely area of Laxtunich in Guatemala. The red path indicates trails used by Scherer and Alcover in 2014 trip between Centro Campesino and La Pasadita. The purple path represents the least-cost route between Salvamento and El Tunel, the hypothetical path walked by Dana Lamb (compare with Figure 8). “W” denotes aguadas. Partly spoked dircle is a cenote at El Tunel. Chevron is a point along the arroyo that traverses the region, illustrated in Figure 5.

Moreover, Scherer and Alcover traveled with guides who had decades of experience in the region, and thus were able to move with relative dispatch on their journey. They traveled at brisk clip, if with heavy packs, along a route that took them 22 km in 8 to 9 hours from Centro Campesino to La Pasadita (Figure 7). From our experience, 20 km is a generous maximum estimate for any distance covered by Dana and his companions while cutting trails.

Figure 7. Walking a recently opened logging trail south of La Pasadita, Guatemala, 2014, taken near the aguadas in Figure 6 (photograph by A. Scherer). 

Of the two trails travelled by Scherer and Alcover in 2014, the one closest to the Usumacinta River is about 6.75 km northeast of the point from which Dana likely left that body of water. Dana’s own hand-drawn map suggests they moved in a general northward direction (it is unknown, although likely, that he carried a compass, Figures 8 and 9). From Dana’s description, he and his companions travelled about four to five km (three miles) north or northwest before lunchtime. He then suggests they travelled 6 leagues, the equivalent of 18 miles or 33 km, before their next rest after lunch, when two of his companions went ahead to scout the trail and returned with the muddy water. A frustrated Dana writes in his journal, “I was anxious to go on ahead and get to the ruins before dark but Jose said he was not sure of the trail and that we could not make it before dark. Reluctantly we hit the side trail to the Lechugal & slung our hamocks [sic]” (April 5).

Figure 8. Dana Lamb’s map of trails leading from Salvamento, Guatemala (image from Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz, courtesy Sherman Library and Gardens). 

Figure 9. Dana Lamb’s notation of his “Site 5” (Laxtunich), with notation “Pictures of carved stones were made here” (image from Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz, courtesy Sherman Library and Gardens). 

Dana is almost certainly mistaken about the 33 km that he and his companions covered between lunchtime and their evening stop at the watering hole. To put this scale in perspective, Piedras Negras is just a bit more than 40 km in a straight line north of Yaxchilan. A starting point around Salvamento and the Arroyo Anaite, 33 km to the north or northwest would simply funnel them into the narrow valley approaching Piedras Negras, while 30 km in any other direction east or northeast would require crossing the arduous and precipitous hills of the Sierra del Lacandón. Dana would surely have noted this in his journal.

Since they were re-cutting an overgrown trail, a more reasonable estimate is that Dana and his companions walked between 6 to 10 km total by mid-afternoon, placing them in all probability somewhere along one of the very same overgrown trails south of La Pasadita hiked by Scherer and Alcover in 2014. According to Lamb’s own map (which has no scale) the water source is at a latitude just north of the Laguna Santa Clara in Chiapas, a distance that would be about 13 km due north. Again, that is likely incorrect in view of the time needed to move such a distance over an overgrown path. On their own return journey from La Pasadita, Scherer and Alcover identified an exceptionally muddy aguada along one of the old logging trails, about 7.5 km in a direct line from the Usumacinta River (longer if following the overgrown trails). This is a potential, although by no means certain, candidate for the watering hole visited by Dana and his companions.

Dana and his companion returned to the trail the next day and, according to him, “hiked three leguas (12 mi) to a dry arroyo then cut a trail about one mile due W. to the ruins” (April 6). Dana then writes and crosses-out: “After we had finished our. After a supper of beans and rice we hit the hamocks [sic].” He finally settles on: “On the Way into the ruins Arnold shot a small deer and we had a late supper of cooked venison [sic]. There is no water in this area so we used Agua de Bejuca [sic]” (April 6). Again, it is highly implausible that Dana and his companions hiked 12–13 miles (19-–21 km) on the second day of their journey. All known logging trails in this area follow a north or northwesterly path. Had they crossed beyond the known northern limits of the Yaxchilan kingdom (Tecolote, La Pasadita, etc.), the party would have slogged through the bajo around the Laguna La Pasadita, and into the formidably rugged terrain to the north. An eastward path would have kept them within the kingdom and brought them into the vicinity of Oso Negro. But, again, the old logging paths they appear to have been traveling do not cut an easterly route. More likely, Dana and his companions travelled 10 km or less that second day.

An important clue to Laxtunich’s location is the dry arroyo recorded by Dana. Although we do not know its precise route over the landscape, Scherer and Alcover twice crossed an arroyo that drains into the Laguna La Pasadita (Figure 10, see Figure 6 for its location along one of the trails). This arroyo passes through the site of Tixan, where it was dammed in ancient times. Similarly, Golden and colleagues camped near an arroyo in this same vicinity in March of 1998, when it held a thin trickle of water. This is likely the same arroyo that flows through the site of El Tunel, apparently passing through a cave (hence the name of the site, Muñoz and Román 2004:20). When Scherer and Alcover crossed the arroyo near Tixan in 2014, it carried little water, although volume increased when they encountered it a second time near its confluence with the Laguna La Pasadita. Dana notes no other arroyos in his journal. If we assume a generally northward route of travel, the arroyo near La Pasadita, Tixan, and El Tunel would have been the first such waterway encountered by the Lamb party. That it was dry offers no surprise in that they were traveling at the very end of the dry season. In contrast, Scherer and Alcover observed the arroyo at the height of the rainy season, and even then it held little water.

Figure 10. Dam on a partially dry arroyo near Tixan, Guatemala (photograph by A. Scherer).

After a night camping near the ruins, Dana and his companions travelled to “Site 5,” where they spent the entire day exploring. As Dana describes in his journal, in an entry dated April 7:

“At one time this place was a large city. Now all of it is in ruins except one temple which is partly destroyed. There are two beautifully carved temple stones here. The best I have ever seen. They measure about four feet wide and six feet long but are broken in half. We spent all day exploring around and moving the stones so we could get pictures of them. At noon we had more venison and then worked at the Temple. This ruin is completely unknown so we decided to name it the Place of the Carved Stones, in Maya it is Lashch Tu Nich.”

Dana’s descriptions of the monuments accord well with the photographs that were taken at the site (Figures 2–4). Both lintels are in situ, both broken medially, each fallen from the doorway of a collapsed vaulted structure. Dana also drew a sketch of the site center of Laxtunich, though it is exceptionally vague in its detail, showing a series of plazas and ruined buildings (Figure 11). He marks the two lintels as “alter [sic] stones,” indicating they were found in front of the same structure. Another useful feature of Dana’s map is the presence of a “Dry Sonote” [sic] in the upper left corner of the map, a feature that will be key to identifying the site center of Laxtunich in the future.

Figure 11. Dana Lamb’s sketch map of Laxtunich (image from Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz, courtesy Sherman Library and Gardens).

On April 8, Dana and his companions made their return trip, reaching the Usumacinta River in a single day’s journey. Because Dana and his companions were backtracking on a now-open trail, it is reasonable to suggest they travelled about 15 km or so that day. By April 25, Dana was back in Tenosique where he penned a letter to Ginger (who at the time, and directly contrary to the published account, was in the United States). Here he summarizes the trip: “Enrique Nevelo, Manuel and I went down the Usumacenta [sic] to a place below Yaxchilan then headed deep into Guatemala. We found a beautiful little ruin with some of the finest stone carving I have ever seen. It was a rough trip as there is no water in this area and we had to live off of Agua de Bejuco.”

According to the same letter, Dana made a series of other visits to sites in the area over the next two weeks, including a stop at Yaxchilan on the return from Laxtunich as well as trips to Bonampak and what is likely Lacanja. Photographs of these visits appear in Quest for the Lost City. He concluded his journey at El Cedro, where he took a plane back to Tenosique. Ginger appears to have flown down in early May, and they spent the next month or so again traveling in southern Mexico, presumably shooting additional photos and video for Quest for the Lost City, although with no evidence they returned to the unknown site in Guatemala.

Where is Laxtunich?

Matching Dana’s description of his travels and his maps with our own experience in the region, we believe it highly likely that Laxtunich lies somewhere in the vicinity of La Pasadita and a cluster of poorly explored sites that includes El Tunel, Capukal, and Tixan. It is far less plausible that Laxtunich corresponds to La Pasadita or its twin, Tecolote, located a few kilometers to the west. Tecolote has many collapsed vaulted structures, but its most remarkable feature is a single well-preserved standing structure with fragmentary murals (Scherer and Golden 2009) that Dana would have seen and recorded in his notes. Moreover, there is no cenote at Tecolote nor is it near an arroyo. Similarly, La Pasadita does not have a cenote and its principal structure was still standing in 1950, likely with its own carved lintels and murals still in place. If Dana had visited La Pasadita we can assume he would have made note of such striking images.

Capukal and El Tunel were first visited by archaeologists in 2004 during a brief reconnaissance trip by René Muñoz and Edwin Román (2005; Golden et al. 2005). El Tunel was revisited in 2005 by Juan Carlos Meléndez and Scherer who also managed to reconnoiter the site of Tixan (Meléndez and Scherer 2005; Vasquéz et al. 2006). The archaeologists discerned an abundance of settlement at each of these sites but, owing to a lack of time on both visits, they were unable to identify or pinpoint their epicenters. In that regards it is important to keep in mind that Dana reports only a single monumental structure that was already partially in ruins during his visit in 1950. Thus, even if archaeologists had reached the principal structure of Laxtunich in 2004 or 2005, it is entirely possible they may have overlooked the structure, assuming that by that time its vault was fully collapsed.

Of these named sites, Capukal is the least credible as Dana’s Laxtunich. Muñoz and Román note that the buildings at Capukal disperse into a pattern reminiscent of Fideo, a known Late Preclassic site to the northwest. Further, the only ceramic observed on the surface during reconnaissance at Capukal dated to the Early Classic period (Muñoz and Román 2005:20). In contrast, Tixan and El Tunel possess architecture more closely reminiscent of known secondary centers of Late Classic period Yaxchilan. Tixan was only briefly visited by Meléndez and Scherer in 2005 and they were never able to locate its political and architectural center, if indeed it has one. It exhibits an area of extensive settlement, and further survey is needed to determine to what degree settlement may be more or less contiguous between the areas currently identified as La Pasadita, El Tunel, and Tixan.

El Tunel, on the other hand, was more thoroughly surveyed by both Muñoz and Román and then by Meléndez and Scherer. Meléndez and Scherer (2005:62) observed the careful use of both large block and smaller flat stone similar to details observed in buildings at Tecolote and La Pasadita. These features characterize the well-preserved constructions of the Late Classic period in the kingdom of Yaxchilan (Figure 12). Moreover, defensive walls have been identified in the vicinity of El Tunel, similar to those found at Tecolote and La Pasadita (Muñoz and Román 2004:19).

Figure 12. Preserved wall on a structure at El Tunel; Juan Carlos Meléndez provides human scale (photograph by A. Scherer).

Even more compelling, Muñoz and Román detected the presence of at least one collapsed vaulted structure at El Tunel with the remains of a looted crypt (Muñoz and Román 2004:19). Vaulted buildings with such crypts have also been identified at Tecolote and La Pasadita, and such patterns similarly echo the sub-floor crypts found in palace structures at Yaxchilan and Bonampak (Miller and Brittenham 2013:24, fig. 33). The collapsed vaulted structure found by Muñoz and Román should be considered a possible contender for the source of the Laxtunich lintels, though they did not observe any monument carcasses during their investigations. Recall that, as noted above, the name El Tunel is in reference to an arroyo that flows near the site. Finally, during their reconnaissance of the site, Meléndez and Scherer observed a dry cenote at El Tunel, although they failed to take detailed notes regarding its relationship to other structures at the site (see its location on Figure 6).

A least-cost path plotted from several starting points in Guatemala opposite the Arroyo Anaite to El Tunel creates a path similar in appearance to Lamb’s sketch map, and seems to cross at or near similar landmarks, including well-used trails (compare Figures 6 and 8). Moreover, this modeled path crosses the real path marked by Scherer and Alcover. near where they encountered two water-holes (aguadas), perhaps the source of Lamb’s “muddy water.” If El Tunel is indeed Laxtunich, and the computer-modeled path is anything like that followed by Lamb and his companions, the actual distance traveled from river to site (barring wayward turns) would be in the vicinity of 13 km (~ 8 mi).

Envoi 

In short, all evidence indicates the site of Laxtunich is located somewhere to the east of Tecolote, to the west of Oso Negro, and in the general vicinity of La Pasadita, El Tunel, Tixan, and Capukal. This is an area of generally dense settlement where much of the Late Classic period architecture conforms to that of the greater Yaxchilan kingdom. Of these, in our judgment, El Tunel is the best contender as the source of the Laxtunich lintels. It has architecture in Late Classic period Yaxchilan style, it possesses at least one collapsed vaulted structure with a looted crypt, has defensive walls, a dry cenote, and is located near an arroyo—all features of Laxtunich noted in Dana’s journal. The chances are high that slabs of sliced limestone are still there, left by looters in the 1960s. It is a shame indeed that Lamb did not follow through, as he had promised to Gordon Ekholm in 1951, on a more scholarly publication for the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s “Notes in Middle America” series (sic, “Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology.” AMNH archives, letter dated Jan. 25, 1951). The recollections might have been sharper, the details more accurate. But the pledge to Ekholm was probably yet another deception. A factually grounded essay would have undermined the tall tales in his book.

Quest for the Lost City and the two Laxtunich lintels persist as part of a frustrating yet fortunate chapter in Maya studies. The adventures reported by Dana and Ginger are, we now know, fabrications meant to sell a book. They do little to advance our understanding of the ancient Maya. Yet the true, unreported story—of a foreign visitor who spent a few days in the jungle in the company of local guides—is not unlike how we ourselves “discover” new archaeological sites (though such tales hardly make for fascinating storytelling). The Laxtunich lintels are masterworks of Maya art, torn from their source and rarely seen by scholars, much less appreciated by the greater public. Yet Dana’s photographs exist. He drew us maps that give us a general sense of the site’s location and, most important, took detailed notes of his travels to the site. From these clues, we can be reasonably secure in knowing not only the country of origin (Guatemala) but even the 20 km² area of the Sierra del Lacandόn National Park that likely produced the lintels. Future survey in the region, as aided by remote sensing and the search for thinned remnants, will doubtless transform Lamb’s “lost city” into one that is found.

Acknowledgments  Some of the ideas presented in this series of blogs were first presented at the Center for the Advanced Study of Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, where Houston held an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship in 2014–2015 (Houston and Urton 2015), and at the Wayeb Meetings in Moscow (Houston et al. 2016). The Lamb archive at the Sherman Library and Gardens, Corona del Mar, California, was most generous with access, as was Dr. Charles Spencer, Sumru Arincali, Barry Landua, and Kristin Mable at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York. Mary Miller first drew our attention to the Lamb-Ekholm correspondence at the AMNH. Ron Canter’s map of the Usumacinta was most helpful, as was Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz, who supplied crucial pieces of information from her collection of Lambiana. Michael Coe provided recollections of that Mayanist “Howard Hughes,” William Palmer III.

Note 1. William Pendleton Palmer III (1932–1982) was an heir to a Cleveland, Ohio, steel and mining fortune. His grandfather, William Pendleton Palmer (1861–1927), had amassed that wealth by working his way up from an apprenticeship to Presidency of the American Steel and Wire Company; along the way, he also served as a Director of the Cleveland Trust Co., H. C. Frick Coke Co., and the Bank of Commerce (WPP), with substantial investments in the Hanna Mining Company of Cleveland (Hanna and Palmer and Hanna). A member of the American Antiquarian Society from 1914 on, and President of the Western Reserve Historical Society from 1913 until his death, the Founder had collected a quantity of Civil War manuscripts and Lincoln memorabilia, indeed, on all aspects of antebellum life, for eventual donation to the Society, “Cleveland’s oldest cultural institution” (Western Reserve and Collection). The Founder would not have known his namesake—he died five years before Palmer III was born. But his acquisitive urges and antiquarian interests had some impact. For a time, Palmer III was one of the most energetic collectors of Maya pieces in the world. Our only account of him, “a bit like Howard Hughes, but on a less extravagant scale, and far more generous,” comes from Michael Coe (personal communication, Aug. 23, 2017; quotation from Coe 2006:199), who met Palmer while preparing “The Maya Scribe and His World” exhibit for the Grolier Club in New York City (April 20 to June 5, 1971). Learning that the collector had a large number of Classic Maya pots, Coe was flown on Palmer’s private plane, piloted by a retired Air Force colonel, to Falmouth, Maine, where Palmer lived. (Palmer was, according to Coe and Graham, the then-owner of Bar Harbor Airlines.) Coe remembers two totem poles from the Northwest Coast lying prone, and somewhat forlorn, outside the main residence. The cellar of a second building was given over to racks of magazines and newspapers curated by an older man. When asked about this surprising hoard, “a quarter century’s worth of old numbers of the New York Times, Newsweek, and other newspapers and journals,” Palmer replied, “I just want to look things up when I feel like it” (Coe 2006:199). Coe did not see the Laxtunich lintels, which might already have been in Switzerland.

References

Canter, Ronald L. 2007. Rivers Among the Ruins: The Usumacinta. The PARI Journal 7(3):1–24. (Canter)

Coe, Michael D. 2006. Final Report: An Archaeologist Excavates his Past. Thames and Hudson, London.

Golden, Charles, Tomás J. Barrientos, Zachary Hruby, and René Muñoz. 1999. La Pasadita: Nuevas Investigaciones en un sitio secundario en la región del Usumacinta. In XII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 1998, edited by J.P. Laporte and H.L. Escobedo, 390–406. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City.

Golden, Charles W., Edwin Román, A. Rene Muñoz, Andrew Scherer, and Luis A. Romero. 2005. Reconocimiento y patrones de asentamiento en la Sierra del Lacandón, Petén. In XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2004, edited by J.P. Laporte, B. Arroyo y H. Mejía, 284–295. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City.

Graham, Ian. 2010. The Road to Ruins. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Hofling, C. Andrew. 2014. Lacandon Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary / Diccionario Maya Lacandón-Español-Inglés. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Houston, Stephen, and Gary Urton. 2015. Incontro. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., April 2.

Houston, Stephen, James Doyle, David Stuart, and Karl Taube. 2016. Sun, Night, Earth, and Stone: The Politics of Belief on a Classic Maya Lintel. Paper presented at the 21st European Maya Conference, Moscow, Oct. 22.

Huffman-Klinkowitz, Julie, and Jerome Klinkowitz. 2006. The Enchanted Quest of Dana and Ginger Lamb. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson.

Hull, Kerry. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Lamb, Dana, with June Cleveland. 1938. Enchanted Vagabonds. Harper, New York.

Lamb, Dana, and Ginger Lamb. 1951. Quest for the Lost City. Harper, New York.

Maler, Teobert. 1903. Researches in the Central Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley: Report of Explorations for the Museum – Part Second. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. II, No. 2. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Mayer, Karl-Herbert. 1984. Maya Monuments: Sculptures of Unknown Provenance in Middle America. Translated by Sandra Brizee. Verlag von Flemming, Berlin.

Meléndez, Juan Carlos, and Andrew K. Scherer. 2005. Reconocimiento en La Pasadita, El Túnel y Tixan. In Proyecto Regional Arqueológico Sierra del Lacandón: Informe Preliminar No. 3, edited by C. Golden, A. K. Scherer and R. Vásquez, 59–72. Informe Presentado a la Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural de Guatemala, Guatemala City.

Miller, Mary, and Claudia Brittenham. 2013. The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. University of Texas Press, Austin; INAH and CONACULTA, Mexico City.

Muñoz, A. René, and Edwin Román. 2005. Capukal y El Tunel Reconocimiento en el Àrea de La Pasadita. In Proyecto Arqueológico Parque Nacional Sierra del Lacandon, Piedras Negras 2004, Informe 2, Temporada 2004, edited by C. W. Golden, L. Romero, K. Dardón and M. Rangel, 18–21. Direccion General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural de Guatemala, Guatemala City.

Vásquez, Rosaura, Andrew K. Scherer, Charles W. Golden, Stephen D. Houston, Fabiola Quiroa, Juan Carlos Meléndez, and Ana Lucía Arroyave. 2006. En el reino de Pájaro Jaguar: Reconocimiento arqueológico en el área sur de la Sierra del Lacandón, Petén. In XIX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2005, edited by J.P. Laporte, B. Arroyo and H. Mejía, 867–877. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City.

Witherspoon, Keith B. 2008. Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb.

Zender, Marc, Dmitri Beliaev, and Albert Davletshin. 2016. The Syllabic Sign we and an Apologia for Delayed Decipherment. The PARI Journal 17(2):35–56.

by Stephen Houston (Brown University), James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Karl Taube (UC-Riverside)

The concept of an oeuvre, a body of works created by a single artist, presents an interpretive risk. If taken too far, it implies that makers of things and images somehow know what is to come. Earlier works bind to later efforts, later ones to antecedents, in a coherent story where beginnings anticipate endings. After all, the same artist is involved, the same mind, the same set of hands. But think of Lucien Freud, the British painter. His Girl with a Kitten (1947)—the woman, a study in stiffness, close to throttling her pet—fails to predict a later, impasto oil of Leigh Bowery (cf. Tate and Hirshhorn). Both have a certain “realism,” a commitment to figuration, but they differ markedly as well. One portrays a lover, rendered in pale tones and shown close-up within a cramped frame, each detail observed; the other is a mountain of flesh in browns, greens, and greys. Gravity wins in the sprawl of Bowery’s body. According to one theory, Francis Bacon, a close friend, had come along to liberate Freud’s brush (Smee 2016:88–90). That contact and Bacon’s wild example prompted the shift in Freud’s handling of paint.

Yet the idea of an oeuvre helps in one important respect. It compels attention to an overall accumulation of artwork—the unpredictable arc of a career—and serves to unveil nuances of time and intention. This is why Alfred Gell, an anthropologist and theorist of time, looked at the challenges of oeuvre in his classic book, Art and Agency (Gell 1998). Of course, Gell’s ambition was to generalize beyond Western art, to find commonality behind “Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Constable” and Tahitian ti’i carvings or Marquesan tattoos (Gell 1998:232). What joined these artists and their productions were the acts of copying and innovation, the relation of one work to another, and the ways in which each piece might materialize thoughts or “internal states of mind” (Gell 1998:236). Cross-ties came about—Gell’s temporal interests intruded here—because that was how people create. No artwork was (or could be) an isolate, a de novo production. Each had antecedents to admire, repeat or reject.

Gell’s terms express the subtleties of these relations. “Preparatory” pieces bear a “strong” tie to “finished work” (Gell 1998:234), as in Michelangelo’s sketches for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (e.g., British Museum). Other artworks serve a “precursory” role, with a “weak” but perceptible link to later pieces (Gell 1998:234). An artwork could even be turned back to a precursor, so as to modify and develop that inspiration (Gell 1998:234). Heavily influenced by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, Gell called this a “retention.” “Protention,” another term from Husserl, described the relation between a precursor and later works.

These notions can be graphed (Figure 1). The dots, each an artwork, are connected by arrows into a mesh that spans and defines the start and end of a career. A protention darts forward, a retention backward. Together, the dots—a particular ti’i, a sketch by Leonardo—can be assembled into a catalogue raisonné, a comprehensive, annotated listing by media or by all media (catalogue raisonné)…and a basic resource for understanding the creative intellect over time.

Figure 1. Alfred Gell’s concept of an oeuvre (Gell 1998:fig. 9.4/1). 

Gell’s thoughts are stimulating, but they present plenty of problems. Copies of earlier works and sketches for future pieces are not in mutual exclusion. They may be copies and preparations, as Gell himself acknowledged (1998:238). In some cases, the fidelity to past works and rigid planning for future ones are far looser than allowed by Gell’s map of poking, unidirectional arrows. Perhaps the maker was simply sorting through a visual dilemma and how to tackle it graphically.

Yet the oddest and least persuasive aspect must be his thin arrows jabbing forward as “protentions.” These are vague premonitions that veer close to metaphysics or the mysteries of time travel. And the conceit of a single career as an internal process is made implausible when the copying is of work by others, or when one’s own pieces inspire a catena of mimics. Indeed, what, really, is “individual” innovation and creative afflatus in places that value the constraints of tradition and ritual precedent, where even signed works have multiple craftsmen or makers (Houston 2016:414–415, tables 13.4, 13.5; also Montgomery 1995; Stuart 1989)?

For the Maya evidence, which concerns us here, Gell did not go far enough: why should a system that fuses pictorial writing with text-endowed pictures not include inscriptions and calligraphy in these diagrams of influence, design, and production? Consider stemmatology, a kind of research, a minutely argued procedure, by which the genealogy of certain manuscripts achieves a semblance of order (van Reenen et al. 2004). This document led to that one; both came ultimately from another source, one not necessarily preserved to the present, and so on. For Classic Maya texts and images, there can be no doubt, for example, that those shaping Tikal Stela 22, from the reign of Yax Nuun Ahiin II, were influenced by—as “retentions”—the details and messaging of Stela 21, a carving of his father, Yik’in Chan K’awiil (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:figs. 29, 31).

Gell did not write on the Maya, but his ideas touch on the lintels seen in situ by Dana Lamb (Maya Lintel I). The scatterplot of dots, each an “individual work of art,” suggests a dismaying, unreachable goal. Sketches (done on palm leaf or bark?) do not survive, eliminating a good part of the plot, and most graffiti that do exist seem inexpert and rapid, evoking finished works nearby, showing the incision of a low-quality original or direct observation of events in plazas below (e.g., Źrałka 2014:figs. 69–80; Trik and Kampen 1983:figs. 38, 48, 71, 72, 73). Some scholars suppose that many were even the work of children or subadults, although that intriguing proposal may be hard to prove (Hutson 2011). The complex stemmata of well-executed texts on walls at Xultun, Guatemala, can only be guessed at, in that some may have been preparations for finished books, others a fair copy of the same (Saturno et al. 2012). In Gell’s terms, which are the protentions, which the retentions?

The idea of tendencies or retentions touches on four lintels that almost certainly came from the same hand or from carvers under the supervision of one person. Two are explicitly identified as such productions: Laxtunich Lintel 1, viewed by Lamb during his adventures (Figures 2, 3), and another now in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum (Kimbell).

Figure 2. Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photograph by James Doyle). 

Figure 3. Laxtunich Lintel 1 (drawing by David Stuart).

The signature confirms such “authorship” (Figure 4): ma-yu-yu ?-TI’ or ma-yu-yu TI’-?. The tags both follow the signs for “his carving/3D shaping,” to some epigraphers yuxul but not securely so: too many examples append lu to the initial yu, casting doubt on that reading. Mayuy is probably the same as the Ch’orti’ word for “fog,” mayuy (Hull 2016:275), attested also in K’iche’, mayuy (Kaufman 2003:478). In modern usage, the term conveys a sense of smog or contamination, possibly an emanation. Maya art applies this to other noxious vapors from the “mouth,” ti’, a word present here. Indeed, a telling comparison comes from a Late Classic vessel in which glyphs describe a smoke-exhaling feline as “Smoking Mouth” (pi-bi li/le?-ti-‘i, pibil/pibel ti’, K1250; for a vase from the same hand or workshop see Burial 128 at Altar de Sacrificios [Adams 1971:figs. 77–78]). However, the mammalian head at the end of Mayuy’s name eludes decipherment. Marked with signs for “dark/night,” ak’ab, it may be a nocturnal animal with long ear (Stone and Zender 2011:144–145), but there are insufficient clues to clinch the identification. At an impasse, we simply call him “Mayuy,” drawing on the first elements of his name. Nor is there certainty that he lacked assistants. It would be surprising if he did not have such help, someone to rough out features or undertake the tedious polishing of backgrounds. Yet the amount of time for the lintels is sufficiently long to contemplate a single designer and, in details at least, a lone carver (the lintels span some 10 years or more, see below).

Figure 4. Sculptor’s signatures of Mayuy: Laxtunich Lintel 1: I1–J1 (upper, photograph by James Doyle); Kimbell lintel (Mayuy Series, Lintel 1:J2–J3 (lower, photograph by Justin Kerr, K2823, used with permission).

As Marc Zender has shown, another component of his name spells out a place of origin: AJ-K’IN-‘a, “he of the sun-water” or “he of the warm water” (Figure 5, Zender 2002:170–176). The compelling argument is that this location, perhaps a hot spring or some sunny spot, forms part of the ancient kingdom of Piedras Negras. But this presents a real historical puzzle, in that the carver would have come from a polity detested by those indirectly responsible for the lintels (Houston 2016:409, fig. 13.11). That is, both kingdoms were hereditary enemies, and there is evidence for only a brief entente between the two (Martin and Grube 2000:127; 2008:127). Thereafter, the dynasties returned to their more usual state of mutual loathing. Thus, Mayuy did not just arrive from a different kingdom. He was a turncoat, lured away for better employment or, perhaps, taken as a captive of war. Such monuments on the frontier with Piedras Negras could represent an affront, a kind of “border rhetoric” or taunting between polities (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2017).

Figure 5. Muyuy’s place of origin, K’in’a, with mention of same location at Palenque: (A) Laxtunich Lintel 1:K1 (photograph by James Doyle); (B) Mayuy Series, Lintel 1:J4 (photograph by Justin Kerr, K2823, used with permission); (C) West Alfarda, Temple XXI (Zender 2002:fig. 10.7c; adjusted from Schele and Mathews 1979:#555); (D) Tablet of the Slaves, Palenque:D3l (photograph by Linda Schele, #20080 in Linda Schele Photograph Collection, Schele Photos). 

There are four lintels in total, including two without signatures. One, Laxtunich Lintel 2, was photographed by Dana Lamb near Lintel 1. It obviously pairs with that carving, appearing at some point in the same Swiss vault as its companion and with the same mounting of cross-bars (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Two views of Laxtunich Lintel 2, in situ and in Swiss storage (photograph by Dana Lamb, April 1950, and photographer unknown, image supplied by Justin Kerr). 

The others are: the Kimbell panel, equipped with a Mayuy signature in the place between the commissioning noble and his overlord, Chelew Chan K’inich or “Shield Jaguar IV” (Figure 7); and a piece known only from a grainy photograph, also in the same set of Swiss photographs (Figure 8; for the overlord’s name, see Zender et al. 2016). For reasons to be explained below, these are labeled “Mayuy Series Lintels 1 and 2.” Future work may supplant these labels, however, and situate the carvings in the palace group visited by Lamb. When that happens, with corroboration from sawn remnants, we can and will call them “Laxtunich Lintels 3 and 4.” As noted in the first essay (Maya Lintel I), the photos from Lamb demonstrate that these were lintels rather than wall panels, if considerably shaved down and cut into pieces for transport by mule or human tumpline. Laxtunich Lintels 1, 2, and Mayuy Series Lintel 2 are, in fact, so fragile that only adhesive and the cross-bars mentioned before hold them together.

Figure 7. Mayuy Series Lintel 1, Kimbell Art Museum, AP 1971.07 (Kimbell, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission). 

Figure 8.  Mayuy Series Lintel 2, fire-drilling scene (Drawing by Stephen Houston, after photograph provided by Justin Kerr).

The sequence of dates is straightforward (all are Julian Dates in the Martin-Skidmore correlation [Martin and Skidmore 2012]):

• Feb. 19, AD 769 (Mayuy Series, Lintel 2 [9.16.18.0.19] 1 Kawak 2 Wo);
• Nov. 6, AD 772 (Laxtunich Lintel 2 [9.17.1.14.15] 5 Men 3 Muwaan);
• March 18, AD 773 (Laxtunich Lintel 1 [9.17.2.3.7] 7 Manik 10 Sip);
• Aug. 20 and 23, AD 783 (Mayuy Series, Lintel 1, Kimbell Art Museum, [9.17.12.13.14] 5 Ix 7 Sak and [9.17.12.13.17 8 Kaban 10 Sak]), the latter date corresponding to the presentation of war captives on the carving.

The events are readily understood, in sequence:

• (1) Mayuy Series Lintel 2, fire-drilling by the local sajal, “guardian of Bawayib,” here as a youth impersonating the duck-billed wind god, and under the supervision of the king of Yaxchilan, “guardian of Taj-Mo'” (Chelew Chan K’inich)—note the duck-billed figure on his forehead and as the small jewel on his back. The overlord, the figure from Yaxchilan, impersonates what may be a centipede with watery associations. The fish reveals some of that aquatic background, as does the deity name B3. A wind and water trope loom large in Maya notions of order (Stuart 2003), but perhaps the concept here involves the emanation of wind from watery caves.
• (2) Laxtunich Lintel 2, the elevation as sajal of Aj Yax Bul K’uk’ while Chelew Chan K’inich, labeled mostly by his Emblem glyph and as the “guardian of Taj-Mo,” sits on his throne.
• (3) Laxtunich Lintel 1, the impersonation of Aj Yax Bul K’uk’ as a maize god of night (to be discussed in the fourth essay) and Chelew Chan K’inich as the sun god.
• (4) Mayuy Series Lintel 1, the Kimbell sculpture, in which Bawayib is said to have been captured, his captor firmly identified, Aj Sak Ma’x (AJ-SAK-ma-xi), “He, the White Spider Monkey” (from Common Mayan *maax, Kaufman 2003:561; but see Robertson et al. 2007:38, for the internal glottal)—precisely the same person who, 14 years earlier, drilled fire as a youth in the company of his overlord, Chelew Chan K’inich. In the latest date from the Mayuy series, he offers captives to that lord.

What can be said here of original context? Even after trimming, the measurements of the lintels offer some clues (see Mayer 1995:82 for dimensions of the fire-drilling lintel; the others come from the Kimbell website and measurements by the authors):

Laxtunich Lintel 1                                     Ht.  129.5 cm (left)      Width 94.5 cm (bottom)

Laxtunich Lintel 2                                     Ht.  118.1 cm                Width 94 cm

Mayuy Series Lintel 1 (Kimbell)             Ht. 115.3                       Width 88.9 cm

Mayuy Series Lintel 2 (Fire-drilling)     Ht. c. 100 cm                Width 80 cm

The Laxtunich lintels are relatively close in size, with allowances for mutilation by looters, and show an unusually deep relief (Figure 9). All carvings, including the Mayuy series, display a similar treatment of feathers, often neatly beveled away from the central rachis, and a marked sensitivity to the weight of gravity on flesh and cloth. Belly fat, for example, pushes up from cinched garments. These are likely the attributes of Mayuy’s carving, what appealed to him, in “retention” and “protention” from earlier and later works.

Figure 9. Deep relief on Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photographs by James Doyle).

There is another detail worth noting, one that relates to Mayuy’s probable origins in an enemy kingdom. Late carvings at Piedras Negras itself, not by Mayuy but by sculptors active during his lifetime, flaunt a three-dimensional virtuosity, an undercutting or gouging out that resulted in partly detached, elevated limbs yet careful (if largely invisible) details underneath. Panel 3 at Piedras Negras, dating to Mar. 25, AD 782—a little more than a year before Mayuy Series Lintel 1—has the same audacious undercutting (Figure 10). Mayuy’s place of origin may account for this daring approach to surfaces, in that he brought with him a technique or practice from his home kingdom. Perhaps, even probably, he trained in its ateliers, a Freud (or Bacon?) to his peers. There are no known instances of such undercutting from the greater kingdom of Yaxchilan. Of course, another reason for the deep relief might have been practical. The vigorous relief made the carving stand out in dim or raking light.

Figure 10. Undercutting and partial “detachment” of limbs on Laxtunich Lintel 1 and Piedras Negras Panel 3, broken-off areas highlighted (photograph on left by James Doyle, on right by the University of Pennsylvania Museum). 

Yet there are differences too. The Laxtunich set is rectilinear and taut in its overall composition and placement of figures, while the Mayuy series tends to a pronounced looseness, even drooping, of its masses. Glyphs are more casually picked out in, say, the lines within a ni syllable. To be sure, there are notable symmetries in how both present information. The Laxtunich set has one mythic scene (to be described in the fourth essay here) and one dynastic (the accession). The first concerns a mythic opposition of night and day, the second a validation for local rule. So also for the Mayuy series. There is a fire-drilling on a mythic hole or centipede, described as ma-ta-wi, matawil(?)—the dry cenote mentioned by Lamb at El Tunel? (Maya Lintel I)—and a bold display of dynastic might and martial obedience when captives are presented to the overlord. Here the mythic opposition contrasts deities of wind and water/caves but still commemorates the creation of light-by-fire. In each group there may be a scene taking place at Yaxchilan. These portray the overlord on his throne, which, in the case of Laxtunich Lintel 2, is remarkably close to an actual bench, Throne 1, found at Yaxchilan in the main plaza near Structure 33 (contact sheets are on file in the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Archives, Peabody Museum, Harvard University; see also Tate 1992:fig. 122).

The Laxtunich lintels probably came from one building. They display the same overlord, the king of Yaxchilan, and the same nobleman, Aj Yax Bul K’uk’. This holds equally true for the Mayuy series, which highlights the king of Yaxchilan but now with a different nobleman, Aj Sak Ma’x. A reasonable guess is that the Mayuy series also came from one building but of later date. This would account for the differences in style between the two sets of lintels yet also fold in the operative hand and style of Mayuy. Whatever the sequence of dates, the two groups of lintels reveal events in the lives of two nobleman under the same overlord. Aj Yax Bul K’uk’ came to high office and then, at a later date, impersonated a god with his overlord. A second nobleman, Aj Sak Ma’x, drilled fire with that overlord while a young man, engaged in impersonation as well, and then presented captives as part of his obligations to Shield Jaguar IV.

There are several scenarios here, but one may account for the most variables. A solid chance exists that these lintels came from different structures at Laxtunich itself, each erected by a nobleman, one (Aj Sak Ma’x) succeeding the other (Aj Yax Bul K’uk’, Figure 11). The earlier sajal had either died or been replaced by the second, yet the second wished to show, through a retroactive scene of fire-drilling as a youth, that he was already in close relation to the overlord. The change in color scheme was systematic, the Laxtunich lintels having a red background, the Mayuy series a blue (see the third essay in this set of blogs). The internal consistency provides added support for the coherence of the two groups. Each pair of lintels required one signature only, hence the uneven dispersion across the four carvings. Doorways equipped with such tags might have had some special or central position. In this they resemble the three lintels over the doorways in Structure 1 at Bonampak. Only one, the middle, Lintel 2, has a sculptor’s signature. Presumably, that authorship was extendible to Lintels 1 and 3 (Mathews 1980:figs. 5–7).

Figure 11. Comparison between a sequence organized by date and a conjecture about placement in two buildings.

Notably, the manner in which Laxtunich Lintel 1 was sawn by looters resembles that of the Mayuy Series Lintel 1, a.k.a., the Kimbell carving (Figure 12). The Kimbell has the same vertical cut, just to the side of the ruler of Yaxchilan, and a right, medial cut across the midsection of a figure. The only difference is that, unlike the Kimbell, Laxtunich Lintel 1 already had an angled, natural break. The cuts and sawmarks hint that the same people were involved in looting the pieces from Laxtunich and from whatever site or building yielding the later Mayuy series. And, if the same people, perhaps this occurred at the same place. The extent to which the backs were shaved off can be appreciated on the Kimbell lintel (Figure 13).

Figure 12. Cuts by looters in yellow, natural break in red, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (ultraviolet photography by Metropolitan Museum of Art, lines added by Stephen Houston). 

Figure 13. Left and right sides of the Kimbell lintel, AP 1971.07, longest side 45 3/8 x 35 in. (115.3 x 88.9 cm, photographs courtesy of Jennifer Casler-Price and Shelly Threadgill, Kimbell Art Museum).

Yet this reconstruction of physical setting requires caution. Much is unknown. The Mayuy series could have derived from a site near Laxtunich but distinct from it, under separate governance by a sajal. There is hope of resolving the puzzle, however. With effort, much survey, some digging, the remaining pieces of thinning and shaping will surely be found, even the missing, triangular wedge of Laxtunich Lintel 2. Most likely it is still in place under doorway collapse.

The historical milieu of the lintels involves a figure named on many carvings at Yaxchilan and in several subordinate sites. He lived almost at the tail end of his dynasty, seemingly the last ruler to be effective and energetic (Figure 14). An attribute on the Mayuy carvings in general is that his regnal name, “Shield Jaguar [IV],” is never mentioned. He is identified solely by his personal name (Chelew Chan K’inich), his guardianship over an important captive, and his Emblem.

Figure 14. Final rulers of Yaxchilan, Mexico, with Shield Jaguar IV highlighted (Martin 2014:fig. 136). 

The paleography of his names and other glyphs can be evaluated as well (Figure 15). Mayuy (or one of his assistants) worked variably, flattening glyphs in some cases, or, in the Laxtunich Lintel 1 and parts of Lintel 2, indulging in rounded surfaces. Later glyphs (Figure 15c, d) seem to sag, slightly off-kilter, according with the looser handling of his later works. There is also evidence of consistency, a favoring of a particular variant of U, Emblems with beaded K’UH[UL] and no other appended elements, K’IN logograph within the chi hand. The largely syllabic spelling of k’inich is almost unknown at Yaxchilan itself, although it also rare to non-existent at Piedras Negras as well—this is a true idiosyncrasy of Mayuy.

A final comment can be made about the oeuvre of this singularly gifted sculptor. Intrepid in infusing delicate, even vulnerable flourishes on stone, he showed remarkable ability in devising multiple registers within a single image and in arranging complex dispositions of bodies in spatial and social hierarchies. His political landscape must have been complicated too, involving sajal, basajal (“head sajal,” on Laxtunich Lintel 1), and, within one monument, an intermediate level (a magnate rank?) of someone labeled as a Chak Tok Wayib (Figure 16, see Beliaev 2004, for discussion of this title; a possibility exists that it pertains to oracles [Beliaev 2004:127] and directions, in this case to the east, a sector associated with chak, “red” [n.b., a K’AN-to-ko-wa-WAY-bi, k’an [“south”?] tok wayib, a baah-sajal at Yaxchilan, impersonates a wind god on that site’s Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, Step X:B1; see also Yaxchilan Lintel 6:B6]). The masterworks of Mayuy may not permit Gell’s time travel or give much evidence of “protention.” But they looked back to earlier works, modified that legacy with aplomb, and, towards the end of the Classic period, flourished at the physical margins of a Maya kingdom.

Figure 16. Possible hierarchy of nobles and overlords in the kingdom of Yaxchilan.

Acknowledgements. Justin Kerr was generous as always with use of his photographs. Parts of this were presented at the European Mayanist Meetings, Moscow, Russia, October 2016, after a kind invite from Dmitri Beliaev, and, in April 2015, by Houston, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Jennifer Casler Price and Shelly Threadgill of the Kimbell Art Museum gave generously of their time for the photographs in Figure 13.

References

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Beliaev, Dmitri D. 2004. Wayaab’ Title in Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions: On the Problem of Religious Specialization in Classic Maya Society. In Maya Religious Practices: Processes of Change and Adaptation, edited by Graña Behrens, Daniel, Nikolai Grube, Christian Prager, Frauke Sachse, Stefanie Teufel, and Elisabeth Wagner, 121–130. Acta Mesoamericana, 14. Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben.

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Houston, Stephen. 2016. Crafting Credit: Authorship among Classic Maya Painters and Sculptors. In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy L. Costin, 391–427. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

Houston, Stephen, and David Stuart. 1996. Of Gods, Glyphs, and Kings: Divinity and Rulership among the Classic Maya. Antiquity 70:289–312.

Hull, Kerry. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Hutson, Scott R. 2011. The Art of Becoming: The Graffiti of Tikal, Guatemala. Latin American Antiquity 22(4):403–426.

Jones, Christopher, and Linton Satterthwaite. 1982. Tikal Report No. 33, Part A, The Monuments and Inscriptions of Tikal: The Carved Monuments. University Museum Monograph 44. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Kaufman, Terrence S. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. On-line resource at http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf.

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Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2000. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. Thames and Hudson, London.

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by James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Stephen Houston (Brown University), Beth Edelstein (Cleveland Museum of Art), and Brunella Santarelli (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

When Teobert Maler arrived in the Usumacinta region, he marveled at the landscape, noting stark contrasts of color and texture while walking among the white limestone cliffs “crowned by towering trees,” with the “nantsin-trees [Byrsonima crassifolia] just unfolding the splendor of their yellow blossoms” (Maler 1901:41). The site of Piedras Negras, Maler observed, took its name from the “splendid sandbanks with blackish limestone rocks rising out of them” (Maler 1901:42)—a distinctive feature now known to result from quarrying for the city. The color world of black, white, yellow, and green that Maler encountered is aggressively evident in the Parque Nacional Sierra Lacandon today, where the site of Laxtunich lies undocumented scientifically, and where the sculptor Mayuy created Laxtunich Lintel 1, his magnum opus.

Color creation and its application to eighth-century Maya monuments reflected the aspirations of Maya artists “to reproduce the effects of prime colorants” in nature (Houston et al. 2009:58). Maya artists made paints, or solid inorganic or organic colored materials suspended in liquid, and lakes, in which organic dyes were combined with inert clays, such as the well-known Maya Blue from indigo. Commonly used pigments included black from carbonized materials, red from hematite, yellow ochre from goethite, and white calcium carbonate (Houston et al. 2009:61-63). Many if not all of these occur on the Laxtunich lintels (Maya Lintel II).

Though the identities of the painters, unlike the master sculptor, remain hidden to us, the rich color world of the Yaxchilan-area nobles was essential to the lintels’ role as portals. Colors had deep symbolic associations for the Classic Maya. In glyphic script, colors took on double meanings as modifiers of people and things. Colors were also tangible substances (Note 1). In material form, colors patted and pinched into cakes were luxury goods taken to the afterlife by Maya kings and queens (Houston et al. 2015:159, fig. 3.70). Not all materials with the same color were created equal. Their richness and rarity were employed sparingly to underscore the preciousness of certain images or text. For example, in the Bonampak murals, imported cinnabar only appears in the dedicatory text of the building. There it brightened and enriched the dedication, in contrast to the more common, less costly iron-based reds elsewhere in the paintings (Brittenham 2015a:35; Magaloni Kerpel 1998:75). A casual visitor would not, we suspect, have distinguished between the two kinds of pigment. But the contrast mattered to makers and patrons.

The Bonampak murals are relevant for two other reasons. They show the most elaborate use of color in the same general time and region as Laxtunich Lintel 1. More to the point, they were almost certainly created by artists affiliated with Yaxchilan. That city provided carvers (and presumably painters) to Bonampak, as well as a queen and supervisory mention in the dedicatory text of the mural building. Mayuy, in carving for a vassal of Yaxchlan, must have known these artists (Maya Lintel II). Moreover, the lintels over the doorways at Bonampak are lavishly colored (Figure 1), and their pigments resembled those used and applied on the flat walls within (see Magaloni Kerpel et al. 1996; Magaloni 1998, 2004, for pigment studies). A reasonable claim is that rules for the transformation of colorants into paints were widely held by artists in and around the royal court of Yaxchilan, on both sides of the Usumacinta river. Sumptuary codes of a similar sort probably governed access to pigments at Bonampak and Laxtunich.

Figure 1. Lintel 1, Structure 1, Bonampak (photo by James Doyle).

Bonampak Lintel 1 celebrates the victory of the local king over a captive, and color signals the setting: the bright blue background suggests this violence took place against a clear tropical sky, as is found in the captive sacrifice scene in the murals within, or perhaps on a battleground deep in the green forest. In the mural, Chooj, the prince who dominates the murals, stands out sharply against the blue sky background with his deep reddish-brown skin, yellow and black jaguar tunic, and green headdress of quetzal feathers (Miller and Brittenham 2013:figs. 172, 190). There appears to have been a guiding logic in going from a background color to adjacent tones: the painters sought contrast, a dominant blue dictating a red frame and vice-versa (see below).

Perceptive research on the painting techniques of Bonampak artists by Diana Magaloni and colleagues reveals how paints and lakes were layered over white grounds to create a fluid, naturalistic look of great subtlety. Yet the surviving pigments on the Laxtunich sculpture hint that color was used in another way. Mayuy or those who painted the lintel—it is hard to imagine much disconnection between them—did not seek the blue sky and white stuccoed facades and walls. Rather, in his first lintels, he used a red background. This configuration resembles, if in darker tint, the coloring of Room 1 at Bonampak, a scene of tributary dance under a sky band and two sets of jewels for regalia (Miller and Brittenham 2013:insert for Room 1).

There are several issues in interpreting the colors of Laxtunich Lintel 1. The main ones involve the lack of context and possible alteration or deterioration of the carving as it journeyed from the site to private collections in the 1960s (Graham 2010:429). Under ultraviolet light, the breaks and linear cuts through the stone are plainly visible as darker lines, with modern restoration seen in the large diagonal break (Figure 2). The lighter areas of a greenish fluorescence, such as in the body of Shield Jaguar IV on the upper left, may indicate a modern consolidation of delicate paint surfaces as revealed by the manual removal of calcite accretions. Those deposits grew, we believe, from centuries of water leaching before the lintel cracked and its housing collapsed. Indeed, the length of the original carving (its dimensions may be appreciated in the Lamb photos, Maya Lintel I) indicates a wide doorway and heavy weight above, as well as the lintel’s overall, inherent fragility. Building collapse might well have been sudden and catastrophic. Alternatively, the damage had taken place only a short time before Lamb’s arrival. In one note on the back of a photo he mentions the recent fall of a large tree (Maya Lintel I).

Figure 2. Ultraviolet fluorescence of surface, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photograph by Beth Edelstein). 

Despite the deposits and damage during transport, several fields of color survive on the lintel (Figure 3). A close examination discloses intense blue-green applied to the quetzal feathers, jade jewels, and frames around the hieroglyphic texts in the upper and lower registers. Blue-green seems also to cover the border of the entire scene, mirroring the preciousness surrounding the glyphs. A darker red with purplish tinge decorates the face and bodies of the four large human characters, and a lighter red-orange covers the background and certain hieroglyphs. A yellowish orange appears in the k’in, “sun,” element of the “quadripartite badge” (perhaps a stylized censer or offering cache) protruding downward from the right side of the horizontal dividing line (Taube 1998:fig. 5).

Figure 3. Surviving color, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (drawing by Stephen Houston, photograph by James Doyle). 

To evaluate the pigments present on Laxtunich Lintel 1, qualitative, non-destructive, open-architecture x-ray fluorescence analysis was performed in situ on various areas of the stone. [Note 2] The locations of the sampling appear in Figure 4. Our team also scraped some of the pigmented areas for SEM-EDS and Raman analysis, in places corresponding to a number of the XRF analysis points.

 Figure 4. Location of XRF sample points, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photograph by Beth Edelstein).

Surface XRF analysis of the red and yellow pigments suggests that both are iron oxide pigments. One sample area of red indicated the presence of arsenic (point 1), so SEM-EDS analysis was performed to confirm that substance. However, the scraping taken from point 1 turned out to have no pigment, only stone or carbonaceous crust. The EDS results from the other scraping (taken from point 7) also denotes iron oxide, not arsenic, as the most likely identification. The source of the arsenic is unclear, though it may be present in crusts on the surface of the stone.

The blue and green pigments were examined with XRF, SEM-EDS and Raman spectroscopy. The XRF spectrum primarily showed elements in the stone itself (calcium and iron), but the EDS registered elements characteristic of a clay (silicon, aluminum and magnesium); the Raman spectra of both blue and green samples matched that of indigo (Figure 5). Together, these results signal that the blue and green pigments are Maya blue, a mixture of indigo dye and palygorskite clay. The blue area on Laxtunich Lintel 1 exhibited a small copper peak, as seen in Figure 6. SEM-EDS, however, was not able to identify copper, making it unlikely that the mineral pigment derived from this element.

Figure 5. Raman spectra of blue and green pigment samples, with reference spectrum of indigo (in gray).

Figure 6.  XRF Spectrum of blue pigment, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (analytical point 1).

The iron oxide reds and yellows, Maya blue, and likely carbon-based dark pigment of Lintel 1 are visually similar to the color scheme of Laxtunich Lintel 2, also in a private collection, especially the Maya blue on the frame around the hieroglyphs (Figure 7, center). Striking differences arise in comparison with Mayuy Series Lintel 1, which shares the blue background of the Bonampak lintel and murals (Figure 7, right). There are several reasons for this discrepancy. First, the blue background on the more courtly scene may refer to the sky, as in Bonampak, or to the preciousness of the innermost chambers of the royal court. Second, the red background potentially underscores the setting of the interaction depicted on Lintel 1, namely, the golden-red sky of the equinoctial dawn (or sunset) or an evocation of some primordial event (cf. mythic referents on the red-background “Vase of the 13 Gods” at the Los Angeles Museum of Art, M.2010.115.14 and Maya Lintel IV).

Figure 7. Shifting color schemes in Laxtunich Lintels 1, 2, and Mayuy Series Lintel 1 (photographs by James Doyle [left], courtesy of Justin Kerr [center], and the Kimbell Art Museum [right]). 

Or perhaps the red background with blue glyphs advertised that these events were taking place at Yaxchilan itself, rather than at provincial centers. Artists might have used red to reference the dense, stuccoed, and painted core of Yaxchilan; blue would have correlated with the smaller hilltop palaces at the local sajal courts. Against this interpretation is the Kimbell Lintel or Mayuy Series Lintel 1. That scene, in which Aj Chak Ma’x offers human tribute to his overlord (ti yajaw), has a blue background, yet the event probably took place at Yaxchilan (see Piedras Negras Stela 12 for a similar display; CMHI 9:61). Consistency was important, it seems. The two early Mayuy lintels came, we suspect, from the same building, suggesting that such conformity of appearance guided the makers, whatever the distinct themes in the lintels themselves (Maya Lintel II). Mayuy may even have wanted a vivid contrast between the earlier and later lintels.

The red-versus-blue background schemes in the Yaxchilan kingdom have parallels in the murals at Cacaxtla, painted several hundred kilometers away (see Brittenham and Magaloni Kerpel 2016; Brittenham 2015b). There, in the Red Temple, so-named after the background of its luxuriously painted murals, the artists highlight the blue-green preciousness of jade, quetzal feathers, maize plants, and watery abundance against a deep red background (Brittenham and Magaloni Kerpel 2016:74-81, fig. 3.23-4). The red scenes at Cacaxtla blur human and supernatural identities, while the blue background of the Battle Mural indicates “present-day” action, namely, close to the time of painting (Brittenham 2015:177). At Cacaxtla, as in the Laxtunich lintels, one color determines the juxtaposition of the other. Yet the lintels differ in one important respect by offering few divisions between the dynastic present and the supernatural. Lintel 1, a cosmic scene, and Lintel 2, a political presentation, share the same red ground (Maya Lintel II and Maya Lintel IV). Nor can we be certain of full evidence: the Laxtunich building may well have contained murals.

Contrast mattered. Mayuy took artistic license in his choice of red or blue background to amp up the contrast between the red-hued human figures, festooned with jade and textiles, and the ground field, which would otherwise have been yellowish-white stone. This seems also to be the case with the murals and lintels from the site of La Pasadita, the contemporaneous center of a sajal noble court (Figure 8). A lintel in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, likely to be from La Pasadita, carries the same color scheme of red background, blue and green jade and feather highlights, and a yellow-orange daubed on a few attributes. More than his peer at Laxtunich, the sculptor of the La Pasadita lintels, Chakalte’, mastered a more subtle, low relief technique. Yet the same rules seem to inform the post-dedication painting of these upper surfaces of doorways.

Figure 8. Comparison of paint schemes: (left) enhanced multispectral image from Fragment 1, Structure 1 murals, La Pasadita, Guatemala (now in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City, Kamal et al. 1999:fig. 10); (right) La Pasadita Lintel 3 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979.206.1047).

The overlord of the courts producing these three artistic schemes of sculpture and painting—at Bonampak, Laxtunich, and La Pasadita—was the same ruler, Shield Jaguar IV. Resource procurement of pigments and knowledge of recipes were probably more or less equal across his territory. Yet differential levels of skill become obvious when comparing the facture of painted lintels and murals. The careful preparation of stucco surfaces and layering of paint in murals give way to an almost clumsy, caked-on painting of the carvings, begging the question of who applied the pigment.

One can imagine the master sculptor shaping a quarried stone. The lintel would then be raised, positioned, and dedicated, possibly with subordinate nobles bearing the weight of the masterwork. (These lords either did the lifting or, more probable, given their elite status, assisted metaphorically by commissioning the construction.) The lintel thus placed, the roof completed, the building could then be completed ritually by having fire enter it for the first time (Stuart 1998). We cannot know for certain, but perhaps paint was applied in an almost ritual sequence, blue early on, in a workshop or just after carving, then red and yellow-orange paint, symbolic of the fiery dawn, at the time of dedication. The crude dark coloring over the Itzam in lower center may reveal some other application, perhaps even from a resinous torch, thrust upward at this spot alone or done later by visiting Lacandon Maya. Someone took great care, however, to reach behind the floating arm and dab Maya blue on the beaded jade necklace of the Itzam (see essay 4 in this series).

There might have been a deeper, devotional meaning to the mixing and application of bright paints. Rather than an end product—a colorful, naturalistic scene as in the murals—the painting of lintels was, perhaps, an iterative process. Multiple hands labored over many moments. The blue pigment of jade beads hanging from the deity in the lower register, hidden by its now-missing arm, indicates a careful and purposeful marking of even the smallest details. Valuable things needed valuable, materially accurate color. Could visitors have applied paint over time, in a ritual act like touching a mezuzah when entering a Jewish household? At the least, the Laxtunich lintel expresses thoughtful application of pigment, enjoining us, by its example, to understand local motivations and schemes in configuring color.

 Note 1. For a comparative study in ancient China, see Lai (2015).

Note 2. Spectra were acquired with a Bruker Artax instrument using unfiltered Rh radiation at 50 kV, 700 μA, with a 1 mm collimator in a Helium atmosphere, and with 60 seconds live-time acquisition.

Acknowledgements  

Special thanks go to the Departments of Objects Conservation and Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for permission to disseminate the technical study of the pigments, performed by Beth Edelstein and Brunella Santarelli. Ellen How and Federico Caro also participated in the visual and macroscopic examination of the stone.

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Magaloni, Diana. 2004. Technique, Color, and Art at Bonampak. In Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya, edited by Mary Miller and Simon Martin, 250–252. Thames and Hudson, London.

Maler, Teobert. 1901. Researches in the Central Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley: Report of Explorations for the Museum, 1989-1900. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. II No. 1. Cambridge, MA.

Miller, Mary Ellen, and Claudia Brittenham. 2013. The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Stuart, David. 1998. “The Fire Enters His House”: Architecture and Ritual in Classic Maya Texts. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Stephen Houston, 373–425. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

Taube, Karl. 1998. The Jade Hearth: Centrality, Rulership, and the Classic Maya Temple. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Stephen Houston, 427–478. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.

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d by Stephen Houston (Brown University), James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Karl Taube (UC-Riverside)

As a form of authority, sacred kingship is both ubiquitous and long-lived. It occurs most everywhere where complex societies exist, and it has endured, until its recent extinction or weakening, for many thousands of years (Oakley 2006:10–11). Yet there are almost as many variants as examples. This is not to deny parallels or traits in common. Typically, sacred rule fuses microcosms (structures at immediate, human scale) with macrocosms (those at vast levels beyond easy comprehension). It also mutes or disguises the vagaries of political life. To make such affairs seem smooth, logical, and predictable, there may be appeals to—or mergers with—eternal cycles, celestial phenomena, and exemplary beings of a supernatural sort. When it comes to kings, what better understanding can there be than Le Roi Soleil of France (Burke 1992), a Hellenistic ruler with radiate, solar crown (Stewart 1993:246) or Jayavarman VII of Khmer civilization, smiling out to us as the Buddha of compassion and mercy (Coe 2003:124)?

A checklist of sacred kingship runs a risk, however. It assembles a package of attributes that pulls away, if one is not careful, from what counts: the local meanings, play of personalities, variable emphases, and “shifting contingencies of history” that enliven and trouble human existence (Oakley 2006:18; see also Houston and Stuart 1996). Laxtunich Lintel 1 lodges all the features of sacred kingship—links to deities, diurnal or seasonal cycles, celestial or chthonic bodies, the architecture of cosmos itself—in a granular record of politics and hierarchy (Maya Lintel II). Specialists speak of “naturalizing” the ordering of society. Lintel 1 does so at the elite level. Supernatural beings and behaviors slot neatly over and into those of humans. But the greatest novelty is its declaration of self-reference, an illustration, seldom seen in ancient America, of royal construction taking place, and of much else besides: stone that meets sky, day confronting night, season poised against season, royal flesh made divine, and gods brought into human form by ritual impersonation.

Kings, Gods, and Magnates

The composition of Laxtunich Lintel 1 is in some respects like a quincunx, a five-part ordering of distinct elements (Figure 1). In the upper register, two seated figures engage with each other while seated on a stylized “sky-band,” a schematic rendering of the heavens as a linear band. That band sprouts a head. Simon Martin (2015:192–196, esp. figures 11, 12), has studied this “cosmic monster of the sky,” a crocodilian creature with Venus-sign in his deer ear, and, at far end, a stylized cache vessel or censer, its marking for k’in, “sun, day,” painted yellow (Maya Lintel III). Opposed to an “earth monster,” a terrestrial counterpart—which does not appear here—the croc may have been separated from its opposite at the moment of creation (Martin 2015:194–195). Not a static being, it appears to move along in majestic passage: a text on a throne at Palenque even describes it in terms of numli ta chan, numli ta kab, “it passes in the sky, it passes on the earth,” apparently across the “back,” paat, of an important Period Ending (Stuart 2003). Two Atlantean figures, said to aggregated with a set of four (4-ITZAM-TUUN-ni), support this mass. Their faces look downwards in steady concentration—this is hard work! In the middle sits an elderly being in profile. Below is a skull with two long bones passing through its orbits and out the palate. Symmetrical vegetation emerges from a cleft just beneath that god. Although subtle, the pattern is clear: there are two figures seated on the sky, two support them, and another, much smaller being hunches more-or-less in the center. Together, they form a quincunx, a common (and ancient) emblem for centrality, fire-making, and cosmic order (Taube 2009:90, 92).

Figure 1. Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photograph by James Doyle).

The gathering of figures is at once mythic and human. The most important figure is on the left, not usually a position of honor in Maya imagery (that usually occurs to upper right, Figure 2). Yet this arrangement is well-attested on lintels in the kingdom of Yaxchilan, especially at its subordinate settlements. The local lord often appears to the right, as the main figure of local interest. In seeming compensation, the overlord is depicted in such a way to mark his exalted status. On Laxtunich Lintel 2 and Mayuy Series Lintel 1 (from the Kimbell Art Museum), he sits on the left but at higher level, ensconced on a throne that, perhaps, can still be seen at Yaxchilan (see below). Mayuy Series Lintel 2 represents the overlord in more conventional position, to viewer’s right. On Laxtunich Lintel 1 the overlord’s superior status is semaphored by his frontal position, one hand on the thigh rather than on the ground—contrast this with the underling’s deferential gesture (see Figure 1). The overlord’s torso is erect rather than inclined, his handheld glyph higher than his counterpart’s. A delicate visual choreography operates here, denoting what is local yet adjusting for relative status. There is little doubt about the person in charge, but local lords discharge key, if supporting, roles in the performance.

Figure 2. Laxtunich Lintel 1, detail, Chelew Chan K’inich [Shield Jaguar IV] of Yaxchilan (photograph by James Doyle). 

The main text occupies a privileged position between the two figures (Figure 3). It reads:

A1–B1   7 Manik 10 Sip ([9.17.2.3.7], March 18, AD 773, Julian Date [Martin and Skidmore 2012, for correlation used here])

A2–B2   K’AL-[la]ja ti-CHAN K’IN-AJAW-wa, k’ahlaj ti kan k’in ajaw, “the Sun Lord is raised in the sky”

A3–B4   U-BAAH[AHN?] K’IN-AJAW-wa che-le wa-CHAN [K’IN]-ni~chi K’UH-PA’-CHAN-AJAW-wa, u baah ahn? k’in ajaw cheleew chan k’inich k’uhul pa’chan ajaw, “it is the [impersonated] body/portrait of the Sun God, Cheleew Chan K’inich [Shield Jaguar IV], holy lord of the Split-Sky [Yaxchilan]”

Figure 3. Laxtunich Lintel 1, glyphs A1–B4, alternative lighting (photographs by James Doyle). 

Several things are evident in the text. On this date the Sun God is raised in the sky, a reference to the heavy lifting by subordinates underneath. The text then identifies the ruler of Yaxchilan, Cheleew Chan K’inich [Shield Jaguar IV], who impersonated that deity during this act of elevation (for impersonation, see Houston and Stuart 1996; further study, Nehammer Knub et al. 2009). Sun God impersonations occur elsewhere in the corpus of Maya texts, most notably with the owners of certain ceramic vessels (Figure 4). In holding up or using such a vase, the owners presumably channeled the identity of a resplendent, eagle-like (tzikiin) god. (Some Maya pots may have been used more selectively than thought or were at least intended for special ritual occasions.)

Figure 4. Impersonation of the resplendent, eagle-like Sun God (Huk Chapaht Tzikiin K’inich Ajaw): (A) Vase of the Eleven Gods, Naranjo, Guatemala:G1–L1 (K7750, pre-restoration images, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission); (B) Chama-style vase:J1–R1 (K7224, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission); (C) Bonampak murals, Room 1, Initial Series text:E’1–F’2 (drawing by Stephen Houston); and (D) late vase with non-Maya glyphs:D1–J1 (K6437, all photographs by Justin Kerr, with permission).

Cheleew Chan K’inich’s personal name invoked the Sun God, K’inich, so the connection may be somewhat personal. The association does not end there. His headdress has an openwork and angled, even woven, shape with, at front, the extruded head of the centipede. That creature corresponds to the rays of the sun (Boot 1999; Taube 2003). On Copan Stela A, the thirteenth ruler, 18 U Baah K’awiil, dresses as this figure. A text to the side of that image alludes to the impersonation, although further specifying that the flaming or smoking solar disk belongs to a snake—is this some typological understanding of elongated, venomous centipedes (Figure 5)?

Figure 5. Centipedes and “ribbed” headdresses with Sun God impersonation: (A) Laxtunich Lintel 1 (photograph by James Doyle); (B) Copan Stela A:B9 (drawing by Linda Schele); and (C) Copan Stela A, top front (drawing by Anne Dowd; Baudez 1994:fig. 2A).

A similar depiction is found on an unprovenanced stela glimpsed at the Palacio Canton in Mérida, Yucatan (Figure 6). The ruler’s body blazes with a K’IN sign on the upper arm, and the AJ-K’IN-AJAW incised nearby buttresses his identification with the Sun God. On the lord’s head is a jawless centipede, and his nose exhales a stylized blast of hot breath. Even his face approximates the K’IN glyph by showing the characteristic lobes of that sign. Added information must have been in the upper portion of the stela, in a fragment long since cut off by looters (natural breaks on the bottom suggest the lower section remains in situ).

Figure 6.  Ruler as Sun God with centipede headdress, stela on display, Palacio Canton, Mérida, Yucatan (photograph by David Stuart). 

A final trait deserves comment. The face of Cheleew Chan K’inich has a noteworthy touch, a pointy goatee (Figure 7). Other evidence assigns such facial hair, often yellow, to the Sun God, as can be appreciated in the Postclassic Madrid Codex (Ishihara-Brito and Taube 2012:466; also Taube 1992:50, 52).

Figure 7. Bearded Sun God, Laxtunich Lintel 1 (lower left, photograph by James Doyle); and Madrid 108B (Lee 1985:138). 

The date of Laxtunich Lintel 1 can be probed for other meanings. It lies close to a calculation, contingent on which calendar is used, of March 20, AD 773, close to the vernal or spring equinox (NASA calculation, taking latitude into account). At this point of the year day and night are roughly of the same length, a feature emphasized in the Yukateko expression, “lahcet kin yetel akab, “equally/together the sun and night” (Bolles Dictionary). Today, the vernal equinox marks the conventional division between spring and summer. For the Tzotzil Maya of Chamula, Chiapas, the separation goes deeper still. Both fall and spring equinoxes designate times of “rising” and “waning” heat, establishing a line between categorical opposites—dry season vs. rainy season, day vs. night, left hand vs. right hand, and active vs. dormant phases of agriculture (Gossen 1972:30–35, fig. 2). This line also helps configure the path of ritual circuits.

The equinox as moments when resources shift finds an echo among the Cora of Western Mexico, where the sun arrives on March 21 to awaken another god (Nicanori) so that he might “create all the shellfish and fish and prepare the birds to lay eggs”; another deity, aroused by the forceful light, begins to produce the “salt and other fruits…in the months of April, May, and June” (Mathiowitz 2011:448). At the equinoxes “the rays of the rising sun enter the … [temple] doorway and symbolically climb the stepped altar in his symbolic ascent into the sky” (Mathiowitz 461). A harvest of feathers marks this occasion as well. It was at the vernal equinox in Paquimé, Mexico, that the scarlet macaws met their end, sacrificed when their plumage was most mature (Mathiowitz 2011:666–667). Further to the north, the Tewa of New Mexico had Summer Chiefs who took charge after the vernal equinox, presiding over the “warm-weather agricultural cycle” (Mathiowitz 2011:918).

In ancient times, equinoxes had more to do with whether the sun rose due east and set due west. Such experiences have been adduced, for example, to explain equinoctial alignments in Structure 1-sub at Dzibilchaltun, Mexico (Coggins 1983:7fn3; Coggins and Drucker 1988). For our purposes, the precise conjuncture is less important than the evident need of scribes to associate such an occasion with the month day “10 Sip.” Marc Zender (personal communication, 2017) reconstructs a similar set of dates on the apparent equipment (casting pendants?) of a calendar or rainmaking priest from Comalcalco, Tabasco, Mexico (he also points out that such notations exist on molded bricks with Long Count notations). The “10 Sip” combine with a set of day names— Ik’, Manik, Eb, Kaban—that served as “year-bearer” or first-of-year dates in the Classic Maya calendar (Stuart 2004; see also Kaban in a reference to the solstice, Stuart 2015 Solstice).

According to Zender, the “10 Sip” dates at Comalcalco fall exceptionally close to the vernal equinox. To be sure, that observational reality might have been conditioned by the need to join ritually important day signs to a conventionally fixed position in the month. A longstanding affinity exists between “10 Sip” and rainmaking, as in this mention from the Yukateko Chronicle of Oxkutzcab: “…men at Mani they were, rainbringers at Chichén Itzá then, and there escaped Nahau Veeh, Napot Covoh. On 10 Zip it took place, in 12 Ahau it was, the tun on 2 Yaxkin, that it may be remembered (Thompson 1927:6–7, using a translation by William E. Gates, emphasis added; Zender kindly provided the reference). One epigraphic proposal entertains a reading of t’ohxaj for the verb on the Comalcalco pendants—could this as yet unproven decipherment bear some connection to Yukateko t’ox, “divide, distribute,” as in a year split seasonally (Davletshin and Bíró 2014:5)?

What can be understood is this: on Laxtunich Lintel 1 the image of the raised Sun God fit conceptually with the vernal equinox. The sun and, as a god, the Sun shifted to dominance in the heavens. The close congruence with Chamulan belief is, as we shall see, almost unsettling, with its shared emphasis on night and day, the seasons, and agricultural cycles.

Figure 8. Vernal (near-)equinox dates, Comalcalco Urn 26: (1) Pendant 3a, with reconstructed date by Marc Zender; (2) Pendant 4a; (3) Pendant 6a; (4) Pendant 16a, and; (5) Pendant 17a (drawings by Marc Zender, courtesy of the Proyecto Arqueológico de Comalcalco; all are Julian Dates in the Martin-Skidmore correlation). 

Seeking other clues, we now turn to the caption of the other figure in the top register (Figure 9). This text reads:

C1          u-BAAH-hi[AHN?], u baah ahn?, “it is the impersonation of…”

D1          1-?-AK’AB-AJAW, 1-?-ak’ab-ajaw, “the 1 ? Lord of Night”

C2–D2    AJ-YAX-bu-lu k’u-K’UK’, Aj Yax Bul K’uk’, name of the nobleman

E1-F1     sa-ja-la CHAK-to-ko-WAY-bi?, sajal chak tok wayib, the nobleman’s two titles

Figure 9. Laxtunich Lintel 1, glyphs C1–D1, alternative lighting (photographs by James Doyle). 

The subordinate holds a relatively common title, sajal, a term that evades full understanding despite decades of research. The title can be read as to its sound, but there is no consensus on what its constituents mean nor how they relate to noble status. The other is a less usual epithet that may refer to a magnate (Figures 10). Dmitri Beliaev (2004), Alexandre Tokovinine, and Simon Martin have done the most extensive studies of the title. In some areas, as around Holmul, it appears to enjoy great time depth, going into late periods as well. At Tikal, it served as the epithet of an important captive depicted on a large rock outcrop in the Maler causeway and on a column altar from the north side of West Plaza (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:83). The texts of those carvings contain two dates. Perhaps they two stations of display (and pure misery for the captive), at a place to the north of Tikal, along a north-south road, and towards its very center. The prisoner seems to have been captured (baakwaj) and then, two days later, sacrificed on Dec. 11, AD 749 (Martin 2003:31–32. Another humiliating depiction tops the undated Tikal Altar 8 (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:fig. 30). For a captive not of highest rank—he carries no Emblem glyph—the Tikal dynasty nonetheless reveled in his discomfiture and downfall. His importance continues to puzzle.

Figure 10.  Chak Tok Wayib title, highlighted, Tikal Causeway Carving (left, drawing by Simon Martin) and Tikal Column Altar 1:B2 (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:fig. 110a).

Turning back to the lintel: what is to be made of the god impersonated by the local lord? Text-image correlations offer one lead (Figure 11). The glyphs spell out ak’ab ajaw, “lord of the night,” which must point to the ak’ab element in his panache of feathers. The other objects are more difficult to make out—the volutes resemble smoke or flame, but they also include a puzzling medial loop—yet the glyphs provide assistance here.

Figure 11. Glyph of impersonated deity and headdress element of sajal (photograph by James Doyle).

The lord’s impersonation spells out an aspect of the Maize God, perhaps read 1 Ixi’m (Zender 2014:2, fig. 1; n.b, Mayanists sometimes render ixi’m, a term for “grain corn,” as ixiim, but the common use of an internal glottal stop in Highland Mayan languages favors the former, as cued by disharmonic spellings with subfixed ma syllable [Kaufman 2003:1034–1035]). A set of substitutions in an entirely different royal name at La Corona, Guatemala, lays out the variants (Figure 12). One example (Figure 11D) “explodes” the sequence of superimposed name glyphs into a fully visible 1-IXI’M CHAK-NAHB-bi CHAN/CHAN[A’N?] (the final sign, perhaps, from Ch’orti’, a’n, “elote,” or “green ear of corn” [Hull 2016:57]).

Figure 12. Chakaw Nahb Chana’n? of La Corona, Guatemala: (A) La Corona Miscellaneous 2:A6–B1 (photographer by Irmgard Groth-Kimball); (B) Element 56:pH6 (Proyecto Arqueológico Regional La Corona); (C) Element 33:E5 (drawing by David Stuart); and (D) Site Q Panel 1/Grolier:C3–C4 (Coe 1973:pl. 3).

The abbreviated glyphs exhibit the same locks of hair and jewels as in various foreheads of the Maize God (Figure 13).

Figure 13. Maize god with hair lock and forehead jewels: (upper left) Maize god on Dumbarton Oaks carved bowl; (upper right) Maize god on chocolate pot (K1560, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission); (lower left) Maize god on watery journey (K1202, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission); (lower left) 1 Ajaw, painted text, Group G, Tikal, Guatemala (photograph by David Stuart).

But there is an alternative reading, in that 1 Ixi’m may simply communicate “one” or juun. This possibility receives support from varied spellings for the “Water Lily Serpent” impersonated by some lords and ladies (Figure 14A). A vessel from the Cuychen Cave in Belize, to give one example, uses the forehead elements for the number “one,” and in a context with tight controls for that meaning (Figure 14B; see also Tikal Stela 9:A2, where the number “two” is recorded with a circle, for “one,” plus a circle with pendant [Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:fig. 13a)]; see the comparable spelling on Tikal Stela 40:E4). Admittedly, some of the texts at La Corona (Figure 12A, 12B) may show an abbreviation of an abbreviation: a stripped-down 1 Ixi’m in which the upper part of the jewel has disappeared or been fused with the number.

Figure  14. Water serpent signs with variants of “1”: (A) El Peru Stela 34:H1–G2 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1967.29; photographer unknown); and (B) Cuychen Vase:G1–H1 (Helmke et al. 2015:fig. 15).

A related set of glyphs incorporate a rare prefix, as attached to TUUN, “stone,” signs in spellings from Tonina, Mexico (Figure 15). That prefix portrays the jewel and forelock of the Maize God, yet they also—this is crucial—refer to stones erected on the dates 1 Ajaw. Are these “Maize God” stones in some metaphoric sense or do they refer to stones elevated on “1 Ajaw,” all on a particular Period Ending in the Maya calendar?

Whatever the interpretation, it seems plausible that the impersonation of the lord with Shield Jaguar IV was as the “Maize God Lord of the Night” or, alternatively, as the “1 Lord of the Night.” Other inferences ensue. The first is that the Sun God, dominant in real life as the overlord, dominant celestially as the sun that ever stronger at this time of year, and dominant mythically as a potent deity, is opposed on Laxtunich Lintel 1 to a Lord of the Night. The latter was connected in some way to the Maize God or, perhaps, to a number associated with the god. In this text Mayuy may have prefigured Chamulan ideas (among others) by alluding to notional segments of the Maya year: one for the Sun and full dry season, another for the night and a time of growth. The mention on Sakpeten Altar 1 of the “birth” of the sun on the observed winter solstice whispers of other divisions in the Classic Maya year (Stuart 2015). Possibly it was divided into four parts, of which two, the summer solstice and September equinox, have yet to be discerned or clearly mentioned in Maya texts.

Correspondences between political hierarchies and seasonal (and even agricultural) shifts introduce other questions. Why was an overlord linked to seasonal dominance after the vernal equinox? Was this because of the obvious tie between a ruler and the most obtrusive being in the sky? Or did it relate to the timing of Classic wars and skirmishes, when battles, most led by kings, involved people who could be removed from agricultural duties (Martin 2014:Chart 18)? The sector in which Laxtunich was found likely served as the “hamper” of the kingdom, a place producing much of its food (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2017). The ritual arrangements on the lintel glimmer with economic ones.

We do know the sun was a preoccupation of the Yaxchilan dynasty. Its rulers expressed great interest in solar movements, especially the summer solstice, with which they aligned buildings like Structure 41 (Tate 1992:95, 240–249). Dances too were celebrated with a distinct rod that scholars call a “flapstaff,” one being depicted at La Pasadita, not far from the possible location of Laxtunich (Kamal et al. 1999). As at Dzibilchaltun, perhaps the building that housed the Laxtunich lintels accorded with the vernal equinox and its east-west alignments. Dana Lamb’s map hints at such architectural “hierophanies” or celestially motivated orientations (Maya Lintel I, see Figure 11; Aveni et al. 2003). Much depends on the placement of “north.” Lamb provides no arrow, but we presume he used a compass while thrashing through the forest. If facing east, the rooms would have received light at dawn, if west, at sunset.

Figure 15. K’al-tuun expressions with Maize God “forelock” and related Ajaw dates: (A) “New Captive,” Tonina (9.13.5.0.0 1 Ahaw 3 Pop, Associated Press photo by Moysés Zúñiga); (B) Tonina Monument 145, J1, A1 (9.13.5.0.0 1 Ajaw 3 Pop, Graham et al. 2006:76); and (C) Tonina Monument 134:A8–B8 (9.13.)5.0.0 1 Ajaw (3 Pop).

The celestial connotations of the upper register pose one other problem. There is a pairing of two objects held by Shield Jaguar IV/the Sun God and Aj Yax Bul K’uk’/ the God of the Night (Figure 16). The first is a duck-billed wind god (numbered “13” on Laxtunich Lintel 1) as held by Shield Jaguar. The second is a deer head with human footprint over the eye (also with “13”), here lifted by Aj Yax Bul K’uk’. On the Dos Pilas support at the bottom of Figure 16, the Sun God holds the deer head, and at Copan, the wind god merges with what may be a ju syllable (an onomatopoeia for an exhalation?). There is a suspicion that this pairing also relates to the seasons, including times of winds or sun, but the meaning flits away from us.

Figure 16. Opposition of Wind deity and deer with footprint in eye: Laxtunich Lintel 1 (top, photograph by James Doyle); Copan Stela 49:pC4–pC4 (2nd from top, drawing by Barbara Fash); supports for figures on the Tablet of the Slaves, Palenque (3rd from top, photographs by Linda Schele, #366, 367, Linda Schele Photograph Collection); upper right support, Structure N5-21, Dos Pilas, Guatemala (photograph Jorge Pérez de Lara, Finamore and Houston 2010:98, pl. 26). 

The Atlantean Itzam

Beneath the register with the king of Yaxchilan and lord of Laxtunich are the two Atlanteans (Figure 1). Their titles read 4-ITZAM-TUUN-ni, the “4 Itzam Stones,” indicating that there would have been two more to complement this pair (see above, Stuart 2007 Itzam reading; see also Martin 2015:205–206, fig. 2, 9). The first employed a name well-stocked with syllabic elements: mo-yo?-lo-AJAW, moyol ajaw (cf. Ch’orti’ moyor, “cinched [bag], Hull 2016:287), as well as a relatively high title, ba-sa-ja-la, baah sajal, the “head sajal” (Figure 17). Ordinarily, that title connotes primus inter pares, “first among equals.” The noble is also an ajaw. The paradox is that the figure seated with the Sun God/Shield Jaguar IV—namely, the local lord extolled in the lintels—was merely a sajal. The Chak Tok Wayib title might have contributed a more exalted touch to his status. But this also suggests that some sajal could serve yet other sajal, perhaps at the behest of an overlord.

Figure 17. Caption by Itzam to lower left, Laxtunich Lintel 1:G1–G3, with alternative lighting (photograph by James Doyle).

The second Itzam, who wears the same water-lily dress as his companion, uses no ajaw or sajal title (Figure 18). The caption does record that he captured one CHAK-u-xi, Chak Uux, in battle (ux is a patronymic in Yucatan, but the meaning is uncertain here [Barrera Vásquez 1980:903]). In other words, he was a warrior when not doing the sweaty work of lifting the sky.

Figure 18. Caption of Itzam to lower right, Laxtunich Lintel 1:H1–H3, with alternative lighting (photograph by James Doyle).

An unprovenanced stela in a private collection (Figure 19), said to be from the “région de l’Usumacinta,” contains an identical name at 9.18.5.0.0 4 Ajaw 13 Keh (Sept. 12, AD 795, Julian Date, Stierlin 1998:#215). This cannot be the same person. The dates come too late. But it may have been a namesake or close relative of an enemy taken in war by the Itzam impersonator on the Laxtunich lintel. Moreover, and probably not by chance, the unprovenanced stela contains the same basal or toponymic element as the lintel. It portrays almost a vegetal seepage, split in two parts, from a frontal skull and, in the case of the stela, from what may be a stylized seed. Is the place-emblem mythic in both scenes or does it concern an actual location?

Figure 19. A shared name and toponym, Laxtunich Lintel 1 and an unknown site in the Usumacinta drainage (Stierlin 1998:#215).

The Itzam have been thoroughly researched elsewhere (Martin 2015; Stuart 2007). Elderly, wizened beings on the whole, they display markings of stone, hard, even indurated bodies, and water-lily headbands, tending also to gather in groups of fours (Figure 20). They do work for others, undertake heavy lifting, offer subservient attendance, hold up day signs as part of cycles of years, and by habit live in watery and chthonic abodes. Typically, they associate with k’an, “yellow,” the color of ripe corn, symbolic of harvest (see Figure 20, name captions).

Figure 20. Four Itzam-tuun, c. AD 700, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, #1988.1174 (photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission).

On a stela at Jaina, Campeche, Mexico (Figure 21), a union takes place between the four stony Itzam and, as the text indicates, the stone itself: tz’a-pa-ja 4-ITZAM-TUUN-ni, tz’ahpaj 4 Itzam Tuun, “The Four Itzam Tuun are driven [into the ground],” but erected under the supervision of a historical personage. This is more than a depiction, a flat carved surface. It refers to what might be called “lithic immanence,” the proposition that spirits reside in stone while doing the work expected of them. In Classic Maya texts, only deities are recorded in this way (e.g., Houston and Stuart 1996:304, fig. 17).

Figure 21.  Jaina Stela 1, 9.11.0.0.0 12 Ajaw 8 Ceh (Oct. 12, AD 652, Julian Date, photograph by Eric von Euw, draftsman of inking unknown).

A theme that most closely recalls the Laxtunich Itzam is on a pot of unknown provenance and whereabouts  (the photo mosaic with incorrect joins suggests the image was taken some time ago, Figure 22). Two Itzam in an awkward, back-breaking position support a sky throne with a fierce Sun God. The deity’s headdress matches that on the Laxtunich lintel, a centipede adorns his staff, and what may be a centipede jaw issues from his mid-section to curl towards his back. (The painter seems enamored of that form, repeating it across the image.) A figure with Maize God features and a lunar crescent sits behind the Sun God on another throne. There is no help here from tortured, bleating Itzam, only an angular throne with circular adornos (see the women’s throne in Room 3 of the Bonampak murals; Miller and Brittenham 2013:folded insert). The second deity shows indeterminate gender, although the glyph above the crescent may indicate that this is a female. The pair of gods evokes ancestral roundels on the top of stelae at Yaxchilan, one for a father, the other a mother (Houston and Inomata 2009:fig. 7.12). On the pot, the cringing Itzam to the left implies some story not expressed at Laxtunich. He recoils from a fearsome creature rising in front of the Sun God’s throne.

Figure 22. Late Classic vase, unknown location and photographer. 

The final figure in the five-part arrangement is dressed as an Itzam, with the same water lily headdress as the noblemen. But the figure has by contrast a more aged, slumped look (Figure 23). The limbs have withered muscles, and, notably, a large head of animate stone merges with his body yet faces in the opposite direction. Such markings do not occur on the more youthful Itzam supporting the sky. His role differs in another respect. In his right hand he holds, not a duck-billed wind god or deer-with-human footprint, but a set of glyphs read CH’AHB-AK’AB, if with the same number 13 (the Ch’olan languages make a spelling of ch’ahb rather than ch’ab more likely; moreover, because of usage in Ch’olan, Houston prefers a meaning closer to “ayuno” or “fast” rather than “creation,” a Yukateko gloss [Kaufman and Norman 1984:118]). The meaning of this phrase is opaque—it is mentioned in accounts of creation in the Yukateko Ritual of the Bacabs (Bolles 2003:7, 83, 87, 90, 91, 153, 162, among other examples, all passages of utmost obscurity). The same combination of signs appears in offering bowls for bloodletting at Yaxchilan, but without any attached number (Figure 24).

Figure 23. Itzam and 13-Ch’ahb-Ak’ab sign (photographs by James Doyle). 

Figure 24. Comparison between CH’AB[AK’AB] on Laxtunich Lintel 1 and Yaxchilan Lintel 13 (lower left, drawing by Eric von Euw) and Lintel 14 (drawing by Ian Graham, both Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Harvard University [CMHI 3:35, 3:37]). 

The elderly Itzam is unique on the lintel by conveying a purely mythic identity. There is no evidence that he corresponds to an actual historical figure. This may be why he, alone on the lintel, has no glyphic caption. His body is curious in another way. It is the only part of the lintel to be torched, burned or daubed with some far darker material. Lamb’s photographs make it clear that this section was one of the first to be exposed—had the figure become an object of devotion by Lacandon Maya visiting the site (Maya Lintel I?  (Their “god pots” are mentioned by Lamb at various places in the region.) Or was this some earlier ritual that paid particular attention to the elderly Itzam (Maya Lintel III)?

Lifting the Sky, Lifting the Lintel 

The two Itzam disclose an intriguing detail. The text leaves the main activity quite explicit, that the Sun God is being “lifted up” (k’al) in the sky (Figure 25).

Figure 25.  Lifting the sky on Laxtunich Lintel 1, the celestial crocodile and censer highlighted in yellow (photograph by James Doyle, modified by Stephen Houston).

Several Maya verbs have a celestial or mythic referent (Houston 2012 Heavenly Bodies). The idea that “lifting” of cultural features—stelae, lintels, royal headbands—could derive from or parallel some celestial action may account for unexplained variants of the K’AL sign at Chichen Itza and other sites (Figure 26). The spelling on a lintel of the Las Monjas, Chichen Itza, refers to the raising of a carved lintel (pa-ka-ba TUUN-ni) but with a K’IN or sun glyph in the hand. Other examples, almost all from the northern part of the Maya area, display star and sky signs, shiny celts, and, in an example on the Altar de Sacrificios Vase, pointed out by Simon Martin (personal communication, 2014), a small figure lifts a polished celt above its Humpty Dumpty head. The raising of the Sun God on the lintel fits these concepts and may have existed as their mythic template or exemplar. Among the Preclassic Maya, most polished celts now lie in caches, disposed in cosmic arrangements (e.g., Aoyama et al. 2017:figs. 7, 8). But part of their existence was above-ground, to be lifted up as central instruments of ritual. Their endpoint was not the totality of their meaning. By the same token, the elevation of lintels, stelae, and pots accrued purpose and warrant in acts of celestial creation and in daily events as miraculous, yet expected, as the rising of the sun.

Figure 26. Celestial versions of K’AL verb: (A) raising of lintel carving, u-pa-ka-ba TUUN-ni, Las Monjas Lintel 4:B2–C1 (drawing by Ian Graham, but with his numbering scheme, which needs revision); (B) Xcalumkin Column 4:A2 (drawing by Ian Graham); (C) Molded-carved vessel:B1 (K4466, photograph by Justin Kerr, used with permission); and (D) Altar de Sacrificios Vase:E1 (image courtesy of George Stuart).

Another point bears mentioning. The fingers of the two standing Itzam curl around the edges of an animate stone (Figure 27). The image does not just highlight the lifting of the sky, although that must be taking place. A piece of inscribed stone is involved. The image is self-referential, hearkening back to the elevation of a stone, the lintel itself. In a unique visual, the carving depicts how the lintel came into position, yet it laminates that action with a mythic overlay. Mayuy clearly relished his innovative depiction of architectural construction. Indeed, he chose to inscribe his name and titles into the stone’s eyes on the lintel within a lintel—like Velázquez or Le Brun inserting themselves into commissioned works. Mayuy, if in name alone, peers towards viewers from the center of the scene, the color of his name glyphs the same as on bodies nearby (Maya Lintel III). That royal and divine vision can validate what it sees—that it reaches out to affect the world—finds a firm basis in Classic Maya thought (Houston et al. 2006:173–175). Mayuy has claimed a prerogative of kings and gods. His is the only presence, aside from the skull below, to address the viewer directly.

Figure 27. Close-up, Laxtunich Lintel 1, showing snout of animate stone facing downwards (photograph by James Doyle). 

The downward looking snouts provide a compelling clue for the idea that this is a lintel. The language of the inscriptions uses, as an Eastern Ch’olan language, a “causative” for positional verbs. Depending on the stem it qualifies, and the vowel of the stem, that suffix would be, -bu, as in “pak-b’u [pak-bu] ‘to place face down'” (Kaufman and Norman 1984:106). Pak itself is a term from Common Ch’olan *päk “bend/fold over…face down” (Kaufman and Norman 1984:128). Of relevance here is that, no only is pak, “face down,” well-attested as a positional verb (a face-down cacao/maize god in Figure 28A), but it functions as part of expressions for the raising or elevation of lintels (Figures 28B, 28C). The lintels illustrated here, both found in areas not far from the probable location of Laxtunich, describe themselves as, “placed-face-down stone,” pa-ka-bu-TUUN. The Laxtunich lintel thus appears on itself. Those elevating the lintel are not the overlord or the local patron. They are yet other nobles tasked with the commission.

Figure 28. Pak, “face-down,” in Maya texts: (A) pa-ka-la-ja, Dumbarton Oaks fine limestone bowl, detail, glyph at E1, Early Classic period (Martin 2012:fig. 55c, drawing by Simon Martin); (B) [‘i?]k’a-K’AL-ja u-pa ka-bu TUUN-ni-IL, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, #61_15, Dec. 31, AD 513?; and (C) k’a-K’AL-ja u-pa-ka-bu-TUUN, “Po-Panel,” area of Bonampak, Mexico, AD 521 (BAMW Photography). 

Depictions of building and construction are exceedingly rare in the Maya world. Sculpting is shown on a panel found near Palenque, a day or two’s walk from the area of Laxtunich (Stuart 1990 Emiliano Zapata)—its scene of a lord carving a stone is securely self-referential (Herring 1998). Another appears on Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, Step VII (CMHI 3:160). A riser offers, to upper left, a small, abridged version of itself. The Postclassic Madrid Codex is the only source in which images of building abound: u-ta-k’a u-sa-sa, “he [the god] plasters his wall” (Figure 29, Houston 1998:358fn16), while, on other pages, with a sign of unknown value (a Postclassic PAT?, see Prager 2013), they appear to shape walls or lift up wooden lintels (Figure 30).

Figure 29. Madrid pages 14a, 15a (Lee 1985:91, 92). 

Figure 30. Madrid pages 20b, 21b (Lee 1985:94, 95).

In making such images the Maya seem a decided anomaly in Mesoamerica and more broadly in ancient America. Views of building in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex, delightful for their fresh vignettes and vibrant action, nonetheless stuff the scenes with western buildings and inject them with western practice (Figure 31). Metal adzes, classical pillars, and pediments—the forms could come right out of Renaissance Spain or Italy, and must have graphic antecedents in images (prints?) seen by the painters.

Figure 31. Images of quarrying, stone-carving, and construction, Florentine Codex, Book X (Medicea Laurenziana Biblioteca, Florence, Book X). 

For better parallels, it behooves us to turn to ancient Egypt or the inner walls of the Bayon in Angkor Thom, Cambodia (Figures 32, 33). For his tomb, Rekhmire, an important official in the reigns of the Pharaohs Thutmose III and Amenhotep, commissioned a virtual manual of mortar preparation, carving, and building (Figure 32, Rekhmire TT100 Tomb). A more complicated activity perplexes scholars who have tried to make sense of building scenes at the Bayon (Figure 33). Pulleys and, as Houston has seen personally, drilled holes and compression weights helped to rest or affix one stone to another as the great mass of the Bayon rose in the late 12th and early 13th centuries AD. The Laxtunich lintel went them one better by taking such muscular acts, innately collaborative but not of highest prestige, only to appropriate and enlarge them. Aj Yax Bul K’uk’ sat with his king, at a time of seasonal shift, but also entered with Shield Jaguar into the guise of timeless beings. Other nobles, the mainstays of the kingdom, were shown as obliging supporters of that dispensation, raising the lintel in an echo of creation.

Figure 32.  Rekhmire TT100, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, ‘Thebes, Egypt (Creative Commons).

Figure 33. Bayon relief, construction (photograph by Michael Coe, used with permission). 

Creation, curiously enough, is a good place to end: the mythic actors and setting of the Laxtunich lintel may not labor in some diffuse past. Rather, they couch their ritual work within a pan-Mesoamerican episode of creation, the lifting of stone, sky, and celestial reptiles out of watery places, perhaps out of primordial floods. The agents of that lifting are Atlanteans, duck-billed Wind Gods of unimaginable strength, as in an illustration from the Postclassic Mixtec Vienna Codex (Figure 34). Laxtunich Lintel 1 anticipates that depiction with its own account of macrocosm mixing with microcosm. Its claims are audacious, its intent self-interested: that seasonal rituals, politically inflected, arise from heroic acts of creation, and that the cosmos itself affirms human hierarchy.

Figure 34. Vienna Codex, p. 47, the Wind God raises the watery sky (Anders et al. 1992:facsimile).

Acknowledgements. Justin Kerr gave free use of his photographs, to our lasting gratitude. Earlier versions of this essay were presented in two fora: in April 2015, by Houston, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and by the current set of authors at the European Mayanist Meetings, Moscow, Russia, October 2016, at the invitation of our friend, Dmitri Beliaev. Marc Zender was most helpful with sources about Comalcalco; Christian Prager, too, helped with a citation. “CMHI” is the code preferred by Ian Graham for citation of volumes in the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions.

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The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings (Workshops and Symposium), will be held January 9-13, 2018, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Forty years ago, in 1978, UT Austin hosted the first Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop by Linda Schele, and an institution was born. Over the years the annual event grew as an open and vibrant gathering of scholars, students and others, sharing in the newest research in (mostly) Maya art, archaeology and related disciplines. 2018 brings exciting new changes, marking not only the beginning of our third k’atun, but also our new identity as the UT Mesoamerica Meetings, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all Mesoamerican cultures. To celebrate our anniversary and our new direction, we will devote our 2018 conference to a novel topic: Mesoamerican Philosophies: Animate Matter, Metaphysics, and the Natural Environment.

Ancient Mesoamerican religion and worldview hinges on a special understanding of “matter” and the metaphysical expression of the sacred. The world and what inhabited it – landscapes, buildings, objects, illnesses, even time itself — were considered animate and “living” in some sense, creating a dynamic system of interactions and relationships between people, gods, and things. These ideas found a constant expression, at different scales, in the region’s art, imagery, architecture, and ritual deposits, yet it is fair to say that these elemental notions have not been organized as a cohesive philosophy in any systematic way. At the 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings scholars and students will bring ancient Mesoamerican philosophy and religion into sharper focus, looking at how the ancient Maya, Aztecs, and other Mesoamerican cultures communicated these important ideas, and developed many notions of their own. In short, the conference will be looking at some of the most foundational but least articulated concepts of a cohesive ancient Mesoamerican worldview.

Among the questions we will be asking are: How do we refine our picture of Mesoamerican ideas as a cohesive system, a philosophy that might be placed alongside other ancient traditions worldwide? How did Mesoamerican peoples represent and interact with “living” things, spaces, materials and landscapes to express their understanding of human action in an animate world? Can we come up with a more accurate idea of “animism” in describing aspects of the Mesoamerican worldview? In what ways do such ideas have direct bearing on archaeological interpretation? These are large issues, and other related questions will no doubt arise during the conference. We see it as the beginning of a new and necessary foray into defining Mesoamerican thought as a set of philosophical traditions with key repercussions in scholarly research and cultural understanding.

For more information on the symposium and the workshops, including paper submissions, please visit the 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings webpage.

by Stephen Houston (Brown University)

The Romans and the Greeks before them cherished the taste of a particular resin. Tapped from silphium, a wild plant growing along the coast of North Africa, the flavoring went well with roast meat, brought savor to tripe, udder, and sow’s womb, partnered nicely with vegetables, salted tuna, and sea squirt (an invertebrate rooted to ocean floors), helped digestion, and even went into eye-drops (Dalby 2000:17–19). But its popularity and fussy conditions of growth undid the plant. Grazing sheep displaced its natural habitat, and the last root went down the gullet of the Emperor Nero (Dalby 2000:18).

Beloved foods come and go. How many Europeans still consume garum, that smelly fish sauce—Pliny the Elder called it a “secretion of putrefying matter”—traded throughout the Mediterranean and into the furthest reaches of the Roman empire (Curtis 1983:232)? Legionnaires in a British or German military camp doubtless grumbled if they failed to receive their ration or special issue of oil. In the United States, molasses, a viscous treacle resulting from cane refining, sweetened many foods in the 19th century, but gradually gave way to refined sugars. Boston’s Molasses Disaster of 1919, in which a burst tank released a brown tsunami 15 feet high, killing 21 people, would be unthinkable today, for a variety of reasons (Molasses Disaster; I am told that hot days still trigger a cloying odor in the neighborhood). Mostly, though, such quantities are not needed. Shoofly pie, of gooey molasses, is no longer much on the menu, although it was in my Pennsylvania childhood.

Consider, if one can, another unthinkable: forgetting chocolate or cacao, from a plant found wild and later cultivated in ancient America. Avid debate surrounds the pharmacological effects of this “chemical kaleidoscope”—whether it serves as an anti-depressive or libido enhancer cannot be easily shown (S. Coe and M. Coe 1996:28–34). But craved it was, in many forms. As a liquid, for example, chocolate “introduce[d] Europe to the pleasures of alkaloid consumption” (Coe and Coe 1996:31). Yet there are grounds for believing that, as an elite consumable, it did indeed drop out of use in one area, the Grand Coclé of Panama. Mortuary deposits in that area, as excavated by Samuel Lothrop and J. Alden Mason—as well as looters and “amateur archaeologists”—revealed staggering wealth, especially in gold but also hundreds of vessels and other goods (Lothrop 1937, 1942; Hearne and Sharer 1992). An element of that wealth, flaunted in feasts, may have been the consumption of chocolate by techniques imported from northern Central America or Mesoamerica, and perhaps indirectly from the Maya.

The main clue is a particular shape of ceramic. In his final opus, James Ford, striving for a grand synthesis of New World diffusion—heroically, for he was dying of cancer—attempted to chart the movement of ceramic “complexes” across “Formative” America (Ford 1969). One diagnostic: the “jar with bridge spout” or “teapot vessel,” long-understood by most specialists in Mesoamerica and northern Central America to characterize early agricultural settlements (Figure 1; Ford 1969:19, 21, 116, 120–123, Chart 16; on Ford and his diffusionist interests, see Willey 1988:68–70). Not all spouted jars or vessels are the same, of course. These evinced a consistent shape: a bulbous body (sometimes with a well-defined circumference at the mid-line); a vertical if slightly inclined neck; a flattened eversion around the rim; and a straight or gently inclining spout often, but not always, connected to the rim by a ceramic bridge. Volume varied, as did the presence of paint or modeling into effigies.

Figure 1. Bridge spouts and “Formative” America, esp. Chiapas, Tehuacan, and Veracruz, as excerpted from a chart by James Ford (1969:Chart 16). Dark squares mark time, visible here in 500 year increments from bottom to top, 1500 BC to AD 500. 

A notable strand in Mayanist archaeology is a claim for function. Thomas Gann, working in what was then British Honduras, called one example “the usual Maya chocolate pot” (Figure 2; Gann 1918:77, 128, fig. 74, quotation on p. 128). Mostly he seemed skeptical. Another had “a curious upturned spout” so configured “that it would be impossible either to drink or pour out the contents therefrom” (Gann 1918:77). And: “they were supposed” to have been used for chocolate “but drinking from them must have been a feat of legerdemain” (Gann 1918:77). Where did Gann get the idea? Who had “supposed” this use in the first place? One suggestion is that it came from a description of chocolate vessels “with spouts” by the “Anonymous Conqueror,” among the few Spaniards to leave an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico (Spouts; see Merwin and Vaillant 1932:64fn2).

The finest to survive may be an archaicizing object, the stone “Diker Bowl” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the text appears to refer to drinking from the vessel, and possibly to a glyph for seed or grano (pulverized beans?, Houston 2011). Not surprisingly, some of these—and other, even earlier ceramics—have tested positive for theobromine, a key constituent of chocolate (Henderson et al. 2008:18939–18940; Joyce and Henderson 2007:649–651; Powis et al. 2002:97–98; Powis et al. 2011:8597–8599). Whether these drinks were alcoholic or not is an intriguing proposal. Some suggest the first such drinks arose from fermented cacao pulp, i.e., they were inebriants, not a frothed, non-alcoholic beverage made from water and ground beans (e.g., Joyce and Henderson 2010:170). But using residues to distinguish the two remains a challenge.

Figure 2. Chocolate pots among the Maya: (left) “Mound 31,” near the Río Nuevo, Belize (Gann 1918:fig. 74); (right) the “Diker Bowl,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, #1999.484.3 (Diker MMA, photograph courtesy of Justin Kerr, pencil drawing by Stephen Houston, see Houston 2011 Diker Archaicism). 

More recent scholarship takes the reasonable tack that the spout helped in spuming chocolate drinks, a well-known delicacy in Mesoamerica (McAnany et al. 1999:138; Powis et al. 2002:94). To prepare the drink, someone blew into the spout, in contrast to later practices in which liquid chocolate was beaten with a stick or poured back and forth to raise a head of spume (S. Coe 1994:141): pure taste as the bubbles burst, leaving flavor behind. It is impossible to prove, but this might have followed shifts in perceived hygiene. Did some find it disagreeable to drink chocolate touched, perhaps, by another’s saliva…particularly that of a servant? Or was the change motivated by a need for heightened drama? I have seen this myself. On the north coast of Asturias, Spain, while gorging on razor clams, I once admired a waiter pouring cider from beaker to cup. Not a drop spilled as he drew the beaker further and further away, attaining at last an arc over a yard long.

Generations ago, in a time of diffusionist thought, the broader link between the “chocolate pots” and points south seemed self-evident. Raymond Merwin and George Vaillant (1932:64) noted that the form was “common at Coclé in Panama,” and, in his doctoral dissertation of 1921, published in 1926, Samuel Lothrop observed similar shapes in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, “related to the group of Maya pottery usually known as chocolate pots,” if of far later date (Figure 3; Lothrop 1926:117). The comparison made sense, for Lothrop was one of the last archaeologists to work in all parts of the Americas and, with colleagues, had looked closely at early links across the region (Lothrop 1927; Willey 1976). 

Figure 3. Turkey effigy jar, Bolsón, Guanacaste, Costa Rica (Lothrop 1926:pl. XIII).

The Coclé vessels are notable for their quantity and quality (Figure 4). Yet, the chance that these held chocolate and that such drinks were of intense interest to Coclé elites appears to have faded away. Over the last decades, The archaeological literature shows little to no mention of chocolate in early Panama. One specialist expresses skepticism about much contact with Mesoamerica (Cooke 2005:155; but see Coggins and Shane 1984:pls. 44–50; Lothrop 1952; Pendergast 1970; Pillsbury et al. 2017:#164, for secure evidence of Coclé gold at Altun Ha, Belize, and Chichen Itza, Mexico). In another essay, he targets “rank” and “status” in the Grand Coclé region, commenting on prestigious drinks in the balsería “ritual game” of the Guaymí of Panama but not, at least in that paper, extending such ties back in time (Cooke 2004:274). Nor do drinks make an appearance in a recent, elegant synthesis of evidence from the Grand Coclé (Cooke 2011).

Figure 4. Spouted jars from Grave 26, Sitio Conte, Panama (Lothrop 1942:fig. 197). 

The diffusionist tendency of earlier archaeology has been a migraine from which some areas have only just recovered: localism, in-situ process, the dignified integrity of regions—these are all concerns that merit a sympathetic response. But then there is chocolate. In a classic study of the Bribri, a Chibchan group along the border of Costa Rica and Panama, Alanson Skinner recorded drying platforms for cacao and the consumption of cacao with plantains, the latter to sweeten the former (Skinner 1920:55, 93, 94). Lothrop (1942b:113) himself mentions Nahua (or Nahuatl?) groups in Panama, evidently engaged in the production or trade of cacao. That account also gives them a “tail more than a third of a yard long,” so one wonders a little about its reliability.

Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuevo (2017[1565]:75) does report on the widespread use of cacao in “Muhammad’s Paradise” (a.k.a, Nicaragua): “The fruit is like an almond and grows in a shell about the size of a pumpkin…When it is ripe, the seeds are removed and placed in the sun to dry. When they want to drink, they roast the seeds in a pan over the fire, and then they use the stones they use to make bread to grind them. They put this paste in vases (which are like gourds grown in a certain tree that is found in every part of the Indies) and add warm water bit by bit.” Obligingly, he illustrates a cacao tree, dry seeds, and, of rather less relevance, a woman making fire—was this image about roasting seeds (Figure 5)? To be sure, there is a view that cacao in Nicaragua was of relatively recent origin, having been brought there by Nahua speakers migrating from the north (Stanislawski 1983:8, citing Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, cronista de Indias). Not all agree. The widespread mention of such cultivation down into Panama suggests far greater antiquity, especially for the processing of beans rather than simply the fermentation of pulp (Steinbrenner 2006:265, 267; see also Young 1994:15, for a line between these methods as far south as Colombia).

Figure 5. A cacao tree (cacauate) under sheltering arbor, with probable seeds drying in the background (Benzoni 1565, Lib. II:103, Benzoni scan). 

Has the cultivation and use of cacao by Coclé elites been forgotten or overlooked, by both archaeologists and later chiefs? Is cacao the silphium of ancient Panama?

The jars at Sitio Conte and elsewhere have an almost startling similarity to those of the Preclassic Maya and other peoples in northern Central America. In colonial times, not far from Coclé, cacao was processed into beans, presumably for liquid consumption. And there is demonstrable if perhaps indirect contact attested in the form of gold work brought north well before the Spanish conquest. A comment found on-line hints that similar thoughts about cacao have occurred to the curators of the “Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, and Gold in Ancient Panama,” a 2015 exhibit from the University of Pennsylvania Museum (“Straws” for Chocolate).

The main puzzles are the dates. Local specialists suggest that such spouted ceramics in the Grand Coclé must be at least 3–4 centuries after they ceased to be used in the Maya region (Cooke 2011, esp. 158, at c. AD 750–900). Yet, oddly enough, in the Huastec region of Veracruz, Mexico, that same shape is roughly the same date or just before Sitio Conte (Huastec AMNH; Harner Collection). Too much can be made of formal resemblances. Similar jars could service divergent functions, distinct recipes or drinks. But the charge should also be clear: that the Grand Coclé spouted vessels be tested for theobromine. If the alkaloid is present, they will join with gold, emeralds, and sperm whale teeth as luxurious items, chocolate vessels, used long ago in Panama.

Acknowledgements

I thank John Hoopes and Jeffrey Quilter for discussions about spouted pots from Panama; Claudia Brittenham, Charles Golden, and Andrew Scherer offered helpful comments too.

References

Benzoni, Girolamo. 2017. The History of the New World: Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuevo, edited by Robert C. Schwaller and Jana Byars. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

Coe, Sophie D. 1994. America’s First Cuisines. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe. 1996. The True History of Chocolate. Thames and Hudson, London.

Coggins, Clemency C., and Orrin C. Shane, III, eds. 1984. Cenote of Sacrifice: Maya Treasures from the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Cooke, Richard G. 2004. Rich, Poor, Shaman, Child: Animals, Rank, and Status in the ‘Gran Coclé’ Culture Area of Pre-Columbian Panama. In Behaviour behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, edited by Sharyn O’Day, Wim van Neer, and Anton Ervynck, 271–284. Oxbow, Liverpool.

Cooke, Richard G. 2005. Prehistory of Native Americans on the Central American Land Bridge: Colonization, Dispersal, and Divergence. Journal of Archaeological Research 13(2): 129–187.

Cooke, Richard G. 2011. The Gilcrease Collection and Gran Coclé. In To Capture the Sun: Gold of Ancient Panama, by Duane H. King, Richard G. Cooke, Nicholas J. Saunders, John W. Hoopes, and Jeffrey Quilter, 129–173. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK.

Curtis, Robert I. 1983. In Defense of Garum. The Classical Journal 78(3):232–240.

Dalby, Andrew. 2000. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Ford, James A. 1969. A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 11. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Gann, Thomas, W. 1918. The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British Honduras. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 64. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Hearne, Pamela, and Robert J. Sharer, eds. 1992. River of Gold: Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Henderson, John S., Rosemary A. Joyce, Gretchen R. Hall, W. Jeffrey Hurst, and Patrick E. McGovern. 2007. Chemical and Archaeological Evidence for the Earliest Cacao Beverages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104 (48): 18937–18940.

Houston, Stephen. 2011. Bending Time Among the Maya. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography Bending Time

Joyce, Rosemary A., and John S. Henderson. 2007. From Feasting to Cuisine: Implications of Archaeological Research in an Early Honduran Village. American Anthropologist, n.s, 109(4):642–653.

Joyce, Rosemary A., and John S. Henderson. 2010. Forming Mesoamerican Taste: Cacao Consumption in Formative Period Contexts. In Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by John E. Staller and Michael Carrasco, 157–173. Springer, New York.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1926. Pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Contributions from the Museum of the American Indian, Volume VIII. Heye Foundation, New York.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1927. Pottery Types and Their Sequence in El Salvador. Indian Notes and Monographs, Vol. 1, No. 4. Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1937. Coclé: An Archaeological Study of Central Panama, Part I: Historical Background, Excavations at the Sitio Conte, Artifacts and Ornaments. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. VII. Cambridge, MA.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1942a. Coclé: An Archaeological Study of Central Panama, Part II. Pottery of the Sitio Conte and other Archeological Sites. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. VIII. Cambridge, MA.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1942b. The Sigua: Southernmost Aztec Outpost. In Proceedings of the 8th American Scientific Congress, Volume II: Anthropological Sciences, edited by Paul Oehser, 109–116. Department of State, Washington, DC.

Lothrop, Samuel K. 1952. Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichén-Itzá, Yucatán. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol, 10(2). Cambridge, MA.

McAnany, Patricia A., Rebecca Storey, and Angela K. Lockard. 1999. Mortuary Ritual and Family Politics at Formative and Early Classic K’axob, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 10:129–146.

Merwin, Raymond E., and George C. Vaillant. 1932. The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology No.2, Vol 3. Harvard University, Cambridge.

Pendergast, David M. 1970. Tumbaga Object from the Early Classic Period, Found at Altun Ha, British Honduras. Science 168: 116–118.

Pillsbury, Joanne, Timothy Potts, and Kim N. Richter, eds. 2017. Golden Kingdoms: Luxury Arts in the Ancient Americas. J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Powis, Terry G., Fred Valdez, Jr., Thomas R. Hester, W. Jeffrey Hurst, and StanleyM. Tarka, Jr.  2002. Spouted Vessels and Cacao Use among the Preclassic Maya. Latin American Antiquity 13(1):85–106.

Powis, Terry G., Ann Cyphers, Nilesh W. Gaikwad, Louis Grivetti, and Kong Cheong. 2011. Cacao Use and the San Lorenzo Olmec. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(21):8595–8600.

Skinner, Alanson. 1920. Notes on the Bribri of Costa Rica. Indian Notes and Monographs VI(3). Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York.

Stanislawski, Dan. 1983. The Transformation of Nicaragua, 1519–1548. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Steinbrenner, Larry. 2006. Cacao in Greater Nicoya: Ethnohistory and a Unique Tradition. In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, edited by Cameron L. McNeil, 253–270.  University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Willey, Gordon R. 1976. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop, July 6, 1892–January 10, 1965. National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs 48:252–272.

Willey, Gordon R. 1988. Portraits in American Archaeology: Remembrances of Some Distinguished Americanists. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Young, Allen M. 1994. The Chocolate Tree: A Natural History of Cacao. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

by Michael Coe (Yale University) and Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Forgeries have long been a scourge to archaeology and art history alike, rearing up whenever money mixes with “excessive desire and bad judgment” (Meyer 1973:103, see also Lapatin 2000:45). According to Ascanio Condivi, even Michelangelo got into the act by passing off one of his carvings as a valuable antiquity (Holroyd 1903:21–22). Yet fakes also serve as fascinating evidence in the history of crime, especially for that special con by which the cleverness of a forger matches wits with scholars.

Fakers may win for a time—think of the “Etruscan warriors” concocted by the brothers Pio and Alfonso Riccardi and later sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (von Bothmer and Noble 1961). But mostly they lose. No one can look today at van Meegeren’s banal paintings and think, as Hermann Göring did, that Vermeer had a hand in their making (Godley 1967). Scientific techniques play a role in separating fakes from genuine pieces, along with a systematic probing of provenience, outright confessions—proudly made in some cases (Beltracchi and Kunst)—and the mere fact that every generation draws on greater knowledge. Faking becomes harder and harder, and the myth, say, that a forger knows more than specialists in Maya art and writing is scarcely credible. The wise analyst must also ask the standard gumshoe questions: who was the victim, who the perpetrator, was there any intent to deceive, was harm done as a result (Chappell and Polk 2009:3, 16)?

There are, no doubt, works that continue to puzzle. The Getty Kouros, for example, is either a fake that deeply skews our understanding of Greek art or it is a revealing anomaly that shows our “imperfect understanding of what remains, and the limits of our perspectives, preconceptions, and comprehension” (Lapatin 2000:46). And then there are the stunningly terrible fakes that do not so much represent a “crisis of criteria” (Lapatin 2000:43), a tough decision to be made between competing claims, as obvious forgeries that would fool no scholar.

Think about Maya fakes. There are many of them (Eberl and Prager 2000; Eberl and Prem 2011), some published, to our amazement, in important traveling exhibits (Gallenkamp and Johnson 1985:pls. 62, 63, 69, 72, 74). A few have needed further research. Typically, the more challenging cases are colonial, with only a few purported signs or images of indigenous nature (Hanks 1992; Jones 1992). But, under hard scrutiny, they too eventually yield their secrets. As for “Pre-Columbian books,” the tell-tale indicator is whether they exist as a pastiche, a rough assortment of glyphs or pictures. Often in nonsensical order, and mostly lifted from well-known sources, the glyphs and images tumble out in combinations that are, to expert eyes, anachronistic, stylistically inconsistent or incoherent, and contrary to recent decipherments of Maya writing.

With Maya books, of which only four intact examples remain, there is no real “crisis of criteria.” Quite simply, the fakes are glaring, at times laughable: who would be fooled by them today? In truth, few scholars ever were. The first such studies were done by Frans Blom (1935a, 1935b; 1946) and by a sprinkling of others (Brainerd 1948; Wassén 1942).

The “codices” tend to have a number of attributes, including:

(1) recognizable day and month signs, sometimes interspersed with wishful squiggles intended to simulate glyphs (Figure 1; compare with Figure 3, below);

Figure 1. Comparison of faked codex with source image in Dresden 19a. 

(2) a crudely polished leather base, with follicles clearly evident, or on what appears to be amate (fig-tree bark) or even coconut fiber (Figures 2, 3);

Figure 2. Faked leather codex and source image (K594, photograph copyright Justin Kerr, used with permission).

(3) little to no confidence of line, the “hand” being ill-practiced in calligraphy (Figure 3);

Figure 3. Unpracticed handling of paint, illegible signs and crude leather base.

(4) overbold and liberal use of polychromy (Figure 4; see also Figure 5, from the Peabody Museum at Yale University);

Figure 4. Bright polychromy: source image to right, “Pellicer Vase,” Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara (photograph to right: Stephen Houston). 

Figure 5. Garish polychromy on the Yale Peabody Museum Codex (photograph by Michael Coe); note also the copying from Dresden 56b.

(5) transparent copying from widely available sources, especially the Dresden Codex and sundry illustrations from general books.

A few of these examples will suffice. One smuggles in a poorly interpreted vulture from a page of the Dresden Codex (Figure 1). The hammock and courtly figures on the so-called “Pellicer vase” from the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, Villahermosa, Tabasco, transfer neatly to another “codex” (Figure 4; vase published in Covarrubias 1957), and a Late Classic image of a mythic figure from a polychrome vase excavated at Uaxactun Guatemala finds an inept copy on yet another leather codex (Figure 6). Mixing periods–—the mural dates to the late 300s, early 400s—the faker also quoted freely from the well-published Ratinlixul Vase, excavated in 1917 by Robert Burkitt near Chamá, Guatemala, and now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (UPM No. NA 11701, Danien 1997:38, Fig. 1).

What is abundantly evident is the sheer laziness or uninventive mentality of forgers. Sylvanus Morley’s The Ancient Maya (1946), first edition, was a particularly generous source for them, as it contained a handy list of Maya day glyphs (fig. 18), month signs (fig. 19), glyphs for time periods (fig. 22), Initial Series (fig. 25), and thorough coverage of the Maya calendar (pp. 265–295). The Ratinlixul Vase had its own line drawing too (pl. 88b). Of slightly earlier date was the useful, inexpensive, and widely available edition of Maya codices by the Villacortas in Guatemala (Villacorta and Villacorta 1933).

Figure 6. Copy of images from Uaxactun and the Ratinlixul vase on a forged leather codex (photograph to lower left, copyright Justin Kerr, used with permission).

A final example shows how blatant such copying can be (Figure 6). This codex lifts half of the center ballcourt marker from Copan Ballcourt BII (excavated by Gustav Strømsvik in the 1930s), as well as a frontal image from Palenque’s Temple of the Skull (upper left) and a smattering of full-figure glyphs from Copan Stela D (center left; see Stuart Temple of the Skull); Maudslay 1889–1902:pl. 48).

Figure 6. Fake codex and, at center, image taken from Copan Ballcourt II, center marker (drawing by John Montgomery). 

A few of these documents are in institutions (American Museum of Natural History, no. 30–9530, in a gift of c. 1901–1904, from the Duc de Loubat [Glass 1975:204]; Peabody Museum, Yale University [No. 137880]; Världskulturmuseet, Göteborg [Glass 1975:305]), but most are only known to us by way of unsolicited communications or, for one manuscript, via a glossy facsimile published in Guatemala (Benítez 2005; said to be from Chichicastenango, Guatemala, it even has a supposed radiocarbon date of “BP 200 + 28,” which, by odd arithmetic, the author pushes back to “1650 A.D.” [Benítez 2005:4–5]). Most fakes had two episodes of preparation, beyond the painting itself. Immersion in dirt or (we suspect) cow patties provided the right patina, and then a hurried cleaning gave some visibility for the dupe being invited to purchase the book.

A striking element is that many share elaborate “origin” stories. As a random selection, these concern a now-deceased relative who had traveled in Mexico/Guatemala, etc., a stray find in a Maya town in Guatemala, caves, scuba-diving or, in an example seen by one of us (Houston) in Provo, Utah, an heir wishing to donate the manuscript to a worthy public institution. A few seem to have gone through the hands of the late Pablo Bush Romero, “Mexico’s distinguished diver, self-made scholar and restless millionaire-at-large” (Sports Illustrated 1964). The presence of others of far earlier date, as in that acquired by the Duc de Loubat, show multiple hands behind their manufacture: the temptation to fake such codices clearly had deep roots (Glass 1975:305–306; for the Duc, Loubat obituary). The Yale forgery is described on the museum website as: a “Maya codex purchased in Mexico City, 1905, from an old priest around the corner from the southeast corner of the Alameda. This codex was first shown in 1887; he then declined to sell it, but in 1905, having been so ill that both his legs were amputated, and not expecting to live longer, he offered to sell the codex (to a friend?) of his in Merida who was then a druggist. This codex was examined by Dr. Alfred Tozzer of Harvard University, who considered it a reproduction, partly because the…various day signs were not in the proper Maya order” (Yale codex).

At this point, one of us (Coe) has seen over a dozen such codices. All are supremely unconvincing to the trained eye. The inept painting, ignorance of Maya coloration, slavish (yet scrambled) copying of well-known sources, anachronisms, inattention to decipherments, improvised, ad hoc “signs,” rough preparation and obvious attempts at artificial aging—all characterize these examples, without exception. It is unthinkable that any in this corpus of pictorial failure would pass muster, technical analysis or glyphic and iconographic exegesis.

To understand what is not a fake, as in the Grolier Codex (Coe et al. 2015), we are well-advised to study what is a fake. This rogues’ gallery shows that compelling deceptions of ancient Maya books are easier to claim than to create.

References 

Benítez, Henry. 2005. Códice Chugüilá (1650 d.C.). Guatemala: Editorial Piedra Santa.

Blom, Frans. 1935a. A Checklist of Falsified Maya Codices. Maya Research 2(3):251–252.

______. 1935b. The ‘Gomesta Manuscript’, A Falsification. Maya Research 2(3):233–248.

______. 1946. Forged Maya Codex. The Masterkey 20:18.

Brainerd, George W. 1948. Another Falsified Maya Codex. The Mastery 22:17–18.

Chappell, Duncan, and Kenneth Polk. 2009. Fakers and Forgers, Deception and Dishonesty: An Exploration of the Murky World of Art Fraud. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 20 (3):393–412 (pp. 1–20, online).

Coe, Michael, Stephen Houston, Mary Miller, and Karl Taube. 2015. The Fourth Maya Codex. In Maya Archaeology 3, eds., Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, 116–167.San Francisco,: Precolumbia Mesoweb Press.

Covarrubias, Miguel. 1957. Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. New York: Knopf.

Danien, Elin. 1997. The Ritual on the Ratinlixul Vase: Pots and Politics in Highland Guatemala. Expedition 39(3):37–48. Danien 1997

Eberl Markus, and Christian Prager. 2000. A Fake Maya Bone. Mexicon 22(1):5.

Eberl, Markus, and Hanns Prem. 2011. Identifying a Forged Maya Manuscript in UNESCO’s World Digital Library. Ancient Mesoamerica 22(1):155–166.

Gallenkamp, Charles, and Regina E. Johnson. 1985. Maya: Treasures of Ancient Civilization. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Glass, John B. 1975. A Catalog of Falsified Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 14: Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Part 3, ed. Howard F. Cline (assoc. eds., Charles Gibson and H. B. Nicholson), 297–310. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Godley, John R. 1967. Van Meegeren: A Case History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Hanks William F. 1992. The Language of the Canek Manuscript. Ancient Mesoamerica 3:269–279.

Holroyd, Charles. 1903. Michael Angelo Buonarroti. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Jones, Grant D. 1992. The Canek Manuscript in Ethnohistorical Perspective. Ancient Mesoamerica 3:243–268.

Lapatin, Kenneth D. S. 2000. Proof? The Case of the Getty Kouros. Source: Notes in the History of Art 20(1):43–53.

Maudslay, Alfred P. 1889–1902. Biologia Centrali-Americana, or, Contributions to the Knowledge of the Fauna and Flora of Mexico and Central America, vols. 55–9, Archaeology. London: R. H. Porter and Dulau.

Meyer, Karl E. 1973. The Plundered Past: Traffic in Art Treasures. New York: Athenaeum. 

Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946. The Ancient Maya. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Villacorta, J. Antonio C., and Carlos A. Villacorta. 1933. Códices Mayas: Dresdensis— Peresianus—Tro-Cortesianus. Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional.

Von Bothmer, Dietrich, and Joseph V. Noble. 1961. An Inquiry into the Forgery of the Etruscan Terracota Warriors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Papers 11. New York.

Wassén, S. Henry. 1942. A Forged Maya Codex on Parchment: A Warning. Etnologiska Studier 1213:293–304.

MESOAMERICAN PHILOSOPHIES: ANIMATE MATTER, METAPHYSICS, AND THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

January 9-13, 2018

The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings are coming soon! Please join us in Austin next month for our stimulating series of workshops and our two-day symposium, focused on “Mesoamerican Philosophies.” Registration for the Meso Meetings is open to the public and all are welcome. Presenters include Chris Beekman, Linda Brown, David Carrasco, Michale Carrasco, Andrew Finegold, Patrick Hajovsky, Chrisptophe Helmke, Lucia Henderson, Julie Hogarth, Nick Hopkins, Zack Hruby, Danny Law, Elliot Lopez-Finn, Leonardo López Luján, James Maffie, Barbara Macleod, Alexus McLeod, Osiris Sinuhe Gonzalez Romero, David Stuart, Alex Tokovinine, Karl Taube, and Marc Zender.

Workshops, Symposium Program and Registration Information

Forty years ago, in 1978, UT Austin hosted the first Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop by Linda Schele, and an institution was born. Over the years the annual event grew as an open and vibrant gathering of scholars, students and others, sharing in the newest research in (mostly) Maya art, archaeology and related disciplines. 2018 brings exciting new changes, marking not only the beginning of our third k’atun, but also our new identity as the UT Mesoamerica Meetings, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all Mesoamerican cultures. To celebrate our anniversary and our new direction, we will devote our 2018 conference to a novel topic: Mesoamerican Philosophies: Animate Matter, Metaphysics, and the Natural Environment.

Ancient Mesoamerican religion and worldview hinges on a special understanding of “matter” and the metaphysical expression of the sacred. The world and what inhabited it – landscapes, buildings, objects, illnesses, even time itself — were considered animate and “living” in some sense, creating a dynamic system of interactions and relationships between people, gods, and things. These ideas found a constant expression, at different scales, in the region’s art, imagery, architecture, and ritual deposits, yet it is fair to say that these elemental notions have not been organized as a cohesive philosophy in any systematic way. At the 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings scholars and students will bring ancient Mesoamerican philosophy and religion into sharper focus, looking at how the ancient Maya, Aztecs, and other Mesoamerican cultures communicated these important ideas, and developed many notions of their own. In short, the conference will be looking at some of the most foundational but least articulated concepts of a cohesive ancient Mesoamerican worldview.

Among the questions we will be asking are: How do we refine our picture of Mesoamerican ideas as a cohesive system, a philosophy that might be placed alongside other ancient traditions worldwide? How did Mesoamerican peoples represent and interact with “living” things, spaces, materials and landscapes to express their understanding of human action in an animate world? Can we come up with a more accurate idea of “animism” in describing aspects of the Mesoamerican worldview? In what ways do such ideas have direct bearing on archaeological interpretation? These are large issues, and other related questions will no doubt arise during the conference. We see it as the beginning of a new and necessary foray into defining Mesoamerican thought as a set of philosophical traditions with key repercussions in scholarly research and cultural understanding.

Workshops, Symposium Program and Registration Information

by David Stuart (University of Texas, Austin) and Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Dedicated to our dear friend, Alfonso Lacadena

We seldom think of wintry wonderlands when considering mostly tropical Mesoamerican landscapes. But parts of the Maya highlands in Guatemala sometimes see very occasional snowfall during the winter months, always exciting curiosity and wonder, if not a little consternation and concern over crops (Figure 1). Whenever snow falls and coats the ground, public media must explain the phenomena to local readers, describing its distinction from hail (see Prensa Libre 4/21/2017; also Prensa Libre 12/18/2016). Recently, the national disaster agency (CONRED) even thought it necessary to report that snow can be “associated with precipitation and low temperatures” (Boletín Informativo No. 3046). While rare and noteworthy, snow was ever-present in a few select areas of the central Mexican highlands, atop prominent volcanic peaks such as Orizaba, Popocatépetl, and others.

Figure 1. A rare snowfall in Cerro Cotzic, Ixchiguan, San Marcos, Guatemala, Jan. 25, 2013 (Creative Commons 2.0 Generic). 

For those who have never experienced snow, it might come as a challenge to describe verbally its many sensations and textures — slushy, clump-flaked, powder-dry, and so on. Then there is the messy residue as it melts, along with its endurance, over months, at altitude or to the far north. At root, to show distant wonders or to talk about them is an imaginative task, drawing on all the tools of the story-teller and the wiles of visual artists. For this, analogies or metaphors work well, especially when distances are great and the unfamiliar acutely strange.

As one example, taking us closer to the Precolumbian past, an unknown maker of woodblock prints devised the first known European image of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Published, probably, in Augsburg, Germany, in 1522, it refers to the city of “dem konig Madotzoma…herr von grossen Venedig,” displaying the causeways or dikes of that city as arching bridges, sailboats passing underneath, and the many temples as turreted buildings (Figure 2; Newe Zeitung). Square-shoed burghers with hose stockings, flat caps, belt purses, and fur collars would have dumbfounded the Mexica Aztec they depict. But they do at least try to describe the unfamiliar. There are settlements like European ones (if walled and likened to Venice, a frequent comparison of the time, going back to Cortés and others [Kim 2006]), and people dressed in the everyday garb of Augsburg.

Figure 2. Earliest European depiction of Tenochtitlan (Unknown 1522:5, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI).

The Classic Maya may have been no different. Among the texts linked to contact with the civilization of Teotihuacan, and almost surely with Teotihuacan itself, is the famous  “Marcador” of Tikal, found during excavations overseen by Juan Pedro Laporte south of the Mundo Perdido Group (Figure 3, Laporte and Fialko 1995:66–70). This object is strikingly similar to so-called “ball markers” from Teotihuacan, ranging from one depicted in the murals of Tepantitla (perhaps a goalpost for a stick game) to a carving with separable components at La Ventilla; the latter is well-garnished with yet other cultural references, to the volutes of El Tajín, Veracruz (Solís 2009:#124). The semantic layering in these images and carvings is rich and only partly understood, as there must also have been a reference to standing, banner-like shields (e.g., Taube 2009:figs. 2b, c). The Tikal find, from Group 6C-XVI, potentially bears another link to ballplay. A large raised area nearby, thought by earlier investigators to be a natural hill, is revealed by LiDAR to be eerily close in orientation and layout, if at halved-scale, to the Ciudadela at Teotihuacan (processing and interpretation by Houston and Thomas Garrison of Ithaca College). As if by cue, the Ciudadela has just been shown to contain, in an earlier phase of its existence, a large ballcourt (Gómez Chávez and Gazzola 2015).

Figure 3. Tikal Marcador, Group 6C-XVI, on display in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología de Guatemala (photographer unknown). 

In part, the historical links between Tikal and Teotihuacan (or its proxies) have been understood for some time (Proskouriakoff 1993:8–9; Stuart 2000; see also Martin and Grube 2000:29–31). An enigmatic personage whose name was probably Sihyaj K’ahk’, “Born from Fire” (coming from a fiery war dart to boot), “arrived” (huliiy) or “completed” a journey (tzutzyi) to Tikal on 8.17.1.4.12 11 Eb 15 Mac in the Maya calendar, or Jan. 16, AD 378 in the Maya-Christian correlation we favor. His presence was clearly martial, as indicated by the Marcador glyph that situates the arrival in terms of conquest, using the familiar term och ch’een, “to cave-enter”  Most likely too, Sihyaj K’ahk’ galvanized or even reorganized the political geography of much of what is now northern Guatemala. Every few years or so a new reference to him comes to light, suggesting that many more are to be found (e.g., Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Stuart 2014; note that the Maya could also hint at later ambivalence about Teotihuacanos [Houston et al. 2016]).¹

The Marcador text is relevant for another reason. In addition to the “arrival,” which highlights the first part of the inscription, the second side of the monument reaches back to two dates: (1) May 5, AD 374 [8.16.17.9.0, 11 Ajaw *3 Wayeb, an unusual, perhaps dire date, presumably, as it falls in the five final days of the year], the evident accession of another figure associated with Teotihuacan, “Spearthrower [ja-tz’o?-ma] Owl” (Martin 2003:13; Stuart 2000:483); and (2) Jan. 24, AD 414 [8.18.17.14.9, 12 Muluk 12 K’ank’in], the dedication of Marcador itself (Figure 4).

Figure 4.  Tikal Marcador, E1–H9 (rubbing provided by Juan Pedro Laporte, with heightened contrast). 

In part, the Marcador remains a highly opaque text. Yet an apparent place name tied to Spearthrower Owl contains recognizable elements, including the number 5, a glyph known since the time of Eric Thompson to represent the downy texture of “cotton” (Thompson 1972:83–83), a syllabic ma (shown in its fuller form, as a prefix and suffix framing the main sign), and the well-known WITS, “hill, mountain” (Figure 5). Thus: the “5 ‘something’ Hills/Mountains,” and as locations or a single place affiliated in some way with a person tied to Teotihuacan or its proxies.

Figure 5. Place name associated with Spearthrower Owl, Tikal Marcador, E4, G6 (drawings by Linda Schele).

The one undeciphered sign is probably a representation of “cotton.” The rows of small “u”-shapes are standard in Mesoamerican art as markers for spun cotton or cotton as shown by iconographic clues assembled by Karl Taube and others (e.g., Taube 1993:657). In Maya art we also see the same “u”-shapes on cloth, as on the panel fragment from Palenque shown in Figure 6, depicting the ruler K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb aiding with what might be a cotton bundle containing tribute goods (Stuart 1998:413).

Figure 6. Panel fragment from Palenque, showing large cloth tumpline bundle with “cotton” markings (Drawing by David Stuart).

John Dienhart suggested that the hieroglyphic sign with these same u-shapes reads NOK’, “clothes, cloth” (Dienhart 1986:53). Almost epigraphers have accepted, from multiple sets of evidence, a syllabic value of no, derived, following Dienhart’s lead, from nok’, “clothes, cloth” in Common Ch’olan (Kaufman and Norman 1984:127). The decipherment makes sense. It explains expressions with antipassive suffixes such as ‘a-AK’-no-ma, ak’-n-oom, in the area of Cancuen (Príncipe Maya Panel:E5), ‘a-k’a-no-ma, ak’-n-oom, at Palenque (Temple of the Inscriptions, West Tablet:C6) or the “shaker” title employed frequently by later rulers of Calakmul (yu-ku-no-ma, yuk-n-oom, Martin 2017).

Dienhart may have been both wrong and right: wrong because the “cotton” sign, as a logograph, was perhaps incorrectly deciphered as NOK’ (“cloth”), but right because it did correspond to a word for “cotton.” The logical candidate we propose here is tinam, read TINAM as a glyph, a term well-attested as meaning “cotton” in Common Ch’olan and all its descendant languages (Norman and Kaufman 1984:132). On the Marcador, the term explains the ma syllable—here serving as a reinforcement for TINAM. A no syllable would not account for this usage, yet there can be little doubt that, as a visual form, the glyph corresponds to that fluffy substance.

There may even be a more general protocol in place for generating signs. A Maya innovator (it is hard to see this as anything other than a singular, intentional act) first extracted a syllable no from nok’, the former no longer having any meaning. The scribe then used that sign to record a distinct if conceptually related term, one for the material itself. The motivating word had been left behind, to be replaced in logographic usage by another, loosely linked term. To our knowledge, a “fish” sign, a ka syllable, never references its motivating word, kay, a to syllable fails to deliver tok, “cloud, fog,” and so on. One of the few exceptions may be bi and BIH, “road,” a handy term for a people who liked to move in processions and on various journeys.

But why “cotton” mountains? Why “5” of them, why the tie to Teotihuacanos? And how is this an evocative, analogical description, of the unfamiliar made familiar to readers in a tropical zone?

Central Mexico, the general setting for Teotihuacan, is a far colder place than steamy Tikal, Guatemala. Peaks in visible range of Teotihuacan—at least in times prior to urban pollution—are girt with snow, some of it seasonal, some few examples perennial. A poetic analogy for someone describing this distant, fantastical land might be to reach for the familiar (cotton) to picture the radically foreign (snow). The scribe composing the Marcador text, masterfully proficient in Maya writing, knew much about Spearthrower Owl’s civilization—the text of the Marcador contains several non-Maya signs, and the overall carving exhibits many Teotihuacano elements. It may thus have been referring to a place he had not visited but could describe in terms of fluffy white “down” on high mountains, five of them in fact, perhaps Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl, Orizaba, and others. (One of the authors [Stuart] is collaborating with David Carballo in a future study that will consider these specific connections in more detail.)

The analogy might have been familiar in parts of Mexico. In Oaxaca, the Codex Nuttall, a Mixtec pictorial book from the 14th century, portrays a couple between two peaks (Figure 7). They are a pair, Lady 1 Flower and Lord 1 Jaguar, who founded a particular Mixtec dynasty (Anders et al. 1992:108). Cotton marks, a spread of small “u”-shapes, cover and streak down the peaks, and a small cotton spool at the base of the mountain to the right both accentuates this conceit and employs, according to one interpretation, a Mixtec homophone, yuhua, “cotton spool” or “snow” (Anders et al. 1992:107fn5). A commentary on the Nuttall describes these as the “Montes Nevados” (the snowy mountains), and possibly as a particular location, Icpantepec Nieves in the Mixteca Baja of Oaxaca, Mexico (Anders et al. 1992:33). Snow may have been as unfamiliar to them as to the Lowland Maya of the Early Classic period, but, as on the Marcador, they invoked a metaphor that worked with wit to excite the imagination.

Figure 7. “Cotton-covered” mountains, possibly Icpantepec Nieves, Mixteca Baja, Codex Nuttall, p. 11, detail, British Museum ADD.MSS 39671 (© Trustees of the British Museum, Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0). 

1. In 1983 or so, Houston saw another text referring to Sihyaj K’ahk’. It was on an exquisitely inlaid shell in the temporary keeping of Gordon Ekholm, then a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Etched lightly with glyphs, the shell displayed areas of jade and Spondylus, inserted by some clay-like adhesive into drilled areas of the surface. A scene of emergence, with a single head looking upwards through a symmetrical effusion of foliage, served as the principal image. At the time, Houston made a quick sketch of the text, including an evident statement of overlordship by Sihyaj K’ahk’. The object, considerably damaged by erosion in its hollow, has since disappeared. It may have been in the process of evaluation by Ekholm and his associate, Robert Sonin, an authenticator and former curator at the Brooklyn Museum, who came to Ekholm’s office during Houston’s visit.

Acknowledgements  This essay has benefitted greatly from discussions with David Carballo, Karl Taube, and Marc Zender.

References

Anders, Ferdinand, Maarten Jansen, and Gabina A. Pérez Jiménez. 1992. Crónica Mixteca: El rey 8 Venado, Garra de Jaguar, y la la dinastía de Teozacualco-Zaachila, libro explicativo del llamado Códice Zouche-Nuttall, Ms. 39671 British Museum, Londres. Madrid/Graz/Mexico City: Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario/Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt/Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Aveleyra Arroyo de Anda, Luis. 1963. La Estela teotihuacana de La Ventilla. Cuadernos del Museo Nacional de Antropología I. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

Beliaev, Dmitri, David Stuart, and Camilo A. Luin. 2017. Late Clasic Maya Vase with the Mention of Sihyaj K’ahk’ from the Museo VICAL, Casa Santo Domingo, Antigua Guatemala. Mexicon XXXIX(1):1–4.

Dienhart, John M. 1986. The Mayan Glyph for Cotton. Mexicon 8(3):52–56.

Estrada-Belli, Francisco, Alexandre Tokovinine, Jennifer Foley, Heather Hurst, Gene Ware, David Stuart, and Nikolai Grube. 2009. A Maya Palace at Holmul, Peten, Guatemala and the Teotihuacan ‘Entrada’: Evidence from Murals 7 and 9. Latin American Antiquity 20(1):228–259.

Gómez Chávez, Sergio, and Julie Gazzola. 2015. Una posible cancha de juego de pelota en el área de la ciudadela, Teotihuacan. Anales de Antropología 49(10):113–133.

Houston, Stephen, Simon Martin, and Karl Taube. 2016. Xenophobia and Grotesque Fun. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography Xenophobia

Kaufman, Terrence, and William M. Norman. 1984. An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology and Vocabulary. In Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication 9, eds. John. S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, 77–166. Albany: State University of New York.

Kim, David Y. 2006. Uneasy Reflections: Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 49/50:81–92.

Laporte, Juan Pedro, and Vilma Fialko. 1995. Un reencuentro con Mundo Perdido, Tikal, Guatemala. Ancient Mesoamerica 6(1):41–94.

Martin, Simon. 2003. In Line of the Founder: A View of Dynastic Politics at Tikal. In Tikal: Dynasties, Foreigners, and Affairs of State, ed. Jeremy A. Sabloff, 3–45. Santa Fe/Oxford: School of American Research Press/James Curry.

Martin, Simon. 2017. Secrets of the Painted King List: Recovering the Early History of the Snake Dynasty. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography Secrets

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2000. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. London: Thames and Hudson.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. 1993. Maya History. Rosemary Joyce, ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Solís, Felipe (ed.). 2009. Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly.

Stuart, David. 1998. ‘The Fire Enters His House’: Architecture and Ritual in Classic Maya Texts.” In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, ed. S. D. Houston, 373–425. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Stuart, David. 2000. ‘The Arrival of Strangers’: Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya History. In Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs, eds. D. Carrasco, L. Jones, and S. Sessions, 465–513. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Stuart, David. 2014. Naachtun’s Stela 24 and the Entrada of 378. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography Naachtun’s Stela 24

Taube, Karl A. 1994. The Birth Vase: Natal Imagery in Ancient Maya Myth and Ritual. In The Maya Vase Book, Volume 4, ed. Justin Kerr, 650–685. New York: Kerr Associates.

Taube, Karl. 2009. La religion à Teotihuacan. In Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux, ed. Felipe Solís, 152–159. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly.

Thompson, J. Eric S. 1972. A Commentary on the Dresden Codex: A Maya Hieroglyphic Book. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 93. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

Unknown. 1522. Newe Zeittung. Von dem Lande. Das die Sponier funden haben ym 1521. Iare genant Jucatan.; Newe Zeittung vo[n] Prussla, vo[n] Kay: Ma: Hofe 18 Martze. 1522.; Newe Zceyt von des Turcken halben von Offen geschrieben. Augsburg? [John Carter Brown Library, J522 .N543z]

The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text
by Stephen Houston
Yale University Press, 2018

Figure 1. Name of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, from Altar Q of Copan (Photo by D. Stuart).

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

One of the most famous of ancient Maya rulers is K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (KYKM) (“Solar-Green-Quetzal-Macaw”), the Early Classic founder of the Copan dynasty (Figure 1). He was celebrated by ancient Copanecos throughout the site’s 400 year history, and his legend lives on today in the key sources on Copan’s archaeology (W. Fash 2001; B. Fash 2011:35-47). He was even the subject of a 2001 PBS documentary, The Lost King of the Maya.

Given KYKM’s notoriety it’s interesting to reflect on how little we knew of his history before the mid-’80s. By that time archaeologists and epigraphers had a general outline of Copan’s Late Classic dynasty, and KYKM’s glyph had even been recognized as a personal name of some sort (the K’inich prefix being a strong indication, given its established use as a pre-posed title on late royal names at Palenque). But whose name? Proskouriakoff identified the glyph as a title, a reference to “certain ‘parrots’ that seem to turn up in troubled times” (Prouskouriakoff 1986:129). And both Gary Pahl (1976) and Lounsbury (corresponding in 1978) were closer to the mark, each seeing the glyph as a personal name but still unsure as to its exact nature. Pahl proposed it to be a variant name of the sixteenth ruler, whereas Lounsbury couldn’t commit to any historical identification, but thought it to be in reference to a Late Classic figure as well.

Figure 2. Stuart’s 1984 notes on identifying KYKM as an Early Classic ruler

Figure 3. Back of Copan, Stela J. (Photo by D. Stuart, 1987)

In retrospect this ambiguity is understandable, for the name glyph was in those years known only from much later inscriptions dating the reigns of the last five or six Copan kings (very early texts from close to KYKM’s reign finally appear in excavations during the 1990s, such as the “Xukpi Stone” and the “Motmot Marker”). It’s no wonder therefore that Proskourikoff surmised the glyph to be a general title for troublesome parrots (are there any other kind?), and not that of a definable historical figure.

This all changed in the mid 1980s, when KYKM’s true role in Maya history finally came into focus. In 1984 I became convinced that he was not a Late Classic protagonist at all but rather an early king, probably the founder of the dynasty and the first in the long line of sixteen rulers. I recently came across my old notes from that time (Figure 2), showing my line of thinking in proposing his early placement at or near the beginning of the dynasty (Note 2). The famous mat-shaped text on Stela J (Figure 3) offered the most important clue, for it showed that KYKM’s accession could be linked to the much earlier Bak’tun ending of 9.0.0.0.0, in 435 AD. Another piece of the puzzle came a couple of years after these scribblings when, in the summer of 1986, Linda Schele and I recognized that the the first figure depicted on Altar Q wore on his headdress an elaborate combination of the sings K’IN-YAX-K’UK’-MO’, placing  him at the very beginning of the famous sequence of sixteen kings (Figure 4) (Stuart and Schele 1986).  The inscription atop Altar Q soon made more sense as well, for it became clear that that the opening three dates belonged to this same Early Classic time-frame, narrating KYKM’s ch’am-k’awiil accession rite at Teotihuacan in September 6, 426 followed by his arrival back at Copan 152 days later. The last two dates of the altar’s text concerned its dedication centuries later in 775, early in the reign of the sixteenth ruler, Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat (Note 3).

Figure 3. The name-headdress of K’inich Yan K’uk’ Mo’ on the west side of Altar Q (Photo by D. Stuart).

Of course we have learned a good deal more about KYKM since the 1980s. Soon after he was properly placed in Copan’s dynastic sequence, some archaeologists still expressed informal doubts about his historical veracity, positing that he might not have been a true ancestral king but a character in some constructed, questionable history (a strangely cynical outlook on Maya histories in general, I think). But then in the 1990s his tomb and resting place were identified deep within Copan’s acropolis by the University of Pennsylvania excavations, within the so-called Hunal building phase directly under Structure 10L-16 (see Bell, Canuto and Sharer [2004] for an excellent overview of early Copan archaeology and history). Since then, one epigraphic clue suggested that KYKM may originally have been from the site of Caracol, Belize. KYKM’s story remains enigmatic in many ways, but we know that he settled at Copan in 427, probably in anticipation of the great Bak’tun ending that came less than a decade later. After several generations he was remembered as the singular cultural and political hero of ancient Copan, and after nearly twelve centuries of obscurity he’s emerged once again as a great figure in Maya history.

Notes

Note 1. In my overview of early Copan history I mistakenly noted that the identification of KYKM’s role as the dynastic founder came in 1983 (Stuart 2004:227). The dates on surrounding pages in my notebook make it clear it was in 1984.

Note 2. Looking at my old notes, students of epigraphy will see that I make use of old sign readings that are rejected today and may even seem unfamiliar – Thompson’s “hel” reading for the TZ’AK sign, for example, and Lounsbury’s “mak’ina” for what we know to be K’INICH. In fact, on the right margin of the notes here illustrated, one can see the clear inklings of the K’INICH decipherment, noting the K’IN-ni-chi substitution found on Copan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway and in a few other texts. This was confirmed around the same year.

Note 3. In my hand-written notes I botched the Long Counts for the Early Classic dates on Altar Q, even though I correctly placed them roughly 17 k’atuns before the altar’s dedication. I wasn’t using a computer program, and I was thrown-off by the mention of “17 k’atuns” which I took far too literally as a precise expression of elapsed time. It did not take much time to realize that this was instead a rare rounded Distance Number, used from time to time in Copan’s inscriptions. The actual dates on Altar Q’s top are: 8.19.10.10.17 5 Caban 15 Yaxkin (“takes k’awiil”); 8.19.10.11.0 8 Ahau 18 Yaxkin (“comes from the ‘wite’naah'”); 8.19.11.0.13 5 Ben 11 Muan (“arrives”); 9.17.5.0.0 6 Ahau 13 Kayab (PE dedication); 9.17.5.3.4 5 Kan 12 Uo (unknown). On the west face we find the isolated record of Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat’s accession on 9.16.12.5.17 6 Caban 10 Mol, placed between his portrait and that of the founder.

References

Bell, Ellen E, Marcello Canuto and Robert J. Sharer (eds.). 2004. Understanding Early Classic Copan. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Fash, Barbara. 2011. The Copan Sculpture Museum: Ancient Maya Artistry in Stucco and Stone. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press.

Fash, William L. 2001. Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Pahl, Gary. 1976. A Successor-Relationshop Complex and Associated Signs. In The Art, Iconography, and Dynastic History of Palenque, Part 3, edited by M.G. Robertson, pp. 35-44. Pebble Beach, CA: Robert Louis Stevenson School.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. 1986. Maya History. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Stuart, David. 2004. The Beginnings of the Copan Dynasty. In Understanding Early Classic Copan, ed. by E. Bell, M. Canuto and R.J. Sharer, pp. 215-248. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Stuart, David, and Linda Schele. 1986. Yax K’uk’ Mo’, the Founder of the Lineage of Copan. Copan Notes no. 6. Proyecto Acropolis Arqueologico Copan.

by Stephen Houston (Brown University) and Joshua Schnell (Brown University)

Maya ruins, if excavated well (and if preservation allows), yield a variety of bone tubes (Fig. 1). Some are only a few cm in length, others longer—the size of the animal and its long bones placing obvious limits on dimensions (e.g., Franco C. 1968:18, lám. III; Inomata and Emery 2014:132, fig 8.4.a–d, fig. 8.9, fig. 8.11; Lee 1969:163–165, fig. 122; Moholy-Nagy, with Coe 2008:fig. 214; Taschek 1994:fig. 37). Tube production is well-understood. Epiphyses must be removed and surface irregularities trimmed or polished, leaving a “shaft core” for further working (Emery 2008:211; Emery 2009:fig. 6).

Figure 1.  Variety of bone tubes from Aguateca, Guatemala (Inomata and Emery 2014:fig. 8.4c, d [left]) and Uaxactun, Guatemala (Kidder 1947:fig. 81b [upper right, fig. 81c [lower right]).

Yet the use of such tubes remains unclear. A few may have been left at an unfinished stage, on their way to becoming bone needles, rings, pointed awls, snuff spoons, weaving pins, hair ornaments or slivers and plaques (some appear to be on sale in a market scene from the murals of Str. Sub 1–4 from Calakmul, Mexico [Martin 2012:76, fig. 40]). Marked by transverse grooves, others may have operated as musical rasps, although few of these show the wear from repeated, percussive abrasions (e.g., Coe 1959:fig. 55n, o). “Tubing,” the use of bone cylinders in the Maya past, needs more thought, if only to enlarge the range of possible functions.

Consider curing. Maya healing involved many concepts, from the restoration of unstable, wayward souls or breath-force to the neutralization of noxious spirits, all the while accompanied by incantations, movements, and offerings (Vogt 1069:425–446). Anciently, as among Nahuatl speakers, gods relevant to certain maladies must have been propitiated by “flattery, promises, threats, warnings…and word magic” (Ruiz de Alarcón 1984:25). “Sucking” by specialists to extract objects from patients formed one component of traditional healing, with references attested in Nahuatl as early as the great Molina dictionary, tlacuicuilia [tlacuihcuīliā],“chupar el hechizero al enfermo” (Molina 1571:36v; for vowel length, Karttunen 1983:259).

How this was done might have depended on gender. Fifty years ago, among the Totonac of Veracruz, Mexico, “female shamans use[d] the lips or fist to suck, whereas male shamans use[d] a reed” (Dow 2001:87), the object so extracted being either real (pebbles or blades) or merely notional—the distinction did not seem to matter much. Today, specialists performing this task are known as chupadores, “suckers,” who heal alongside healers setting bones, working with herbs, and cleansing and curing with herbs, copal or eggs (Rubel and Browner 2001:302).

Healing tubes are widely known in indigenous North America and even in the toolkit of rain-making shamans (Hopkins et al. 2012:fig. 3; see Hernando Alarcón’s account, from 1540, of such “blowing” in the lower Colorado River [Alarcón 1970:21]). During the Spanish period in California, healers “sometimes sucked and at other times blew, but both as hard as they were able” (McGuire 1899:386–387; for Eastern groups, see Holliman 1970; Olbrechts 1929). Accounts are also recorded, in Amazonia, of “each in turn blowing this powder (ground parica or Anadenanthera peregrina) with great force through a hollow cane into the nostrils of his friend” (McGuire 1899:402).

Tubing, then, might have played similar curative roles among the ancient Maya or at least that possibility needs to be entertained. At the least, composite tobacco pipes of straight outline appear throughout the images of the Colonial Aztec Florentine Codex (e.g., Book 4). Used in feasts but also for religious rituals, tobacco might also have been ingested through bone tubes slotted into a second section charged with combustible plant (Wilbert 1987). Being detachable, the tube might have been less subject to fire damage, providing fewer indications of its function to archaeologists.

Then there are handles for rattles (Houston 2008; Taube 2004). Indeed, examples with small holes in Figure 1 might have served to fasten a long-gone gourd, nut or wooden rattle. The most secure examples come from Tikal Burial 116, the tomb of Jasaw Chan K’awiil, a Late Classic ruler of that city (Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 198b). The term for “rattle” was, as confirmed by one hieroglyphic spelling, chikab, a word for such instruments in Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’ Maya (Grube and Gaida 2006:213–214; n.b.: the text, which ran across two, paired handles—the usual for Maya maracas—was on bone tubes only 4.1 cm high, meaning that the handles must have been longer and detachable, perhaps of some other, more perishable material).

Yet that term, chikab, possibly based on an onomatopoeic chik sound, is not clearly present on the Tikal handles, which refers, with its paired rattle, to the burning and death of a young deity of music (MT 29 [Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 198a]; see Yukateko chi’ik, “shake the head as when rattles sound” [Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:87]). The opaque narrative may recount some story about the deity, his ties to the first music, with allusions to travails, even death, insofar as deities can die (Houston 2008:endnote 1). Yet, in their grimmer details, these events cannot be matched to any known iconography. The more usual associations are, not death after severe burns, but dance and euphonious performance.

Figure 2. Handle of rattle, with reference to Young God of Music (or Wind), and YAX-‘Rattle’-la-WINKIL[li], “First ‘Rattle’ Person,” with possible supervision by a hummingbird (tz’u-nu) in the company of a celestial being (ti-KA’N-la-WINKIL[li]), (MT 30 [Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 198b], reading of WINKIL suggested by David Stuart, personal communication, 2014).

Then there is consumption. Bone tubes might well have been inserted into enema clysters, a proposal made long ago by Michael Coe (Coe 1988:230; Furst and Coe 1977; see also Heizer 1939:86, writing of the New World generally, who describes “a hollow cylindrical bone…used for the [enema] tube”; see also Barrera Rubio and Taube 1987:12). But there are alternative uses. A Classic-era painting from Bonanil Actun, Loltun, Yucatan, shows all the features of good and riotous living (Fig. 3). The young music god appears to the left, followed by a distinctive, lashed jar with protruding cylinder, and the probable head of Ahkan, a deity tied to inebriation (Stone 1995:fig. 4–29; see also Grube 2004; Nielsen and Helmke 2017:153–156).

Figure 3. Bonanil Actun, Loltun, Yucatan (photographer unknown).

In Postclassic and early Colonial Mexico, the jars containing pulque (octli), an alcoholic drink from the sap of the agave or maguey plant, are often shown with such lashings (Figure 4; see also Nielsen and Helmke 2017:fig. 9). More to the point, at feasts, the collective and sociable practice was to suck out the drink from long tubes, perhaps evoking the extraction, by sucking through an acocote tube of aguamiel sap from the maguy itself (Parsons and Parsons 1990:43–44, figs. 39–42; such sucking of pulque is also highlighted in Nielsen and Helmke [2017], who have discerned such consumption in the “Realistic Paintings” of Tetitla, Teotihuacan). Such a tube could be precisely the object sticking out of the lashed olla at Bonanil Actun. Drinking might have made sense in the inner recesses of that cave, the better to accentuate disorientation. The sequence of the God of Music, then the olla, then a supernatural of inebriation scans almost like a prescriptive ordering of actions, sound to set the stage, drink to lubricate it, then a release into wild-haired drunkenness, impulses barely contained if at all. (In early Colonial Mexico, imbibing that fifth cup was thought to lead to a dread loss of self-composure [Córdova 2015]).

 Figure 4. Pulque jars or ollas and feasting with long tubes (Mural 5, Room 12, Conjunto del Sol, Teotihuacan, with distinctive markings of pulque in three gouts of liquid, perhaps marked with “cotton” textures to denote a white substance [personal communication, Karl Taube, 2018, upper left, Nielsen and Helmke 2017:fig. 3b, photograph by Christophe Helmke]; Florentine Codex, Book 4, Chapters 4–5 [lower left]; and Codex Magliabechiano f. 85r [right]). 

Yet the image with tube from Bonanil Actun is unique. All other Maya images of drunkenness, almost always of youths or elderly debauched gods and their paramours, show jars of pulque (chi in Classic Ch’olti’an) with agave leaves stuffed in—a possible means of intensifying the drink (Houston 2018:128–132)? The scenes are not common, to be sure, but this raises another possible use: that some tubes were about spuming chocolate. For example, a theme found in the figural imagery of West Mexico consists of a figure, tube in mouth, leaning over a proffered cup (Fig. 5).

Figure 5. Jalisco. Seated Couple, ca. 100 B.C.E.-300 C.E. Ceramic, 17 1/2 x 151/4 x 10 in. (44.5 x 38.7 x 25.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Coltrera Collection, 2010.23.1. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2010.23.1_PS6.jpg).

The usual explanation is that pulque is being delicately sipped in this fashion, a reasonable thought given such tubes among the Aztec and the emphasis in other local imagery on parts of the maguey plant (Butterwick 1998:102–105). Nonetheless, West Mexico has a well-attested focus on cacao production, if in selective areas (Mathiowetz 2011:543–569). By now, it is a commonplace in Maya archaeology—the thought goes back as far as Thomas Gann working in then-British Honduras during the 1910s— that vases with constricted necks and built-in, vertical or slightly everted tubes were employed in achieving a chocolate spume that appealed to ancient peoples of Mesoamerica (Houston 2017; see also Powis et al. 2002). This practice, perhaps thought decidedly unhygienic, was then replaced by pouring liquid back and forth to attain a fine, bubbly head (S. Coe 1994:141–142).

But what if this account of culinary history were partial and other forms of spuming continued? A cumbersome tube on a pot might have been, in a sense, “detached” and applied more broadly to any manner of ceramics or gourds with chocolate. If the head settled, it might be refreshed by vigorous blowing down a tube.  And then, giving shudders to archaeologists, that same tube might have been used for multiple purposes, for sucking, blowing, smoking, perhaps even attached to a rattle. The ingenuity of Maya tubing requires its own inventive response, with a directive to look for telling residues, where relevant, and tentative experiments, where possible, to assay ancient function.

Acknowledgements   Christopher Beekman was most helpful with comments and encouragement, as were Karl Taube and Leonardo López Luján.

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