Vessel Depicting a Sacrificial Ceremony for a Royal Accession (650-800 CE)
This vessel, used to consume a chocolate drink, depicts a key event in a royal Maya accession ceremony, which shows the relationship between human sacrifice and the assumption of power. The expectant king is flanked by servants, musicians, and masked nobles, while a terrified captive—bound to a scaffold—awaits his death. It is probable that the victim was a warrior from a rival community defeated by the prospective king during a coronation war. Such sacrifices were required as proof of a new ruler’s military abilities, provided an offering to his patron gods, and served as a sign of the triumphant reign to follow.
Vessel of the Dancing Lords (750-800 CE) Guatemala
According to ancient Maya belief, after several failed attempts the gods succeeded in populating the earth when they created humanity out of maize, the staff of life. In the Popol Vuh, a sixteenth-century epic of the K’iche’ Maya, the death and resur¬rection of the maize god was likened to seed corn that sprouted and produced new life. This vessel from the Late Classic period (600–800) depicts a Maya ruler attired as the maize god in three almost-identical panels. On his back, the ruler wears an enormous rack containing brilliant feathers, heraldic beasts, and related emblems. Just as maize plants sway to and fro, the maize god dances to the rhythm of life—often, as seen here, in the company of a dwarf. Among the Maya, dwarfs were seen as special beings with powerful spiritual connections to the earth and the interior world below. This vase refers to a rite of passage in which dwarfs assist the soul of the deceased into the domain of the dead, from which it would eventually be reborn in the royal lineage, just as maize sprouts again in the cycle of nature’s renewal. This vase of the Dancing Lords may have been painted as a funerary offering for a noblewoman with dynastic connections in the city of Naranjo, where it was made.
Carved Vessel Depicting a Lord Wearing a Water-Lily Headdress, (600/800 CE)
Vessel Depicting a Mythological Scene (600-800 CE)
Water-Lily Vessel (750-800 CE)
The simple, elegant design of this vessel reflects the refined abilities of the artist, who painted images of water lilies and a hieroglyphic text with a perfectly controlled brush. The inscription below was the first to be deciphered on a Classic Maya vessel. It states the name of the artist, Ah Maxam (aj maxam), and declares that he is a member of the royal lineage of the kingdom of Naranjo. His mother and father are also named on this vessel, as well as on other dynastic monuments from the region. For the Maya, water lilies were symbolic of the watery surface of the Underworld and the earth’s regenerative powers.
Vessel (600-800 CE)
Tripod Vessel Depicting Monkey Hunters and Traders (850/950 CE)
Vase Depicting a Courtly Scene (600-800 CE)
Tripod with Knotted Motif (850/950 CE)
Footed Jar Incised with Pseudo-Gylphs (250/600 CE)
Figure of a Standing Warrior (650/800 CE)
Jaina The costume and equipment of this figure indicate that he represents a warrior. He carries a rectangular shield and a long wooden spear (now lost), and the detailed attention given to the intricate headdress and facial features—marked by scarification, tattoos, and paint—suggests the portrait of a specific military commander.
Figure of an Aristocratic Lady (650/800)
Jaina
Royal Profile (650/800)
Standing Male Figure (650/800)
Jaina
Naturalistic Jaina figures often present detailed portraits of individuals. Men and women are delicately modeled in the poses, gestures, and costumes of those who ruled the Yucatán peninsula at the height of Classic Maya civilization, providing insight into their roles, status, and concerns. While most figures depict the social elite, such as ladies of the court, royal ballplayers, and priests, some also reflect interest in the range of Maya society members, including servants and captives wounded in battle.
Rattle in the Form of a Mythological Figure (650/800)
Jaina
Many of the hollow interiors of mold-made Jaina figurines were transformed into rattles or whistles. As musical instruments, they may have been played during the funerary ceremonies of the deceased whom they accompanied into the afterlife.
Ritual Vessel in the Form of a Head (600/900) Yucatán
Figurine (250/900) Mexico, Guatemala, or Honduras
Figure of a Jaguar Attacking a Man (Probably 250/900) Possibly Tabasco, Mexico
Whistle in the Form of the Head of a Jaguar (Possibly 250/900) Possibly Jaina-style Possibly Campeche, Mexico
Covered Vessel with the Principal Bird and Peccary Heads (200/300)
Petén region, Guatemala
This beautifully modeled and incised blackware vessel was likely was once the personal possession of a Maya king, who may have used it to serve food at royal feasts or who may have presented it as a gift to a visiting lord as a sign of alliance. Its shape—a lidded dish supported by four legs—was a form frequently produced during the Early Classic period [A.D. 250/450]. These ceramics often display a consistent set of motifs, with birds on their domed lids and inverted peccary (wild pig) heads serving as supports. The artist who created this piece integrated the two-dimensional surface of the lid with its three-dimensional handle by connecting the bird’s spread wings, lightly incised into the surface, with its head, sculpted in the round. The vessel thus captures the essence of an aquatic bird floating on the surface of the water with its prey—a small fish—caught in its open beak. Water birds and peccaries inhabited the natural landscape of the ancient Maya who associated them with the structure of the universe and the time of creation. The crest of feathers atop the bird’s head, its outstretched wings, and the bulge at the tip of its beak mark it as a cormorant. The Maya regarded this bird as a liminal being, able to traverse three distinct environments: it flies in the sky, perches on land, and hunts fish by swimming deep under water. This was considered extraordinary, signifying the capacity to commune with supernatural beings that inhabit all three layers of the cosmos—a power that Maya kings also claimed to posses. The cormorant bore many additional meanings with which these rulers wished to link themselves—for example, its association with watery realms alludes to fertility and agricultural abundance, which kings needed to ensure so that their community would survive. Water also evoked the distant mythological past, a time before the creation of the present universe when, according to Maya belief, everything was enveloped in a vast sea. The peccaries furthered these cosmic associations as they are thought to have represented the four pillars that support the corners of the world. In addition, some Maya identified clusters of stars in the constellation Gemini as peccaries. This constellation is located in the region of the night sky where the seminal event of Maya creation—the resurrection of the maize god—was believed to have occurred. All of these formal and iconographic features demonstrate that as a vessel made for a ruler and used in his court, this work was adorned with imagery designed to express the supernatural sources of his royal authority. In their art programs, Maya kings often associated themselves with the cosmos and the time f creation, thereby affirming that their right to rule was inherent in the world and was established at the beginning of time.
Plate Depicting a Dancing Figure (600/800) Possibly Petén region, Guatemala
Plate in the Form of a Jaguar with Interior Painted with Floral-Like Motif (200/700)
Stamp (300 B.C./A.D. 250)
Eccentric Flint (200 CE)
Ballplayer Panel (700/800)
Usumacinta River area, Mexico or Guatemala
In Central America, the best-known sculptors are the Maya, who decorated their temples and sacred precincts with finely carved stone reliefs representing powerful dynastic rulers involved in various secular and religious activities. This fragmentary ball-court panel from the late eighth century shows two men, dressed in elaborate costumes, engaged in a ritual ball game. Surrounding the figures, and clearly set off from them, are fragments of hieroglyphs by which the Maya identified the players and the date on which the game occurred.
Stela (702 CE)
Vicinity of Calakmul, Campeche or Quintana Roo, Mexico
The lords of Maya city-states in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras portrayed themselves on stone monuments called stelae. Placed in plazas before the palaces and pyramids of ritual and administrative centers, these sculptures document critical information about major dynastic events between A.D. 200 and 900, including royal inaugurations, military triumphs, marriages, deaths, rituals, and key events of the agricultural cycle). The carving style of the stela suggests that it may be from the vicinity of Calakmul, a major Classic Maya city located in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, close to the border with the Petén district of Guatemala. A male figure—likely a ruler—stands in a frontal position, with his head, lower legs, and feet (now missing) turned to the viewer’s left. The subject’s gaunt face suggests that he is elderly. He holds a double-headed serpent bar across his body and is dressed in ceremonial attire associated with the Maize God, consisting of a plumed headdress, jade jewelry, a jade-netted kilt, and a spondylus seashell below the midriff. This costume symbolically connected the ruler to the earth, sky, water, and maize (corn). Hieroglyphics carved on the left side of the monument record the date 9.13.10.0.0 in the Maya calendar, corresponding to January 26, A.D. 702, which marked the completion of a Maya 10-year period. The text on the right side documents the ritual auto-sacrificial bloodletting performed by the ruler to commemorate this significant moment in time. Although they are too highly eroded to read accurately, the hieroglyphs on the front of the stela likely name the ruler, his ancestry, and the place where he governed.
Hieroglyphic Altar (650/700)
Possibly Bonampak/Lacanha area, Mexico or Guatemala
This altar depicts the head and torso of an individual wearing an ornate headdress and a large, woven mat pectoral emblem of rulership. He appears within a four-lobed cartouche, suggesting that he is a deceased ancestor who lives in the Underworld. The hieroglyphs that surround the figure describe the commemoration of a monument or structure; the text carved around the sides of the monument celebrate a successor’s completion of six years of kingship.
Hieroglyphic Panel (650/800)
Usumacinta River area, Mexico or Guatemala
The Maya developed hieroglyphic writing to record the names, births, marriages, alliances, victories and coronations, and deaths of their rulers. Mythological events and religious happenings were also carefully chronicled. Today scholars are deciphering this script and linking the translated information to additional archaeological evidence in order to reconstruct ancient Maya history, belief, and culture. This fragment from a hieroglyphic panel contains calendrical information that was part of a longer text.
Pectoral (200/800)
This elegant chest ornament would have been part of a ruler’s ceremonial regalia. In Maya society, as among other Amerindian peoples, a ruler’s attire indicated rank, religious function, and place of origin. Such dress was highly regulated, and only members of the nobility wore jade and other greenstones as an expression of their wealth and high status. Moreover, these rare and valued stones were considered to be inherently sacred and powerful. By wearing jade regalia, kings directly associated themselves with the youthful green maize plant and life-giving blue-green waters.
MIKE RUGGERI'S ART INSTITUTE ANCIENT AMERICAS 