Maya Decipherment

by Stephen Houston, Brown University 

At Calakmul, Mexico, sculptures were not just made by craftsmen who recorded their contribution via “signatures” or “autographs” (Stuart 1989; also Houston 2016). Several sculptures probably came from political subordinates, in offerings shipped by magnates to the overlord (Martin, Houston, and Zender 2015; Zender et al. 2016: 46–47 [link]). [Note 1] Consider one possibility, Calakmul Stela 51, a monument with unusual, almost voluptuous touches. Exuberant volutes roll through the ruler’s hair, in what I take to be a sycophantic nod to royal vanity. The surface puffs out with striking, volumetric handling. And, as though bursting forth, elements of the headdress extend beyond the sculptural frame (see, too, Stela 89, created by the same carvers; Ruppert and Denison pls. 50c, 53b).

This is virtuoso work, meant to impress…perhaps the royal beneficiary above all. As yet, there is no adequate, in toto presentation of the Calakmul monuments. Simon Martin (2014) is, of course, refining the history of the site and its region, and that work is likely to be definitive on current data. [Note 2] But we can say this: Stela 51 was of some size, 4.12 m in overall height, 3.10 m in length of carving. Stela 89, doubtless delivered at the same moment (its recorded date is 274 days after Stela 51’s), is half that, at 1.55 m in length of carving. Did this disproportion have something to do with ease of transport or reducing the physical burden of that transport?  In fact, their stone appears to have been “[h]ewn from a dense, durable limestone, presumably imported from some distance” (Martin and Grube 2008: 113). I am sorry to say that epigraphers, myself included, seldom if ever record quantitative measures of stone hardness. Perhaps we should. Anomalies might reveal themselves, as in the case of the re-carved Panel 10 at Dos Pilas. That sculpture, “evidently of nonlocal material,” a “fine-grained and dense limestone,” is wholly different from the softer stone in other carvings at the site (Houston 1993: 72, fig. 3–1). The re-carving hints that Panel 10 was transported from elsewhere, something that might have been done, as at Aguateca, Guatemala, for the sculptures of vanquished, enemy kingdoms (Houston 2014).

Another tributary text comes to mind. Step IV on Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 3 has elicited, at least to me, a sense of anomaly since its publication by Ian Graham (1982:170). The style is notably ham-handed in comparison to other carvings on the stairway (Figure 2). Rather than the tidy layout of other treads, which link thematically to the presentation of important captives, these glyphs appear in slovenly manner. Signs slope and sag, their outlines bulge. The look is less of disciplined carving than painterly “facture,” a reflection of originals rapidly executed in pigment. Few rows follow the same alignment, and some glyph blocks vary greatly in size. Even the final column bows to the right before coming back to its intended vertical alignment. There is also a real chance that the limestone itself differed from other treads. According to Graham (1982: 165), its weathering is quite distinct from the other, lower steps of the stairway. This indicates harder stone or, perhaps, later placement. (Such insertions are known at Yaxchilan: Lintel 21, from the Late Classic period, occurs with Early Classic companions in the lintel series of Structure 22.) Were imported stones usually harder, to avoid damage en route?  Step IV also has it own dedication date of 9.14.11.10.1, and for an unusual “owner,” a ruler, Shield Jaguar III, in impersonation mode.

Figure 1. Step IV, Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 3, drawing by Ian Graham (1982: 170 [Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, Peabody Museum, Harvard University]).