Author: David Stuart

Portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een

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by David Stuart

Many interesting historical and artistic details are emerging from Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 from La Corona, Guatemala, just discovered this past April by the Proyecto Arqueologico Regional La Corona. The texts and images are now in the process of study, just as the various blocks are being drawn and documented for eventual publication.

One small but important detail comes from Block VIII of the new stairway, depicting a seated ruler facing to his right, toward another lord on an adjacent block. According to the incomplete text on these stones, the scene appears to show a certain type of ballgame or ritual contest (pitz) between the local La Corona lord Sak Maas and his overlord, the famous Yuknoom Ch’een of the Kan dynasty — one of the greatest of all Maya kings. The figures are both seated on the floor and hold stone hammers, presumably used in the game as well as in their apparent capacity here as Chahk impersonators (note the headdress). Ritual gaming and associated symbols of rain-making involving similar hammer-like stones have been investigated recently by Taube and Zender (2009). This pitz event took place on 9.10.2.1.10, or 11 Feburary, 635 AD. The figure here illustrated (below, right) is almost certainly Yuknoom Ch’een himself — the first well preserved image of him from a Maya monumental sculpture. Upon realizing the likelihood of the La Corona figure as Yuknoom Ch’een’s portrait, I was interested in comparing it to his only other known image, from a carved vessel now in Schaffhausen, Switzerland (Martin and Grube 2000:108; Prager 2004) (see below, left).

Two portraits of Yuknoom Ch'een, king of the Kan dynasty. Left: the king as the day sign Ahaw, from the Schaffhausen vessel; RIght: from Block VIII or HS2 at La Corona (D Stuart photo).
Two portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een, king of the Kan dynasty. Left: the king as the day sign Ahaw, from the Schaffhausen vessel; Right: from Block VIII or HS2 at La Corona (D. Stuart photo).

The two profiles are remarkably similar, each showing a man with a small mouth and distinctively weak chin. Clearly the different artists who produced the stairway block and the vessel each made attempts to convey true portraits of this important royal person.

In addition to simply giving us a pretty good idea of what the great Yuknoom Ch’een looked like, the two images reveal that some Maya artists outside of Palenque were sensitive to the idea of portraiture, even on small ceramic media — something that isn’t always very often seen or acknowledged.

References Cited:

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya (Second Edition). Thames & Hudson, London.

Prager, Christian M.. 2004. A Classic Maya Ceramic Vessel from the Calakmul Region in the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The Human Mosaic 35(1): 31-40.

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 H. Orr and R. Koontz, pp. 161-220. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.

A Podcast on 2012, from The Academic Minute

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CRNHS2VfinalpassageA brief take on the 2012 business, recorded for The Academic Minute, a podcast from WAMC radio distributed on a number of college and NPR stations here in the US.

http://wamc.org/post/dr-david-stuart-university-texas-austin-mayan-calendar

Of course the idea that no actual 2012 prophecy exists gets very little widespread distribution in the media. It hasn’t a chance against the shameless doom-and-gloom, junk-science narratives of The History Channel or, even worse now, The National Geographic Channel.

A Vessel from La Corona?

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by David Stuart

On the Kerr database of Maya vessels appears a colorful polychrome, K4020, depicting two repeating scenes of K’awiil seated upon a throne or bench (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Rollout of K4020, a cylindrical vessel possibly from La Corona, Guatemala. (Photograph by Justin Kerr)

A short dedicatory formula text appears in the two glyph panels separating the figures. This begins with the right-most column of glyphs in the photograph, reading down:

a-ALAY??-ya / T’AB-yi / yu-k’i-b’i / ti-tzi-hi

ya-AJAW-TE’ / K’INICH / K’UH(UL) / SAK-WAHY-si

Alay(??) t’ab’ay y-uk’ib’ ti tzih

yajawte’ k’inich k’uhul sak wahyis

“Here goes up (is dedicated) the cup for tzih of

Yajawte’ K’inich, the Holy Sak Wahyis”

Figure 2. The name Yajawte’ K’inich with the title Sak Wahyis, from the “Dallas Panel” from La Corona. (From drawing by D. Stuart).

The name of vessel’s owner, Yajawte’ K’inich, appears with some regularity at several sites in the central lowlands, including Naranjo, El Pajaral, Zapote Bobal, and La Corona. However, the presence of the regional title K’uhul Sakwahyis on the vessel strongly suggests that La Corona is the relevant connection — only there do we find the same combination of Yajawte’ K’inich name and title, in reference to a Late Classic ruler who reigned around 9.14.9.9.14 (Figure 2). This is the opening date of the so-called Dallas Panel from La Corona, commemorating the arrival of the wife of Yajawte’ K’inich to La Corona from Calakmul (Freidel and Guenter 2003; Martin 2008). The addition of the k’uhul “holy” modifier on the title on K4020 is the only difference, but this is probably a minor distinction, as Sak Wahyis can appear both with and without k’uhul elsewhere in La Corona’s inscriptions.

K4020’s other possible connection with La Corona comes from the repeating scenes on the vessel. In each representation K’awiil sits atop a throne decorated with a large symbolic white flower, somewhat schematic but nonetheless clear. It seems likely that these are emblematic versions of the ancient toponym we know for La Corona, Saknikte’ (“white blossom”).

REFERENCES CITED

Freidel, David, and Stanley Guenter. 2003. Bearers of War and Creation. Archaeology. http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/siteq2/index.html

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

The 584286 Correlation

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Simon Martin and Joel Skidmore have recently published in The PARI Journal and posted on Mesoweb their intriguing new analysis of the age-old correlation question — that is, how we best reconcile the ancient Maya and Gregorian calendars. They offer the possibility that the standard Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) family of solutions so widely accepted by nearly all Mayanists for many decades may be off by up to a few days.

Here’s the link to their article on Mesoweb.

Maya Spooks

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K’ahk’ U Ti’ Suutz’, “Fire-Mouthed Bat,” a common wahy demon on Classic Maya vases (Drawing by D. Stuart).

Around this time of year I often give my “Maya Spooks” lecture to students here at UT-Austin, highlighting the grisly and fright-filled demons (wahyoob) of Classic Maya art and religion. The lecture title is “Spooks, Witchcraft and the ‘Dark Side’ of Maya Art and Rulership (a.k.a. The Halloween Lecture).”  This semester I’m teaching on the Aztecs, so in lieu of lecturing I hereby post my brief treatment of the subject written back in 2005. This write-up was part of the larger sourcebook I put together for the Austin Maya Meetings that year, devoted to “Glyphs on Pots: Decoding Classic Maya Ceramics.”

My own thinking on wahy beings keeps being refined somewhat. I still see them as animate dark forces wielded by court sorcerers, perhaps even rulers themselves, in order to inflict harm or disease on others. But wahyoob can be exceedingly complex and multi-layered, and they certainly aren’t really the benign, shamanistic “animal companion spirits” as we often described them a couple of decades ago. I’m hoping to find time write something more in-depth on the fascinating topic of royal sorcery one of these days, perhaps even as a book on Classic Maya witchcraft.

In the meantime… boo!

“The Way Beings” by David Stuart (pdf file)

Excerpt from: David Stuart, 2005. Glyphs on Pots: Decoding Classic Maya Ceramics. Sourcebook for the 2005 Maya Meetings at Texas. Department of Art and Art History, UT-Austin, Austin.