Vessels

A “Fraternity” of Scribes on a Maya Plate

mayoid

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

“If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” [Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, Vol. 2, Chap. 8]

A renowned example of Chinese calligraphy, Ritual to Pray for a Good Harvest, by Wang Xizhi (王羲之, AD 303 to c. 361), is known less for its size — a mere 15 characters on a slip of paper — than the 372 cm-long scroll in which it is found (Kern 2015:117; Figure 1). On that far larger document, composed of mounted and trimmed snips of silk and paper, three Chinese emperors and a string of connoisseurs left comments and seal impressions. Some were proud to own work by a celebrated calligrapher. They were yet more proud, perhaps, to make that discernment known to later owners and viewers. It could not always have been for content. Cherished by collectors, a few copies of Wang Xizhi’s letters referred to evenings in which the calligrapher “vomited heavily, ate little food, and vomited again” (Harrist 1995:244; Ledderose 1979:3–5). For collectors, there was also a certain anxiety. Was this or that work actually by Wang Xizhi? For Ritual to Pray, the Emperor Qianlong felt sure of it, in that the scroll achieved, in his words, an effect beyond “what a tracing copy can do” (Kern 2015:127).

Figure 1. Ritual to Pray for Good Harvest (Xingrang tie 行穰帖), Eastern Jin dynasty, AD 317–420. Wang Xizhi 王羲之, 303–361. Ink on ying huang paper; Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 1998-140 (image courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum).

 

That he was wrong — by some accounts, not a single original work of Wang Xizhi survives today— is less important than the purported tie to a master (Kern 2015:118–19). The association exalted the owner and burnished his reputation as a savant and connoisseur, especially during the second quarter of the first millennium AD. In China, that was when, according to one view, “individual voices within society” came to the fore in a milieu of literati and eminent, identifiable painters (Wu Hung 1997:43–46). [Note 1] Samples of writing by Wang Xizhi and others became the focus of learned discussion (Clunas 2017:110). By the late Ming dynasty, appraisal of calligraphy could clarify one’s sense of self, elevating the appraiser through a process of aesthetic and moral communion with a distinguished calligrapher (Qianshen Bai 2003:10–11). In this sense, at least aesthetically, a formidable figure such as Qianlong could look laterally at — or even up to — Wang Xizhi. He was not alone in these practices. Among the Mughals of India, the Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) enacted, out of a wish to control representation, a “metamorphosis of the court painter into imperial intimate” (Rice 2023:52, 54). [Note 2] A vast inequality of social station gave way to something else. In Imperial China, at least in the narrow realm of calligraphy, the fiction of collegiality and shared practice could mask profound differences in rank.

Far away, the Classic Maya had roughly similar ideas. Named painters have been known since 1986, when they were first identifed by David Stuart (Stuart 1989; n.b.: the conceptual stress seems to have been on writing per se, not the brush- or quill-work of imagery [Houston 2016:392]). Over twenty signatures are attested, including some that follow an expression for “says,” che-he-na, thus bridging the domains of writing and utterance (Grube 1998; Houston 2016:393). Notably, one painter, Sak Mo’, active in the area of Tikal and Uaxactun (and predisposed to rim-band texts in alternating groups of two glyphs with red and white backgrounds), used only that expression, hinting at further subtleties of practice and meaning (Kerr #1256, 3395; Love and Rubenstein 2021:488–89). [Note 3] To name a calligrapher was unusual. Not one, secure signature is documented for the large and expert production of so-called “Codex-style” pots, yet a large number come from the relatively small kingdom of Motul de San José and adjacent areas of eastern Lake Peten Itza in Guatemala (Just 2012:132–53; Tokovinine and Zender 2012:60–61, table 2.2). These ceramics were plausibly made by only two generations of painters who “almost certainly knew each other or trained in the same ateliers” (Houston 2016:396). Ceramics from the ateliers were much prized, making their way far beyond their kingdom.

An all-glyphic plate from the 8th-century AD is unique in the linkage of owner to calligrapher in a “fraternity” of shared practice (Figure 2). Photographed by Nicholas Hellmuth in the mid to late 1970s, it is documented in the form of 35 mm images, now at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. The object was probably in Guatemala City, and it seems then to have entered a private collection in Florida (Donald Hales, personal communication, 2024). We do know the plate was large. In its holdings, the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand has a rare box of Verichrome Pan Film, with a noted box size of 36 mm in section. Extrapolating from those dimensions and the presence of such a box in Figure 3 yields an approximate diameter of 44 cm, a height of body at 7.2 cm, and of its tripod supports, each in the shape of a slightly misshapen Ik’ sign with central perforation, at 10 cm, for an overall height of about 17 cm. Wall thickness was ca. 1.8 cm, to judge from the surviving slab foot. In comparison, a large plate in Codex-style at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2021.320) is about 42 cm across (this was also a jawte’ ceramic, see below). Ambitious painting needed expansive spaces, even if restricted by the medium of a fired-clay plate.

Figure 2. Late Classic jawte’, northeastern Peten, Guatemala (photograph by Nicholas Hellmuth; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 134, row 4, 03; Hellmuth archive, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, used with permission).

 

Figure 3. Late Classic jawte’, northeastern Peten, Guatemala (photograph by Nicholas Hellmuth; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 1, 02; Hellmuth archive, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, used with permission).

 

The disposition of glyphs is almost numerological: 18 glyph blocks (2 x 9) circle its everted, slightly concave body, and, in its interior, four sets of texts consist of 9 glyph blocks each, with a final, much eroded set of 9 in the center (Figure 4). Together, these total 18 glyphs around the rim, 45 in the interior, for an overall sum of 63 glyph blocks (9 x 7). The numbers “9” and “7” have a distinct resonance in Classic usage, the latter evidently with the meaning of “many,” both “9” and “7” being further tied to supra-kingdom partitions in the southern Lowlands of the Maya world (Beliaev 2000; Tokovinine 2013:98–110, figs. 53–56). The exterior glyphs are approximately 1/2 the height of the support, and the interior glyphs about 1/2 the size of the exterior. For the glyphs within, the awkward shift from sloping to flat surface resulted in a skewing of block alignments. The overall layout of the 5 interior texts seems also to go awry, and the central text in particular has slightly larger glyphs and a misalignment with the other texts. The interior would presumably be read from a seated position, by revolving the plate; the reader would look down at about a 45 degree angle to understand the text. The horizontal, exterior glyphs would be best seen while holding up the plate. As with any Maya painting or inscription, reading was kinetic, the result of grasping or moving around an object or carving.

Figure 4. Late Classic jawte’, northeastern Peten, Guatemala (in order, photographs by Nicholas Hellmuth; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 2, 01; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 2, 02; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 3, 02; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 3, p1; LC p2 196, notebook 5, negative sheet 133, row 1, 02, Hellmuth archive, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, used with permission).

Many Maya ceramics, or more accurately those with texts, refer to themselves. As much items of “furniture” as receptacles, certain plates on supports, particularly those of substantial size, went by ja(w)te’, obvious kin to words for “face up” in Ch’orti’, jaw-; the te’, “wood,” potentially reflects the default material for many receptacles — most such materials are long decayed (Houston et al. 1989; see Hull 2016:165, and, on wood, Houston 2014:43–44). On the Hellmuth plate this term occurs at positions G1–N1 and U2–U3 (Figures 4 and 5a, b). The plate has another label: ya-ja-la-*ji-bi, documented on other plates, with a clear instrumental suffix (-Vb) but an opaque root and attached particle (ajal-[a]j, Figure 5c, cf. Figure 5d, private collection, Guatemala City; Boot 2004). [Note 4]. The painter gave himself flexibility by deploying ergative pronouns, agentive particles, and syllabic or logographic reinforcements in separate glyph blocks, hence spellings like u ja-TE’ (U2–U3), ‘a-6-KAB ba (A’1–A’2), KALOOM TE’ (D’2–D’3). Jawte’ appears to have taken pride of place over ajal(j)ib, although, to judge from couplets on other dishes, both described the same ceramic (Figure 5e; see also Polyukhovych and Looper 2019:fig. 4). In addition, the plate was known as a lak, shown in the text as a stylized bowl with two tamales (Figure 5c; Houston et al. 1989). Steamed breads doubtless filled the bowl and, over time, led to erosion of its center. Perhaps, in an etiquette now lost, the layout of text blocks on the plate dictated the positioning and heaping of this or that tamale.

Figure 5. Terms for plates: a, u ja-TE’; b, u ja-TE’; c, u LAK?; d, ya-ja-la-bi; and e, u-ja-wa TE’-‘e ya-ja-la ji-bi (all photographs by Nicholas Hellmuth, cf. Figures 4 and 6 for image citations; Hellmuth archive, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, used with permission; drawing by Stephen Houston, 1984, plate in a private collection, Guatemala City).

The owner of the bowl was a “great youth,” chak ch’ok, close to their majority (I1–J1, Figure 6; see Houston 2018:44–50, 67–71). The plate itself may have been bestowed at that life passage. What distinguishes the text is that the scribe is named separately, at positions Q1–R1. He is associated with the Ik’ kingdom, ‘a-IK’-‘a, “he of the wind-water,” probably a reference to Lake Peten Itza, Guatemala, and, in another glyph block, to a region called “7 Tzuk” (Tokovinine 2013:figs. 15b, 53, 54, 60d). Other texts indicate that 7 Tzuk extended in an east-west band from what is now western Belize to a string of lakes in the central Peten; within it were the dynasties of Holmul, Naranjo, Yaxha, and Motul de San José (Tokovinine 2013:98–99). The scribe is said to have raised (t’abayi) the writing (u-tz’i bi), almost in the manner of an offering (N1–P1). [Note 5]. There are other passages in the interior text that moor its owner to the area of Naranjo (‘a-6-KAB ba, A’1-A’2), perhaps from the “land” (ch’e’n, A’3) of a higher-ranking lord (6-KAB AJAW, B’2-C’2). [Note 6]. Seemingly, the overall sponsor (u KAB?, B’3) was yet another person, a kaloomte’ or figure of the highest rank (D’2–D’3).

 

Figure 6. Horizontal text on Hellmuth jawte’, alphanumeric labels specify position and sequence, red outlines indicate the name of the owner, blue outlines the scribal titles (all photographs by Nicholas Hellmuth; LC p2 196, notebook 5, rows 1–4; Hellmuth archive, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, used with permission).

The geography of these figure thus ranges from the Ik’ kingdom — homeland of the scribe — to the area of Naranjo, Guatemala, well to the east of Lake Peten Itza, heartland of the Ik’ dynasty. A second epithet, 6 Kab Ajaw, concerns someone involved in the making of the plate and its painted text. He also went by the title, ‘a? TI’-MUT. Difficult to parse, this expression may, in its first glyph, record more than a simple agentive. Option 1: he came from the “edge” or “margins” (ti’) of Tikal (mut). Option 2:  he was the “speaker” or herald (ti’, from “mouth, language”) of that potent city (see Stuart 2023, for discussion of mut). In either case, the description situates him to the west of Naranjo, closer to Tikal. There is much here, then, about a particular object and its nesting within a web of social relations. The plate had an owner, a “great youth,” and a scribe from what a place famed for its calligraphers. Lurking in the background were at least two people of progressively higher rank.

Because of its size, high supports, and use of distinct expressions, the plate resembles pottery from Xultun, a large site northwest of Naranjo. This is reflected, too, in its use of phrases like u-yu-lu and u-CH’E’N-na, along with the separation of ergative pronouns into their own glyph blocks (K2295, 4387, 4909, 8007, 8732, 9271; also Garrison and Stuart 2004; Houston 2021; Krempel and Matteo 2012; Luin et al. 2018; Polyukhovych and Looper 2019; Prager et al. 2010; Rossi and Stuart 2020). One vase, from an area to the north of Xultun, specifies an owner to the north of that site, towards Río Azul, Guatemala (Figure 7, Tokovinine 2013:17–18, fig. 8). It also  mentions a scribe from Lake Peten Itza and underscores his foreign roots: the painter is from the 7 Tzuk province, while the owner hails from “13 Tzuk,” around Tikal, Río Azul, and Xultun (Tokovinine 2013:102, fig. 55). At this time, in the central and northeastern Peten, Guatemala, scribes from a kingdom known for calligraphy stirred from home and found employment with foreign kings. It may be a coincidence, but the large supports of the Hellmuth plate take the shape of the “wind” sign, Ik’, a possible allusion to the scribe’s homeland; multiples of “7” glyph blocks resonate with 7 Tzuk, his land of origin.

Figure 7. Vessel from area north of Xultun, Guatemala: a, K2295 (Portland Art Museum, 2005.29.25, photograph by Justin Kerr); b, closeup of scribe’s label, u tz’-bi ‘a-IK’-‘a OCH-K’IN-ni 7-TZUK[ku]; and c, Hellmuth plate, with scribe’s epithet (for citation, see Figure 6).

One glyph block deserves attention. The original owner of the Hellmuth plate, a youth from an area northwest, perhaps, from Naranjo, south of Xultun, and east from Tikal, was said to be a scribe, ‘a-tz’i-bi (K1). Whether this label was true is less relevant that its assertion. A plate endowed with a large number of glyphs, to the exclusion of imagery, savors of someone who appreciated the calligraphic arts…or, rather, someone who should be so inclined, in a gift offered at the threshold of adult life, under the sponsorship of important lords and magnates. The rhythm of the text leads from his name to that of the actual scribe. He is not alone in joining a “fraternity” of skilled, manual practice. A royal sculptor, offspring of the king, is also recorded at the city of Motul de San José, flanked by the names of two sculptors (Houston 2016:fig. 13.9). Likely the actual authors of the work, they nonetheless conceded a central position to the prince. The Hellmuth plate attests to similar yearnings, claiming an equalization of ability that was more revealing than persuasive.

 

[Note 1]  Calligraphy from the legendary “inventor” of Chinese script, Cangjie, was said to have survived to the Ming period, but the idea was ridiculed at the time (Clunas 2017:7–8, fig. 1.4).

[Note 2]  For Persian analogies, see Welch (1976:190–91), who also emphasizes how such relationships depended on the personality of the patron and the ability of painters to leave such service. For an especially esteemed image, the Mughal emperors might award an elephant(!) to a favored artist; other paintings, some of them war booty, were collected by the emperors or sent as diplomatic gifts (Beach 1997:212). Jahangir delighted in being able to recognize the hands of certain painters, who began to be labeled overtly in his reign and that of his successor, Shah Jahān, r. 1628–1658 (Beach 1997:212).

[Note 3]  Names identified with che-he-na or u tz’ib/tz’ihb, “his writing/painting,” may be mutually exclusive. There is also the suspicion that variant spellings of tz’ib (tz’i-bi) or tz’ihb (tz’i-ba) signal different meanings, the first being, perhaps, the residue of ink on a surface, the second the act of leaving that ink. There is another morphological difference. An appended -IL sign tends to be preceded by u-tz’i-ba, not u-tz’i-bi. That is, the patterns are non-random, and the spellings are not in free substitution. There are two che-he-na spellings on the Hellmuth plate, at Y1 and less clearly at E’1, in a pattern being studied generally by Morgan Clark for her doctoral work at Brown University. One spelling is followed, at Z1, but what appears to be glyph for formal utterance or prophecy: u-mu-ti?-IL?, u muutil, “his news, fame, word” (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:542; see Dresden Codex 17b, 18b).

[Note 4]  The scribe on the plate favors phonological elisions, as in the missing /w/ in jawte’ or second /j/ in –ajaljib.

[Note 5]  In a personal communication, Donald Hales notes that there is another ceramic, a jay or drinking cup, by this very scribe, evidently with the same owner (K5838, for jay reading, see Hull 2003:419, photograph below by Justin Kerr). This flat-bottomed bowl is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M2010.115.604, ex-Lewis Ranieri Collection). Its exterior text is highlighted by the same blobs of pink as on the Hellmuth plate, although with a misspelling, the ja and na syllables being incorrectly transposed. 

Compare with an image sent by Mr. Hales, photographed by Lee Moore, composited by Paul Johnson:

To speculate: these two objects may well have been made as a set — not as a bridal trousseau, naturally, for they belonged to a chak ch’ok, but as equipment for another rite of passage, the transition to male adulthood at court. Mary Miller has explored such sets in an incisive study of mortuary materials (Miller 2022).

[Note 6]  In these contexts, the exact meaning of the ch’e’n expression is unclear. Does it refer to “land” or “cave,” as David Stuart proposed (Vogt and Stuart 2005), or is there some topographic metaphor for a concave or cylindrical receptacle, hence referring to the ceramic itself?

Acknowledgements  My thanks go to Nicholas Hellmuth for allowing use of images from his archive at Dumbarton Oaks (DO), Morgan Clark for reminding me of these photographs, which I first saw in 1985 as a Junior Fellow at DO, and Bettina Smith of DO’s Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) for guiding me as to their use. Jeffrey Moser gave good leads, as did Donald Hales. I was further encouraged by comments from Simon Martin and David Stuart.

References

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______. 2018. The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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The Universe in a Maya Plate

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by James Doyle, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Stephen Houston, Brown University

Expressing metaphors for a constantly shifting reality is a human universal, especially during the mid-8th century AD. At that time, in the center of the Yucatan peninsula, royal courts were on the cusp of political and demographic upheaval. Yet, in a signal irony—and perhaps as a cause?—they managed to sponsor innovative architectural and artistic programs. Consider the vase painters in and around Calakmul, Campeche, at c. AD 750.

The sheer volume of codex-style vessels, produced within a very few generations, suggest that ateliers were scaling up production for the struggling royal court and assertive sub-royals in sites nearby. Lack of archaeological context and legible texts impedes deeper understanding of the circumstances under which such paintings were produced (but see Delvendahl 2008:125-128; García Barrios 2011). A suggestive comparison, though, could be made with the proliferation of lintels and panels in the Usumacinta region within the Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras kingdoms: that is, art was distributed in exchange for loyalty and tribute when such had become, perhaps, more precarious (Martin and Grube 2008:135-137, 153).

Only slightly more than 20 painters are identified by name in the Classic period, far fewer than the ca. 120 sculptors who signed works in stone (Houston 2016; Houston, Stuart, and Fash 2014; Stuart 1987, 1989). Recent studies have traced the oeuvres of individual vase painters in specific temporal contexts (see Just 2012). Without scribal signatures, however, researchers are left to the detailed study of the “hands” of Classic Maya artists. This is an evaluation that rests on habitual, “unconscious” details, as pioneered by Giovanni Morelli, Bernard Berenson, and others for Renaissance masters such as Raphael, or by John Beazley for Classical Greek painters (See Beazley 1911, 1946; Berenson 1901, 1903; Morelli 1900; Wollheim 1974). Such work could be tedious to an extreme, and highly subjective. Morelli himself, founder of such studies, admitted that it required “long practice” and that each eye might see different patterns.

Certain Maya painting styles nevertheless lend themselves to identifying artists’ hands. The limited number of variables and limited palette within the corpus of codex-style painting facilitate that search. This opportunity was recognized by Justin and Barbara Kerr in the early years of their valuable and innovative documentation of Maya ceramics (Kerr and Kerr 1988). The Kerrs proposed the existence of several codex-style masters on the basis of details revealed through close study of brush flourishes or the execution of hands, feet, and other minutiae. We were recently invited by Mary Miller to honor Justin Kerr at a special session in the 2017 College Art Association meeting and decided to revisit this important contribution.

The presentation coincided with the publication of an article celebrating codex-style vessels in the recent Metropolitan Museum Journal, Creation Narratives on Ancient Maya Codex-Style Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum, and a concurrent Maya codex-style installation at The Met. All depict the Classic Maya rain god, Chahk, in typical codex style. Red bands and black calligraphic line fill a cream or light beige background. Washes embellish figures, fluids, and the hieroglyphic texts that accompany them. In this genre, undulating shapes tend to dominate, along with a decided abhorrence of straight lines. Michael Coe called this “whiplash” calligraphy, endowed with lines that seem to curve and “snap” with vigorous energy (Coe 1973:91). New rollout photos, inspired by the Kerrs’ original work, include a hi-res image of the Metropolitan Vase and its visual narrative pertaining to the birth of a mythological infant jaguar deity. This vessel anchored one of the groups identified by the Kerrs, who identified a workshop controlled by a painter they dubbed the “Metropolitan Master.”

One codex-style masterwork not included in the Kerr’s original study was the unusually large tripod plate studied by Linda Schele and Mary Miller in their landmark exhibition, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Nicknamed the “Cosmic Plate” for its dense imagery, cosmogonic themes, and fineness of execution, it is a unique work, with few peers in terms of size, ambition, and care of painting (Figure 1, for a close competitor in quality, see, however, see Coe and Houston 2015:pl. XVIII). In producing a new line drawing of the plate’s great Chahk representation from Justin Kerr’s photos, Doyle quickly realized that advances in knowledge allowed for a fresh study of this masterpiece.

Figure1.jpg

Fig. 1  Tripod plate showing Chahk as the great progenitor, 7th–8th century AD. Guatemala or Mexico, Maya, Late Classic. Ceramic with red, cream, and black slip, Diam. approx. 16 1/2 in. (42 cm). Private collection, photo by Justin Kerr, ©Kerr Associates.

The monumental plate is an object made for display, likely at feasting occasions in the royal court (in fact, few known Maya plates are so large—one example, impressive in size yet smaller than the “Cosmic Plate,” is a 31 cm-diameter Hutzijan polychrome plate excavated in Structure C-10 at Piedras Negras, see Muñoz 2004:103). A plate like this one could have been a grand diplomatic gesture, a gift between Maya rulers. The codex style is clearly a hallmark of the royal courts and loyal local palaces around the great city of Calakmul, straddling the border between southern Campeche and northern Guatemala (see Hansen et al. 1991; Reents-Budet et al. 2010). In our view, two potential models might explain the circulation of codex-style vessels: (1) non-royal political leaders commissioned them; or, more likely, (2) the most exquisite and elaborate were bestowed by the rulers of Calakmul itself. Perhaps local lords received handsome presents in return for their loyalty, through low-cost rewards distributed by the center. After all, a painted pot reveals deep training, but its making demanded only negligible expense in materials, time, and fuel for firing. Recall the high value that scholars had long-assumed for certain Athenian ceramics. In a provocative argument, Michael Vickers and David Gill (1994) suggested that this was a latter-day projection, one inconsistent with an actual, ancient emphasis on vessels of precious metals.

On the Cosmic Plate, the outer walls of its sloping rim are boldly painted with watery motifs, visible from afar, that include swirls, registers of droplets, and waterlily vegetation (Figure 2). The delicate main scene on the upper surface, however, would only have been visible by those directly above the plate at close range. The potter and painter collaborated on a clever conceit. The three feet of the vessel imitate downpours, a vertical deluge of concentrated form—these occur routinely in the Yucatan peninsula. In this case, columns of rain appear to precipitate from the plate itself and the watery milieu on its exterior.

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Fig. 2. Detail of the outside of the tripod plate and supports. Private collection, photo by Justin Kerr, ©Kerr Associates.

Traits on the Chahk plate—including the form of certain common motifs, the singular aspects of its composition, and the virtuoso brushwork over the large surface—distinguish it from almost all other Maya ceramic paintings. Some have argued that three vessels in the Princeton University Art Museum come from the same hand, executed by the painter ?-n Buluch? Laj, and painted around AD 755 (Robiscek and Hales 1983:249; see Just 2012). Indeed, the portrayal of a jaguar on the largest of those vessels invites close comparison with the howling jaguar growing from Chahk’s head. But the hypothesis that ?-n Buluch? Laj also painted the great Chahk plate raises a number of questions about painterly practice.

Maya vase painters appear to have experimented with different styles. The Princeton vases were likely commissioned by a Peten Itza king in north-central Guatemala. Hypothetically, the Cosmic Plate either came from there or from Calakmul, although still influenced by exemplary works to the south. The renowned “Altar vase,” clearly from the Ik’ kingdom near Peten Itza, proves that such pots traveled far and wide (Just 2012:142-149). Another source of inspiration might have been circulating books or paintings. Imperial China is known to have had such exchange, and scrolls gained uniformity, often over vast areas, by their energetic dispersion, study, and copying (see Miller 1998:216-218).

Whether the plate is the lone known work of a master or not, its unrecorded artist certainly fused the mythic and the historical in microcosmic form. The mythic frame of the narrative describes the context of the sprouting Chahk in deep time and in linked primordial locations. The fictive date of 13 Ok 8 Zotz must be significant to wider Maya myths: that Calendar Round appears in the Dresden Codex, in reference to the planet Venus, a point recognized by David Stuart (Miller and Schele 1986:310-312, pl. 122). Three Venus signs as well as the frontal and rear parts of the body of the celestial “starry Deer Crocodile” appear on either side of the upper scene, signifying the sky as the upper part of the composition (Martin 2015; Velásquez García 2006:Fig. 5). A celestial bird carries what appears to be the month name, 4 Ceh.

On the 13 Ok 8 Zotz date, an event “happened” (utiiy). This form of the verb has been suggested by David Stuart (personal communication, 1992) to refer to actions in remote time. The ancient subject seems to be k’uhul jinaj ? or “sacred milpa/planted-maize water,” perhaps a reference to the sprouting of maize, as part of a phrase consistent with the overall theme of emerging vegetation (Figure 3).

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Fig. 3. Hieroglyphic text describing events in mythological time and the four god names.

The scribe went on to describe the mythological setting in triplet form: it “happened” (utiiy, this time in a more conventional, syllabic spelling) “at the black cenote, at the black water, at the five-flower house (?).” The agents at the event in deep time are probably described as the four gods of matawil (4 ma-ta-K’UH), which could be a reference to a watery paradise (Stuart and Stuart 2008: 211-215). The gods are named as a feline or jaguar (hi-HIX)—he appears here, roaring, head-back—we suspect (the text is eroded), the presence of two other gods in addition to the Chak-Xib-Chahk at the center (Stuart was the first to identify this version of Chahk—others are known in the Dresden Codex and at Itzan, among other places; the connection to “red,” Chak, may be purely coloristic or refer to a direction, East). The text accords with visual clues to that toponymy. The centipede’s jaws, in a reference to the black cenote, frame Chahk’s watery emergence from a heavy register marked with the same hieroglyph for black water. There might also be a specific seasonal aspect to the scene, found in the single glyph blocks that flank the jaguar. These are variants of Wind God and sun-related glyphs, similar to the two glyphs born by characters in the Lamb panel from “Laxtunich” (Schele 1990:2).

Chahk is the undisputed protagonist as he rises waist-deep from the “black water.” He takes the form of an active, dancing character, perhaps a releaser of vegetation, and is shown in other depictions poised to chop with his axe. He wears his characteristic Spondylus earspools and holds the lightning axe symbolic of K’awiil. The main image of the scene is the branching head and left arm of the rain deity, with many sprouting beings (Figure 4). These include the large serpent to the left, the jaguar mentioned above, and a large “jester god” in the upper right that is recognizable by its crossed-bands motif. Th text is eroded and its details uncertain, but some of these could correspond the four gods of matawil mentioned in the text, including Chahk himself. Moreover, to lower right, that god’s left hand sprouts a personified version of obsidian. The branching Chahk with the other gods of matawil cue, as Karl Taube has suggested to us, the fractal forms of eccentric flints or obsidians. The overall being is both “hard” and “soft” in its asserted texture, material, and surface.

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Fig. 4. Drawing of a detail of the plate by James Doyle.

The hieroglyphic text contains a disjuncture. The jump separates mythical events and deity protagonists from a likely historical frame of reference and a human owner (Figure 5). The damaged day sign probably carries the coefficient 12, and the Pohp month may be prefaced by a variant of the number 6, identified long ago at Palenque by David Stuart. Though pinning down the date is speculative, style and proximity to major period endings suggests the following possibilities:

9.12.19.16.18             12 Etz’nab     6 Pohp             Feb. 26           AD 692

9.14.19.8.13               12 Ben            6 Pohp              Feb. 17           AD 731

9.16.5.15.3                 12 Ak’bal       6 Pohp              Feb. 10           AD 757

9.16.19.0.8                12 Lamat        6 Pohp              Feb. 7            AD 770

We find the latter two dates more likely, given the available evidence for the temporal distribution of codex-style ceramics, and the possible connection to the Ik’ painters who were active in the 750s-780s. The misalignment and asymmetry in the two sets of glyph blocks underscore the textual split between ancient time and contemporary events.

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Fig. 5. Historical Text.

The action that follows the date is likely a variant of the verb for ceremonial “raising” of a jawte’, plate (not “death,” as posited by Schele). The execution of the dedication verb on the plate is coincidentally very similar to that on the vessel in the Princeton museum and another cup likely by the same painter from the Ik’ polity, the first dated to approximately AD 755 (9.16.3.13.14  4 Hix 12 Kumk’u). The name and title that follow almost certainly name an actual historic figure (la-ch’a-TUUN-ni si-k’u-AJAW), though this name does not seem to be attested elsewhere in the corpus of Maya writing.

The plate with the mythic scene thus belonged to a living, historical owner who carried the ajaw title. Presumably, maize tamales filled the plate during important meals. By another, clever conceit, the plate would have contained actual maize products atop a scene in which growth is shown at first emergence. The reference to the mythological creation of maize and the depiction of this watery Olympus of quadripartite gods of matawil is indeed cosmic, but with a terrestrial focus. See, for example, the three partially preserved figures between the black water band and the potential representation of the “five-flower house” below (Figure 6).

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Fig. 6. Detail of personified plants: (left) “root” figure, possibly manioc or sweet potato (note sign for “darkness,” a feature first discerned by Marc Zender); (center) dancing Maize God with elongated cranium and breath bead; (right) “tobacco” figure (note sign for “darkness” on body of figure, a possible reference to nocturnal conditions or even a plant disease such as black shank?).

Accompanying the leafy plants is another upside-down figure on the left projecting downward from the water register. The scribe depicted this figure’s headdress as something close to the wi syllable, identifiable as a pan-Lowland word for “raíz, root,” in languages such as Ch’ol, Chontal, and Ch’orti’ (Kaufman and Norman 1984:126). This could refer to a type of indigenous root crop, such as sweet potato or manioc, the latter extensively documented as a staple in places like Joya de Cerén, El Salvador (Sheets et al. 2012). If so, this character may constitute a unique depiction of root crops in Maya art. Much like the vegetation around Pakal’s sarcophagus, these beings correspond to plants of economic import to the Maya, and to key elements of consumption.

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Fig. 7. Comparison of wi syllable from Chahk plate and Palenque’s Tablet of the 96 Glyphs.

The deeper meaning of the plate thus comes into crisp focus. The object would have existed in two time frames, offering both real food and mythic food stuffs. In deep time, lightning and rain came together under the auspices of Venus and stars, at a location in or near the black cenote/black water place, calling together a dream-team of four deities. Chahk, as the central figure from which the other gods are sprouting, wields his axe to strike and release primordial vegetation: root crops, maize, and tobacco, in the form of godly figures. Fast forwarding to the 8th century, one can imagine a recitation by someone seated next to the plate. At a sumptuous feast, he or she would read the image and text and recount distant (yet close!) mythological events. The owner perhaps entreated the very deities pictured within, in earnest hopes for bountiful crops and plentiful rains in a time of impending social upheaval.

Acknowledgments

This post is dedicated to Justin Kerr, who built a life with his wife Barbara devoted to the study and preservation of Maya artworks. Mary Miller kindly invited us to the CAA meeting, where we had fruitful conversations with her, Claudia Brittenham, Bryan Just, Megan O’Neil, and Justin himself. Simon Martin and David Stuart also provided useful and timely comment.

References

Beazley, John D. 1911. The Master of the Berlin Amphora. Journal of Hellenic Studies 31: 276–295.

— 1946. Potter and Painter in Ancient Athens. London, Cumberlege.

Berenson, Bernard. 1901. The Study and Criticism of Italian Art. London, Bell and Sons.

— 1903. The Drawings of the Florentine Painters Classified, Criticised and Studied as Documents in the History and Appreciation of Tuscan Art, with a Copious Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols., London, J. Murray.

Coe, Michael D. 1973. The Maya Scribe and His World. New York, Grolier Club.

Coe, Michael D., and Stephen Houston. 2015. The Maya, ninth edition. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

Delvendahl, Kai. 2008. Calakmul in Sight: History and Archaeology of an Ancient Maya City. Merida, Mexico: Unas Letras Industria Editorial.

García Barrios, Ana. 2011. Análisis iconográfico preliminar de fragmentos de las vasijas estilo codice procedentes de Calakmul. Estudios de la Cultura Maya 37:67­–97.

Hansen, Richard, Ronald L. Bishop, and Federico Fahsen. 1991. Notes on Maya Codex-Style Ceramics from Nakbe, Peten, Guatemala” Ancient Mesoamerica 2(2): 225–43.

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 Lynne Costin, pp. 391–431. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Houston, Stephen, Barbara Fash, and David Stuart. 2015. Morelli and the Maya on the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Copan, Honduras. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. Vol. 65/66, pp. 15-36.

Just, Bryan. 2012. Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom. Princeton University Art Museum.

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 publ. 9, ed. by John. S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77–166. Albany, State University of New York.

Kerr, Justin, and Barbara Kerr. 1988. Some Observations on Maya Vase Painters. In Maya Iconography, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Gillett G. Griffin, pp. 236–59. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicles of the Maya Kings and Queens. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

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, pp. 186-227. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Miller, Mary Ellen, and Linda Schele. 1986. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum.

Miller, Mary. 1998. A Design for Meaning in Maya Architecture. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, pp. 187-222. Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks.

Morelli, Giovanni. 1900. Italian Painters: Critical Studies of Their Works, vol. 1, The Borghese and Doria-Pamphili Galleries in Rome, trans. Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes. London, J. Murray.

Muñoz, Arturo René. 2004. The Ceramic Sequence of Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Type and Varieties. FAMSI http://www.famsi.org/reports/02055/index.html

Reents-Budet, Dorie, Sylviane Bouche le Landais, Ronald L. Bishop, and M. James Blackman. 2010. Codex-Style Ceramics: New Data Concerning Patterns of Production and Distribution. Paper presented at the XXIV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala.

Schele, Linda. 1990. The Site R Panels. http://www.mayavase.com/siterpanel.pdf

Sheets, Payson, David Lentz, Dolores Piperno, John Jones, Christine Dixon, George Maloof, and Angela Hood. 2012. Ancient Manioc Agriculture South of the Ceren Village, El Salvador. Latin American Antiquity 23(3): 259-81.

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

— 1989. Hieroglyphs on Maya Vessels. In The Maya Vase Book, A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, vol. 1, edited by Justin Kerr, pp. 149–160. New York, Kerr Associates.

Stuart, David, and George Stuart. 2008. Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

Vickers, Michael, and David Gill. 1994. Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 

Wollheim, Richard. 1974. Giovanni Morelli and the Origins of Scientific Connoisseurship, in On Art and the Mind: Essays and Lectures, pp. 177–201. London, Allen Lane.

US Premiere of Dance of the Maize God

David StuartLeave a comment

The 2014 Maya Meetings in Antigua saw a preview of the extraordinary new documentary film from Night Fire Films, Dance of the Maize God. The US Premiere will take place this coming Sunday, February 23, at 4 PM at CineFestival in San Antonio, Texas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uegtYkOhT2k

An announcement from Night Fire Films:

Night Fire Films is pleased to announce their new feature length documentary, Dance of the Maize God. Like their award-winning 2008 documentary Breaking the Maya Code, the new film explores the loss and recovery of ancient Maya culture – in this case, how royal painted vases, almost all found by looters, have transformed our understanding of the ancient Maya. The film explores the complex issues surrounding the excavation, study and exhibition of ancient Maya art.

Following a sneak preview at the UT Maya Meetings in Antigua, the film will have its U.S. premiere at the CineFestival in San Antonio this Sunday, February 23rd. In March, it will be featured at the Tulane Maya Symposium and at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal.

To read more about the film, view a trailer and see the latest screening schedule, please go to: http://nightfirefilms.org/films/dance-of-the-maize-god/

The filmmakers will be traveling throughout 2014 to screen Dance of the Maize God at festivals, symposia, museums, universities and community organizations. We are hoping to accompany these screenings with panel discussions involving a wide range of viewpoints on the study and exhibition of looted art.

If your organization would be interested in exploring the possibility of a screening, please get in touch with Producer Rosey Guthrie at guthrie@nightfirefilms.org.

REPORT: Name and Image on Two Codex-style Vessels

David Stuart3 Comments

by David Stuart

Among the many images in Justin Kerr’s wondrous database of Maya vases are two codex style vessels, K1552 and K1647 (Figures 1 and 2). These are part of a much larger set of vessels that bear symbols and iconography inspired by Teotihuacan, including images of so-called war-serpents and “Tlalocs” (see Robiscek and Hales 1981: Tables 5, 6, 7, 15, and 16). Many of these look to be painted by the same artist, including the two pictured here.

Rollout of Kerr 1552, showing jaguar paw and fire elements flanking a central k'an cross, in pseudo-Teotihuacan style. Photograph by Justin Kerr.
Figure 1. Rollout of Kerr 1552, showing jaguar paw and fire elements flanking a central k’an cross, in pseudo-Teotihuacan style. Photograph by Justin Kerr.
Rollout of Kerr 1647, showing two pseudo-Teotihuacan figures with jaguar paw and flame elements. Photograph by Justin Kerr.
Figure 2. Rollout of Kerr 1647, showing two pseudo-Teotihuacan figures with jaguar paw and flame elements. Photograph by Justin Kerr.

Compared those many vessels the imagery on K1152 and K1647 stands out. We see repeating ornate designs exhibiting k’an crosses, “fans” and other elements that commonly are used to evoke a Teotihuacan style in Late Classic Maya art (I suspect many of these elements have origins in butterfly imagery — another frequent theme of Early Classic central Mexican iconography). The design of K1152 is somewhat simpler than on K1647, where a human figure is added to the mix. He wears a so-called “tassled headdress” — here a rare Late Classic depiction — that is a familiar feature of Teotihuacan warriors throughout Mesoamerican art (Millon 1988).

Two elements seem to be featured in the repeating iconographic assemblages on each vessel — a protruding jaguar paw to the left of each design, and a prominent set of curving flames to the right. It’s an odd combination that doesn’t find parallel in the repetoire of Maya or Teotihuacan iconography, as far as I’m aware. But the paw and the flames are otherwise familiar as hieroglyphic elements that spell the core component of the royal name Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’, who ruled at Calakmul as the king of the Kaanal (or Kaanul) kingdom from to 686 to 697 CE. In truncated examples his name is simply written with a jaguar paw (ICH’AAK) and fire (K’AHK’), for Yich’aak K’ahk’, “Claw of Fire” (the phonetic prefix yi- in Figure 3d provides the prevocalic possessive pronoun y-).

FIgure 3. Name variants of the Calakmul ruler Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk'. (Drawings a and b by David Stuart; c and d by Simon Martin).
FIgure 3. Name variants of the Calakmul ruler Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’. (Drawings a and b by David Stuart; c and d by Simon Martin).

I have to wonder if the icons on the two related vessels are symbolic references to this important Calakmul king. Could the profiles shown on K1647 be his portrait? Throughout Maya art royal names could be routinely displayed in a similar fashion, where the elements of script often assumed the appearance of iconography. We often find such names in headdresses, for example, where the lines between image and script seem almost completely blurred (a playful overlap that Maya scribes and artists were apparently trained to feature and exploit).

The connection of these vases to Calakmul goes well beyond any strained visual link. It’s now firmly established that these and other codex-style vessels were produced in the so-called Mirador “Basin” (a geographical misnomer) at centers such as Nakbe, which were evidently in the close political sphere of Calakmul (Reents-Budet, et. al. 2010). The stylistic allusions to Teotihuacan are suggestive as well. According to a two different references in the inscriptions of La Corona, Yich’aak K’ahk’ assumed the unusual title Waxaklajuun Ubaah Chan, a name otherwise closely associated with the so-called Teotihuacan War Serpent. These can be found on Stela 1 and on Block V of Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 (Figure 4). The title probably alludes to Yich’aak K’ahk’s importance as a powerful warrior during a time he was warring with Calakmul’s great southern rival Tikal.

FIgure 4. Teotihuacan War Serpent title with the name of Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk', from Block 5 of Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 at La Corona. (Drawing by David Stuart)
Figure 4. The Teotihuacan War Serpent title with the name of Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’, from Block 5 of Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 at La Corona. (Drawing by David Stuart)

The timing for such a personal reference seems about right, too, for many if not most codex-style ceramics appear to have been produced in a relatively short span of a few decades in the late seventh and early eight centuries.

Readers might wonder why I haven’t addressed what the line of glyphs on the vessels actually say. The texts below the rims of the two vessels are nearly identical. Both are standard dedicatory formulae, marking them as drinking cups for cacao, and owned by a k’uhul cha(?)tahn winik, a “holy person” of place or court named Cha(?)tahn (the reading of one of the signs as cha in this context is uncertain; I suspect it may be a logogram of unknown value, and not the syllable sign cha). This may be an indirect reference to a character named Yopaat Bahlam, who carries this same title and is named on many codex style vessels. I suspect, as others probably have, that he was a local ruler of the Late Classic settlement at Nakbe or somewhere nearby, as well as being a subordinate ally under Calakmul’s power.

So in sum, I tentatively suggest that the two vases shown may have been painted ca. 690 CE to commemorate Calakmul’s warrior-king Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’. Their decorations look to be personal references to that k’uhul ajaw — emblem-like name glyphs melded with iconographic allusions to Teotihuacan. It’s probably significant that the writing system that was actually used at Teotihuacan consisted of proper names written in a similar emblematic manner (Taube 2000). The painter of these two vessels may have wanted to show the king’s name using a mix of Teotihuacan and Maya styles, not unlike the glyphs rendered in the Teotihuacan “font” in the Temple Inscription from Temple 26 at Copan (Stuart 2005).

REFERENCES CITED

Millon, Clara. 1988. “A reexamination of the Teotihuacan tassel headdress insignia.” In Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees: Reconstructing the Murals of Teotihuacan, edited by Kathleen Berrin, pp. 114-134. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco.

Reents-Budet, Dorie, Sylviane Boucher Le Landais, Yoly Paloma Carillo, Ronald L. Bishop and M. James Blackman. 2010. Codex Style Ceramics: New Data Concerning Patterns of Production and Distribution. Paper presented at the XXIV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatamala, 2010, Guatemala City.

Stuart, David. 2005. A Foreign Past: The Writing and Representation of History on A Royal Ancestral Shrine at Copan.  In Copan: The History of An Ancient Maya Kingdom, edited by E. Wyllys Andrews and William L. Fash.  pp. 373-394.  The School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Taube, Karl. 2000. The Writing System of Ancient Teotihuacan. Ancient America I. Center for Ancient American Studies, Barnardsville, NC and Washington, DC.

Portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een

David Stuart1 Comment

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.