Divining the Maya’s world
THE recent discovery of the elegantly painted murals at San Bartolo in the northeastern corner of Guatemala provided a unique view into the great antiquity of the philosophy underlying Maya divine kingship. Dating to about 100 BC, the murals reveal the rich colors of the palette and sophistication of the drawing that characterized the greatest achievements of Maya painting during the 7th and 8th centuries.
The discovery generated tremendous excitement in archeological circles. Archeologists, art historians and epigraphers (who study ancient written languages) typically work methodically and systematically, carefully examining the patterns of their data found in the layouts of cities and buildings, the monuments and objects and their accompanying texts. Archeology, however, is a science that benefits from serendipitous discoveries that can dramatically increase our understanding of ancient civilizations, and such is the case with San Bartolo.
The study of Maya civilization is fairly recent, dating to the mid-19th century, when the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens and the British architect Frederick Catherwood undertook a series of travels in Mexico and Central America and brought vivid tales and images of ancient Maya cities to the attention of the public. Subsequently, each decade of the 20th century has brought new insights into Maya culture that continue to be refined by investigations.
Visitors to the ruins of Maya cities typically see the remains of buildings that date to the period known as the Late Classic (AD 550 to 850), when the dynasties that ruled the nearly 60 city states built lavish temples and palaces and commissioned the creation of brilliantly painted pottery and elegantly carved stone monuments. Many of the existing buildings, however, were constructed over earlier buildings. During the past two decades, archeological excavations at a number of sites in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras have revealed the structures layered within the visible surface constructions, thus advancing our understanding of the earlier periods of Maya history.
Along with the architectural sequences exposed by these investigations, a corresponding understanding of the patterns in the art and hieroglyphic writing has brought to light the fundamental philosophical concepts underlying ancient Mesoamerican civilizations. These concepts convey a worldview that centers on the creation of the world and the responsibilities of the ruler in maintaining that world. The strength of these beliefs extends over the course of Maya history as demonstrated in religious practices among contemporary traditional Maya communities and as documented in the 16th century K’iche’ Maya epic, the Popol Vuh. Creation events are recorded in hieroglyphic texts from the 7th and 8th centuries, and now the murals at San Bartolo reveal the great antiquity of the relationship between the events of creation and the emergence of kingship in the Maya area.
The Popol Vuh informs us that before the world was created, the sky lay on the surface of the primordial sea. The Earth was created when the maize god raised a great world tree at the center of the cosmos, lifting the sky from the water and permitting the Earth to emerge. After a series of failed attempts to create human beings, the creator gods successfully made the first humans from a mixture of yellow and white maize from a sacred source, and these humans were perfect, because they honored their creators through offerings and prayer.
Although written down in the 16th century, the sequence of creation recorded in the Popol Vuh is affirmed in much earlier Mesoamerican patterns of art and archeology. As our accumulated knowledge from diverse fields of study began to converge on this theme, William Saturno, an archeologist at the University of New Hampshire, serendipitously discovered in 2001 a fragment of a mural in a small structure attached to a large pyramid. Over the course of the past four years, his careful excavations have provided the world with an astonishing panorama in which artists articulated the creation of the world with the culminating event depicting the coronation of a young king.
Saturno’s comprehensive approach entails the support of a large team of students and experts from Guatemala and the United States, including Mayanists Karl Taube from UC Riverside and David Stuart from the University of Texas at Austin. Their studies have illuminated the nature of the event as recorded in the images and hieroglyphic texts.
The exciting discoveries about early Maya society and art that emerged over the last 15 years served as the impetus for organizing the exhibition “Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As my colleague Dorie Reents-Budet from the National Museum of Natural History and I conducted our research, we visited numerous museums and archeological sites and met with many scholars engaged in bringing to light the early history of the ancient Maya.
It became clear to us that the primary focus of the first Maya art and writing was to document the prestige and authority of kings, who portrayed themselves as the central actors in the events of creation. Among the most important ritual actions performed by kings was that of raising the great world tree at the center of the cosmos, reenacting the event performed by the maize god during creation. By wearing the regalia of the maize god and performing the ceremonial actions of the deity, kings asserted their abilities to bring maize abundance and fertility to their communities. Agricultural abundance provided the wealth on which Mesoamerican civilizations established themselves, enabling the creation of cities and the royal art that sustained the status of kings and queens.
As our research pointed us in the direction of the role of creation cosmology as the underlying precept for the first Maya kings, Saturno discovered the murals that document these principles in the brilliant line and palette of the finest Maya painters from the 7th and 8th centuries.
Although they originally covered the upper register of the four walls of the structure, only the north and west murals survived in nearly intact condition. They portray the signature events of the Maya creation saga through the ritual actions of four supernatural beings. Their offerings invoke the levels of the Maya cosmos: water, earth, sky and the flowery paradise of the afterlife. The depiction of a young man seated on a scaffold and receiving his royal crown is a powerful statement of the sacred and secular authority of Maya divine kingship.
Through the murals, the ancient Maya themselves confirmed the incredible antiquity of their creation saga that endures to the present day. And the accomplished nature of the painting suggests that even earlier evidence of the first Maya kings await discovery.
Fields is curator of pre-Columbian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the exhibition “Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship” is on view through Jan. 2. The exhibition includes a reproduction of the north wall mural from San Bartolo, courtesy of the Proyecto San Bartolo.