I suspect most of them were of wood and have long since rotted away. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady XOOK? In Yaxchilan, structure 23 is seen as the place of Lady Xoc's. She has likely burned the paper to allow the blood to ascend to the gods, and to bring about the vision serpent. The three lintels on Structure 23known as lintels 24, 25, and 26depict different ritual moments in the life of Lady Xook. Modern day lintels are made using . It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. At the Yaxchilan archaeological site there are fifty-eight lintels with decorative pieces spanning the doorways of major structures. Anyone entering Structure 23 would pass. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and. Welcome to Art and Ideas, a podcast in which I speak to artists, conservators, authors, and scholars about their work. Its not as important as Yaxchilan. Hooper 2006 A large and complete example of a type of carved panel (pare or korupe) fitted above the doorway of a chief's house, and later above the doorway of elaborately carved meeting houses (which began to be built around 1840). And they were then combined with a clay called palygorskite, which is found in only a few locations. Only the carver is, through his name glyphs, as it is expressed in the orbits of the lintel being lifted. Describe it for us and its importance in the history of Mayan sculpture, but also, perhaps, just in sheer beauty itself. And in its eyes, looking down at anybody glimpsing and glancing up at the lintel, are the names and titles of the carver. Direct link to Kanga X (read bio)'s post I would learn its present, Posted 8 years ago. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady Xoc (4.6.5)? And so all of this tells us that they were very much concerned with the physical placement of these carvings, but also how humans would interact with them. "His sculpture was erected, Mo Chaak, he of Hixil?". The final sentence, which is not elevated like the other two, is an artists signature. [citation needed] There are numerous documented references to him on artifacts at the end of Stage V at Yaxchilan. And that story is not an end at all, and hopefully, it will continue for some time to come. The glyphs spell out her name. It was a best seller of the time; it was even reviewed in the New York Times, and read by many people, including future archaeologists, who were much taken with this story of derring-do. Her elaborately carved huipil is trimmed with fringe and pearls. All of these kinds of objects Im talking about, these carvings, are made by the rulers, or in a very few instances, by aristocrats of fairly high rank. Lintel 25 (below)from the central doorwayalso focuses on a bloodletting ritual carried out by Lady Xook. Lintels 24, 25 and 26, set above the three doorways of Structure 23, depict a series of rituals performed by Shield Jaguar II and his wife. In this episode, Stephen Houston, editor of A Maya Universe in Stone, explores the production and complex afterlives of these Maya objects. Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum) ([view a diagram of this relief and locate this relief on a map), Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum) (. There seems to be pretty good evidence that the known carvers at Bonampak came from Yaxchilan. So he mustve been very concerned with being out in the forest, with being prepared for every possible contingency. They allowed him, I think, to survive. Other stone, however, is almost crystalline in hardness. CUNO: So we have three sites, if I have my numbers correct, El Tunel being one of them; Yaxchilan being another; and Bonampak being a third. The text comprises three discrete sections. [3] Thanks for listening. Ancient Maya Sculpture. InHeilbrunn Timeline of Art History. It suggests that everything is with respect to the Classic period. In addition to her patterned huipil (square-cut blouse), Lady Xook is festooned with a headdress, elaborate bracelets, earrings, and a necklacelikely made of jade. Now the other thing that, to me, is fascinating about even considering the problem of time, the way we might conceptualize it with respect to this carving, is that the carving itself, as we studied it, tends to prefigure later carvings by this very same sculptor, so theres a rich oeuvre, we know, of his work over a ten-year span. Hieroglyphic stairways are also kinetically fascinating from an interpretive viewpoint because you, of course, walk up and down them, but what is often depicted on them, in terms of imagery, or recorded on them in terms of hieroglyphic inscriptions, would be a succession of rulers over time. It is odd that the men didn't have to "pull a thorned rope" through. In the first millennium B.C., Maya artists began to sculpt in stone, stucco, wood, bone, shell, and fired clay. The sculpture Chibinda Ilunga, made by the Chokwe people of Central Africa, depicts a king as a powerful hunter. And he needed a lost city as a selling point.. Bricker, "Advances in Maya epigraphy,", J. Marcus, "The Iconography of Power Among the Classic Maya,", Posted 8 years ago. Write AAA above the verb if it is active and PPP if it is passive. What kind of stories do the reliefs tell, and do they tell different stories than the vases tell? And the rest of their lives were leavened by little more than an occasional talk about their grand adventure to the Lost City. STEPHEN HOUSTON: Its a great honor and pleasure, Jim. (5 Eb, 15 Mak in the maya calendar). And this may, in turn, account for the kind of micro kingdoms or the political fragmentation that are illustrated or exemplified by the carving weve been looking at. What was a craftsman called when they were in training? And this came as something of a controversy in my field because everyone had assumed there was a local expression of whatever language might be spoken at that time. Some of the most impressive Maya buildings and sculptures were created during this late-Classic period before the city-state collapsed in the 9th century. Ancient Maya limestone carving from Yaxchilan in modern Chiapas, Mexico, The lintel as displayed in the British Museum, Museo Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III, Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, Kition Necropolis Phoenician inscriptions, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yaxchilan_Lintel_24&oldid=1109549671, Ethnographic objects in the British Museum, Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 September 2022, at 14:44. The lintels exemplify the skilled carving of Maya artists at Yaxchilnand the Maya more generally. ti-5-EB 15-ma-AK-u-ba-hi ti-CHAB-li ti-KAK-la-ju-lu u-CHAB-4-WINIKHAB-AJAW ITZ-BALAM-ma-u-cha-CHAN-nu a-NIK-ki KUHUL-[PA]CHAN-AJAW There they encountered a rich cache of decorated structures made in the first millennium CE, including a particularly elaborate limestone lintel (a horizontal support above a doorway) carved by an artisan named Mayuy. For the ancient Maya, jade objects embodied the color blue-green (the spectrum of blues and green was referred to as one word, yax, in the Classic Mayan language), which symbolized new growth, water, and primordial places and beings. The image and the inscription both reinforce the reign of the ruler and his dynastic ties, in this case via his wife. Lintels 24 and 25 are on permanent display in the British Museum's Mexican Gallery. In 1950, the American explorer Dana Lamb happened upon a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. [2] We are able to study the detail of Mayan weaving as depicted in these carvings, and see the pearls woven into the fabric. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady Xoc (4.6.6)? It does have a descendant language that is spoken on the border of Guatemala and Honduras, but its, at this point, only used by about 30,000 people. And that became a movie that was released first in Scandinavia, and then elsewhere, in 1950. And you write that they have an unstable relationship to time. How do we know the names of those mentioned in the article? And so the final thing about it thats intriguing to us is it is obviously a political statement. holajun mak u baah ti chabil ti kakal jul u chab chan winikhaab ajaw Itz[amnaaj] Bahlam u chan Aj Nik kuhul Pachan ajaw A spouted chocolate vessel (1999.484.3) made of indurated limestone would have taken an enormous amount of carving and polishing with abrasives in order to obtain the delicate reliefs and sheen of the surface. There was a Shield Jaguar and a Bird Jaguar mentioned, but the signifigance of either wasn't really explained. There would be the burning of incense. Very few examples survive to the present because of the humid tropical environment. The Mayan city of Yaxchilan, on the Usumacinta River in present-day southern Mexico, specialized in the stone carving of ornamental lintel elements within structural stone lintels. Modeled and carved works of fired clay show the Maya virtuosity at creating realistic figurines and elaborate vessels and incense burners. She kneels in front of Shield Jaguar who holds a great torch described in the text as a "burning spear illuminating a ritual that was probably held at night or set in the dark recess of a private chamber. This architectural system and building method has been co. RM DYEKET - Lintel from Yaxchilan 690 A.D. Three-dimensional wooden objects are scarcer and primarily known from dry tombs, cave contexts, or waterlogged anoxic conditions. There would be a carving, there would be an act of erection or emplacement. Mayan Queen and Consort of Yaxchilan, Lady Xoc is considered to be the most powerful woman of the Maya Civilization. It was the center around which they tended to revolve. And the lintels are features of buildings that span doorways. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mayas/hd_mayas.htm (April 2016). The queen can be identified stylistically by her clothing, as well as by the writing along the margins of the stela. The sculptor, Chakalte, signed this lintel and at least two other works during his career. Working limestone or volcanic tuff with stone tools, sculptors showed realistic portraits of divine lords, courtly ladies, captives, and deities. Lambs objective was essentially to do Kon-Tiki in the Chiapan Rainforest. Yaxchilan itself is in not a very prepossessing area. We now know that it was a rope studded with obsidian blades used in the ritual, and may have the very physical shards depicted themselves. These objects are often found in burials and other archaeological contexts, though other perishable materials, like the rope and the bark-paper strips seen on the lintel, are now lost. Find two or three examples in this story showing that Crane believes war personifies machines and dehumanizes people. And he trekked to the site with locals. The colossal statue of Constantine the Great departs completely from statues of earlier Roman Nonetheless, there are plans afoot to try to return to this region and to explore it in more detail. The portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs over Tiananmen has never been taken down since the day it And so in that lintel thats being lifted, we have an animated stone, which is the lintel itself. This limestone lintel, considered one of the masterpieces of Maya art, is one of a series of three panels from Structure 23 at Yaxchiln, where it was set above the left (south-east) doorway. Direct link to Sophia McManus's post In the section Lintels 2, Posted 5 years ago. The Maya civilization in the Americas was known for its sophisticated art and monumental architecture. Which of these artworks was not made as propaganda to supplement the power of the ruler it The scene represents a bloodletting ritual performed by the king of Yaxchiln, Shield Jaguar the Great (681-742), and his wife, Lady K'ab'al Xook (Itzamnaaj Bahlen III). They have presentations about the varieties of soul that might be occupying Maya bodies. Bird Jaguar ascended the throne ten years after his father died, suggesting that there was perhaps a conflict about who was to become Yaxchilns ruler. The lintel dates to about 723726 AD, placing it within the Maya Late Classic period. Were all very busy with other projects, but its obvious that weve laid out what could potentially be a successful research program to return to this area, to excavate places like El Tunel, to recover even more of the meaning of these lintels, perhaps to find other fragments that would be left behind. Such Maya rituals as bloodletting were only enacted on slaves. Accession rituals, for example, entailed the offering of dedicatory human sacrifices to mark the enthronement of a new ruling lord. Miller, Mary Ellen, and Megan O'Neil. u baah ti chabil ix chakan xook Ix Kabal Xook ix kalomte The rope falls on to an open codex. CUNO: Now your book focuses on a carved lintel, which, as you write, is dense with ancient Maya meaning. Tell us about the role of such carvings in ancient Maya culture. The uppermost describes Itzamnaaj Bahlam, where the second raised section describes Lady Xoc. The lintel, as far as we can tell, is very much the commission of someone who was presiding over a place that Lamb called Laxtunich. It was Mayuy, which is a word that refers to mist and clouds. In the case of windows, the bottom span is instead referred to as a sill, but, unlike a lintel, does not serve to bear a load to ensure the integrity of the wall. And that would be the kind of stone from which this lintel is made. Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post I just thought as I was r, Posted 7 years ago. False What technique was used to create the portrait of King Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti, and their three daughters (4.6.6)? Dating from between AD 769 and 783, these door beams, subsequently looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Not on view. And what they tell us is that these carvings were made by an identifiable, superlative sculptor whose name we know and can decipher. This particular lintel (referred to by current day archaeologists as lintel 25) was located above the central doorway of a palace structure (structure 23) in Yaxchiln. And its also about that time, or maybe a century or so before, that theres a lot of contact with the great city, the metropolis, of Teotihuacn, which is pretty close to what is now Mexico City. It was removed to the Museo Nacional de Antropologa e Historia in 1964. And so Lambs objective was essentially to do Kon-Tiki in the Chiapan Rainforest. Itzamnaaj Bahlams remains lay not far, in Room 3. Attached to his head band is what appears to be a representation of the Jester Mask. And indeed, for much of its existence, it was a dependency of Yaxchilan, which was the superordinate, dominant kingdom in this area. HOUSTON: El Tunel is Laxtunich, in our opinion. But the intent was to have a grand adventure. Elaborate grave goods were found in association with both burials. These lintels are considered by some to be the pinnacle of Mayan art. A carved bowl (2000.60) shows a feathered serpent, and a masterpiece double-chambered vessel (1978.412.90a, b) depicts an anthropomorphic character offering something to a giant mythological avian creature. The text on the left of the panel contains the name and titles of Lady K'ab'al Xook. Is elaborate the same as explain? Dating from between AD 769 and 783, these door beams, subsequently looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Incense burners depicting the sun and rain gods (1978.412.99) were deployed in intimate rituals in palaces, temples, and caves, to honor the ancestors (1999.484.1a, b; 1982.394a, b) and summon benevolent beings. CUNO: So he and the Lambs and were interested in Laxtunich. And its not so much in details, but its what you might say have to do with rituals, with covenants of duty, with relations to land, and indeed, to time itself. A lintel or lintol is a type of beam that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. The second thing to remember about these, though, is that all of these carvings have a certain physical involvement with the viewer. It also gives us another level of, you might say, ethical or epistemological or interpretive responsibility, in that there are descendant communities that we need to address, and for whom we will frame how we come to conclusions in, I think, a very careful way. (Late Classic period, 600-900 CE). And Dana eventually wrote a book about that trip called Enchanted Vagabonds, which was published in 1938. Does lintel 26 depict the same thing? Such Maya rituals as bloodletting were only enacted on slaves. Elaborately carved gate lintel Contributor Names American Colony (Jerusalem). Lamb was notoriously reticent about where he discovered the carvings, turning his find into an archeological mystery at the heart of the new book A Maya Universe in Stone, edited by Stephen Houston and published by the Getty Research Institute. Our theme music comes from the The Dharma at Big Sur composed by John Adams, for the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003 and is licensed with permission from Hendon Music. A glyphic inscription (oddly, written backwards) in the upper left corner of Lintel 25 notes the date of Shield Jaguar IIs ascension to the throne in October 681. In the Lintel 23, Communication with Ancestors, Blood Sacrifices and preparing the King for Battle is seen performing by Lady Xoc in the presence of the King Jaguar. These were located in what is known as Element 21 in Room 1 of Structure 23 at Yaxchilan. Non-structural decorative lintel at Buddhist Banteay Srei, in Cambodia, Non-structural lintel in Buddhist cave temple at Ellora Caves, India, Door lintel in Bozen-Bolzano from 1632 with Elias Tagger's coat of arms, South Tyrol, Italy, Non-structural marriage stone lintel at 'The Hill' farm, Dunlop, East Ayrshire, Scotland, One of many 16th century door lintels in Edinburgh's Old Town, Simonsbath House, Simonsbath, Exmoor Parish, Devon. And so the lintels, we think, both in this particular series, but also in all of those spread without this kingdom, tend to be very bold statements about control, at a time in which it is probably beginning to fray. Or at least it was the claim of that dynasty. Bloodletting was a common practice in Maya life from the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C.E.- 250 C.E.) And its almost impressive to me, in that its almost as though they protest too much, because this is within a couple of decades of the collapse of Maya civilization, and it could be this frenetic cultural activity has something to do, in fact, with a kind of Band-Aid or a way of disguising what could have been fracturing tensions within this kingdom. Its not a terribly comfortable position. Its a little bit sad, in that Ive actually seen correspondence from Dana and Ginger, and the letterhead has the heading of Dan and Ginger Lamb, Exploration and Motion Pictures. But there would be only one movie called Quest for the Lost City, which was released in the 1950s and went into broad distribution. Examples of the ornamental use of lintels are in the hypostyle halls and slab stelas in ancient Egypt and the Indian rock-cut architecture of Buddhist temples in caves. We dont know what the ancient name of the city was. A miraculously preserved kneeling dwarf (1979.206.1063) would likely have held a plaque covered in tiles of obsidian or pyrite that reflected light upon the ruler gazing at it. And it would also prove to be important for his eventual producer, who was none other than Sol Lesser, with RKO. The structure 23 does not depict warfare which differentiates it from other structures build during Jaguar's time. Since the rest of the costume is depicted without much abstraction, it is suggested that Maya kings may have literally attached a shrunken head to their head band as a representation of power. And so many of them went to, of all places, Canada, which was, of course, part of the British Empire as well, until fairly recently. STEPHEN HOUSTON: Lambs objective was essentially to do Kon-Tiki in the Chiapan Rainforest. Due to the association with Lady Xocs burial in Room 2, these have been interpreted as being depicted on Lintel 24. Shield Jaguar II's commissions at Yaxchiln's central complex of buildings (called the Central Acropolis) include carved lintels (the beam at the top of a doorway), stairs faced with hieroglyphic writing, and stele (upright wood or stone slab monuments). I recently sat down with Stephen, the Dupee Family Professor of Social Science at Brown University, to discuss the importance of the Maya lintels and their afterlife. It weighs 120 tons, with approximate dimensions 8.3 5.2 1.2 m,[2] one of the largest in the world. But in point of fact, thats pretty unusual. For the AP exam, is it important to know where everything is located in present time? CUNO: So help us understand the topography and vegetation of the area and how consistent it is across Guatemala. How close are they to each other and how much of Guatemala are they? Theyre living in palaces; there are populations that are going into the millions; we have intensive agriculture, trade, economic tribute. All three were apparently commissioned by Lady Xoc for the doorways of Structure 23. And so to some extent, each one of those language groups and the ethnic groups they represent have had their own varied history of research. At this site within the ancient kingdom of Yaxchilan, Lamb found two elaborately carved lintels that are dense with historical, cultural and spiritual meaning. For photos, transcripts, and other resources, visit getty.edu/podcasts and if you have a question, or an idea for an upcoming episode, write to us at podcasts@getty.edu. emperors. And Ive often wondered, as have others, why didnt he eventually fess up? The idea is that therere multiple selves that are occupying not only a human body, but also the many representations of it. HOUSTON: The pigments involve a blue made of indigo thats taken from the Anil plant. It was a significant Maya centerduring the Classic period (250-900 C.E.) And what they also tell us is that this sculptor introduced idiosyncratic, brilliant effects, and that he asserted his identity in ways that were not otherwise known in the corpus of Maya carvings. Structure 23 has since collapsed. As a. sapodilla, (Manilkara zapota), tropical evergreen tree (family Sapotaceae) and its distinctive fruit, native to southern Mexico, Central America, and parts of the Caribbean. Did it have something to do with the fact that he had another scheme afoot, a future movie in mind? But also, as I mentioned before, that the setting truly matterswhere the building was found, what that building might have presented architecturally, what might be the archaeological deposits nearby. What proximity do they share? There are four carvings known. Hes probably looking for a more lucrative position here in this kingdom. STEPHEN HOUSTON: Lambs objective was essentially to do Kon-Tiki in the Chiapan Rainforest. There are chocolate recipes that are specifying, to a very great degree, what people might be quaffing in some of these festivities that we know that they celebrated. Direct link to Stf Murison's post I cannot remember the sou, Posted 6 years ago. CUNO: What about pigmentation? Each of the works is signed, indicating that the production of such works was regarded as a highly specialized skill rather than a trade.
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what event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel