The Devil’s Writing

Stephen Houston and Felipe Rojas (Brown University)

 

The Spaniards expressed a certain ambivalence about Maya glyphs. They called them letras, a neutral word suggesting an equivalence to their own writing system. But they could also describe the script in terms of caracteres. This implied, among other nuances, a cipher or emblem of magical import (Drucker 2022:61–62; Hanks 2010:3).[1] At the time, charaktêres, an obvious cognate with caracteres, were mystical signs created by adding circles or other embellishments to preexisting scripts (Gordon 2014:266–67). Devoid of grammar, often written for single use, they were thought to be “unutterable,” being visionary in origin and direct conduits to mystical meaning (Gordon 2014:263). John Dee, the Elizabethan-era occultist, even claimed to have received his own esoteric script from angels (Harkness 1999:166). Maya glyphs, by contrast, were understood to be legible if challenging to read. Like other writing, they recorded, among their quite varied content, “the deeds of each king’s ancestors” and reports of “years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, hungers” (Houston et al. 2001:26, 40).

But the Devil was seldom far away. Missionaries and colonial authorities recognized that glyphs served a role in enchantment and conjuring (Hanks 2010:8; Houston et al. 2001:36). The destruction and confiscation of books—the focus was not on the stone carvings from centuries before the Conquest—would, according to the Franciscan Bernardo de Lizana, writing in 1633, “cure and cauterize the pestilential cancer [of idolatry] that was eating away at the Christianity that [the friars] had planted with such great effort” (Chuchiak 2010:91). Diego de Landa had paved the way a few generations before: “[w]e found a great number of books of these letters of theirs, and because they had nothing but superstitions and falsities of the devil (demonio), we burned them all, which they felt amazingly and gave them great sorrow” (Landa 1959:105, translation ours, from scanned version by Christian Prager; see also Restall et al. 2023:164; Landa used demonio, “demon,” as a singular and collective noun, for it could apply both to Lucifer and individual Maya gods, including Hunhau [from Hun Ajaw, presumably], said to be the “prince” [príncipe] of them all [Landa 1959:60]). The shift to Latin script, even for esoteric works out of Spanish control, showed how obnoxious the glyphs had become to Spanish authorities and to local scribes wishing to employ a (by then) more prestigious script when integrating Maya and Christian beliefs (Chuchiak 2010:106). 

Thoughts about devilish writing bring to mind a text, from Europe but approximately the same time, said to have been written by the Devil himself (or, more precisely, an “archfiend” named Per Talion, Ansion et Amlion [Clark 1891:497–499]; see also Drucker 2022:105, fig. 4.9]). This appears in Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi’s Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas (original here), 1539, 212r (Figure 1). Ambrogio received a report of this document, supposedly in the demon’s own hand, after the fiend was conjured by one Lodovico de Spoletano. The demon was asked to respond to a money-grubbing query, suitable for the corruptor of venal souls… and in Italian no less, perhaps his notional language! The question: Sel Cavaliero Marchantonio figliolo de riccha donna da Piacenza ha ritrovati tutti li dinari che laso Antonio Maria, et se no in qual loco sono?; “has Cavaliero Marchantonio, son of a rich woman from Piacenza, found all the dinars that Antonio Maria left, and if not where are they?” (Hayden 1855:189).

Figure 1. Demonic writing, 1539. Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas, 1539, 212r.

The demon obliged. He caused a pen to levitate over the page and left his script, which, mindful of his soul, Ambrogio declined to study (see the translation of his Latin text below, in Appendix 1). An anonymous poem about the Devil’s letter, from 1746, understands that reserve: “No more, ye critics, be your brains perplex’d T’elucidate the darkness of the text; No farther in the endless search proceed, The devil wrote it – let the devil read!” (Yeowell 1855:146). This book has been much gawked at, especially in a copy at the Queen’s College Library, Oxford. On September 29, 1663, it was viewed by no less a personage than King Charles II of England, along with his queen, Catherine of Braganza, his brother, James, the Duke of York, and Anne, the Duchess of York (Clark 1891:497). A compilation of English comments on the volume at Queen’s appears here.

 

The pitchfork script and swirling tails point to their purported maker. The way the tails transgress lines hints at some aggressive property of the “writer” and may also establish links between different parts of the text. Generally, a vertical and horizontal orientation guides the pitchforks, separated by the occasional dots, in sets of 1, 3, and 4, or jagged lines of 1, 2, 3 and 4, and a few signs shaped like Xs. The final sign with whiplashing tail, looks vaguely like the astrological sign of Taurus or the planet Mercury. If there is code here, it is seemingly written from left to right, like Latin script. That reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line, which fails to reach the right side. The lines contain respectively (and somewhat approximately, given the challenge of counting individual signs), 31, 28, 22, 25, 21, 24, and 16 signs, for 143 graphs in total, a wordy response to a question of some 118 letters. (The reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line.) Out of the entire sequence, only one set of signs appears to repeat, the 10th and 11th from the left in the second row, but that may be from the imperfect application of ink in the block made for this illustration (see the smear of pigment to the upper left). A rough typology of signs, much affected by whether a missing tine is intended or not, or a flange or dot, reaches about 35 signs, the upper range of an alphabet; the inverted pitchfork without central tine may be among the most numerous, coming to some 10 examples. To an intriguing extent, the use of similar signs that find contrast by orienting right, left, up, down, resembles Sir Thomas More’s Utopian alphabet from 1518 (Figure 2). More’s shapes, likely devised by his printer and friend, Pieter Gillis of Antwerp, were influenced by geometrical concepts of the Humanist Renaissance, with a greater number of “closed” forms than evident in the Devil’s pitchforks (Houston and Rojas 2022:251; see also Campbell et al. 1978). 

Figure 2. Orientational scripts of the Humanist period: a, the Utopian alphabet, Thomas More, De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia (Basel: Johann Froben, 1518), 13 (photo, Folger Shakespeare Library [PR2321.U82 1518 Cage]); b, vignette of Ambrogio’s letter from the Devil.

This is not the only document said to have been written by the Devil. On the morning of August 11, 1676, a nun named Maria Crocifissa della Concezione claimed to have found a letter from the Dark One on the floor of her cell; her own face was covered in ink, hinting at more than some slight role in its production (Figure 3; Langeli 2020:560–561). The letter is claimed to have been translated in 2017 by Daniele Abate of the LUDUM Science Center, a children’s museum in Sicily, after, we are told, Abate had obtained software on the “Dark Web.” The wave of publicity, as here, does not seem to have been followed by any publication. Perhaps the “Dark Web” had a pleasing resonance with “Dark Lord.” Later, in his novel The Leopard, Guiseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, referred in light disguise to “the two famous and indecipherable letters framed on the wall of a cell, one to the Devil from Blessed Corbèra to convert him to virtue, and the other the Devil’s reply, expressing, it seems, his regret at not being able to comply with her request” (di Lampedusa 1960:82). This was no accident, for Sister Maria was born Isabella Tomasi, Lampedusa’s distant aunt by many generations. In looking at the letter, it is puzzling that the devil would use such a different script, and in the space of only 250 years or so! Most likely, of course, the Sister’s script was influenced by the books of Athanasius Kircher, such as his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–1654), or by various specimen charts that predated her own wild improvisation (Drucker 2022:figs. 6.4, 6.6). 

Figure 3. The Devil’s letter, given to Maria Crocifissa della Concezione, Monastero di Palma Montechiaro, Agrigento, Sicily.

 

Also the work of the Devil, at least by far later report, is the Bohemian Codex Gigas, now in the National Library of Sweden. In 1638, during the 30 Year’s War, it was seized by Swedish troops from the collections amassed in Prague by the Emperor Rudolf II. Eventually, it made its way to the royal library in Stockholm. This unusually large book, 89 x 49 cm, consisting of 310 parchment leaves, was made between AD 1200 and 1230 (Figure 4). A popular account insists that the image was painted in homage to the Devil, who assisted in its production, or that it might even have been made by his hand. This fable, emphatically denied by the National Library, is not quite the same as the stories from Ambrogio and Sister Maria, for the image of the Devil, unusual for its frontal position, sits across from an image of Jerusalem. When the book was open, he would squirm across from the city; when closed, his body would collapse into it. Fascination with the image has led to its over-exposure and fading, as can be seen by comparing the two images below.

Figure 4. The Codex Gigas, with signs of fading over time (ca AD 1210-1220), Latin (309) bl, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm, CC BY Per B. Adolphson, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

That the Devil was literate, assumed to be capable of polite missives and written colloquies, doubles back to Maya glyphs and Spanish views of them. Those works were just as impenetrable, just as unreadable, as the “characters” confronting Ambrogio and Sister Maria: the Maya books were best burned, or sent as idle curiosities to be viewed back in Europe with interest and, perhaps, trepidation.

Note 1. See the Oxford English Dictionary, with a citation from John Metham, 1449, writing in Middle English, “Anone he dyght hys sacrifyse..hys cerkyl gan dyuyse With carectyrs and fygurys, as longe to the dysposycion Off tho spyrytys.”; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “character (n.)”; Singer 1989:53; see also Hamann 2008:35, on these “abstract and esoteric and asonic” fantasies).

Appendix 1. Describing the Devils’ writing

Non tam cito pennam Magus deposuerat, quam cito qui aderant pennam eandem corripi, et in aera sustolli, et in eandem charta infra scriptos characteres velociter scribere viderunt scribentis vero manu nullus comprehendere potuerat Ut mihi aliquem retulit, qui cum multis presens fuer[at et] cum postmodum Papiam venisset, et factum ut fuerat enarraret. Rogatus archetypum mihi reliquit. Cuius verba adscripsi. Characteres vero tales erant. Quid vero characteres illi insinuarent, quam[ve] responsionem ad quaesita redderent scire o[mn]ino non curavi Quandoquidem vanas Magorum superstitiones, et somniis similia deliramenta, naturali quodam semper odio prosecutus fuerim. Nec mihi quispiam persuadere umquam potuerit, ut talia placerent. Non enim me latuit, huiusmodi nequam spiritus, suis semper cultoribus, laqueos tendere, ut irretintos in perniciem trahent. Exemplo nobis iamdudum esse potuit (ut multos praeteream) antiquus ille Simon Magus, qui Apostolroum temporibus misere interiit.Et in presentia hic, de quo loquimur, qui paulo ante, cum se rei militari totum dedisset, ac sub eius vexillo armatos tercetnos, sive quadrigentos duceret pedites, in rusticorum semel manus incidit. Qui tot illum ferris tridentibus (quot invocatus Amon, in suis characteribus effinxerat), appetentes, percusserunt, vulneraverunt, transfixerunt, Et tricipiti apud inferos Cerbero consignandum, mulits undique laeatalibus cribratum vulneribus, exanime tandem corpus ille reliquerunt. Verum cum in dignoscendis variarum linguarum characteribus, ac literarum figuris, propenso semper animo versarer, nolui etiam hoc scribendi genus, pratermittere intactum …

No sooner had Magus put down the quill than those who were present saw that same quill being grabbed and being borne in the air, and [they saw that quill] on the same sheet writing quickly writing the characters below. Yet the hand of the one writing no one could perceive. So he brought me someone, who had been present with many [others] and had just come to Papia. And he related how the deed had happened. Having been asked, he left me the archetype [i.e., the original manuscript], whose words I wrote down.— Such indeed were the signs: As to what those characters actually insinuated, and what response they gave to the questions asked I did not care to know at all, especially since with a certain natural hatred I have always chased away the empty superstitions of “Magicians” and their delirious visions similar to dreams. And no one has ever persuaded me that such things were acceptable. For it does not escape me that such evil spirits lay snares for those who worship them that they may drag them entangled into ruin. That famous Simon Magus, who died a miserable death in the days of the Apostles, can serve as an ancient example for us—I pass over many others [in silence]–this man of whom we speak, who a little before, had devoted himself entirely to military matters, and led three or four hundred footmen armed under his standard, once fell into the hands of peasants, who sought him, struck him, wounded him, and pierced him with as many tridents of iron (as the invoke Amon had represented in his characters). Having been consigned to the triple-headed Cerberus in the underworld, wounded on all sides by fatal wounds, they finally left his body lifeless. Since in distinguishing the characters of various languages, and the shapes of the letters, I ponder them with an ever attentive mind, I did not want to pass over this kind of writing undiscussed …

References

Campbell, Lorne, Margaret Mann Phillips, Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, and
J. B. Trapp. 1978. Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis, and
Thomas More. Burlington Magazine 120:716–25.

Chuchiak, John F., IV. 2010. Writing as Resistance: Maya Graphic Pluralism and Indigenous Elite Strategies for Survival in Colonial Yucatan, 1550–1750. Ethnohistory 57(1):87–116.

Clark, Andrew. 1891. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632-1695, Described by Himself, Volume 1, 1632-1633, pp. 497–99. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society.

di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. 1960. The Leopard, trans. by Archibald Calquhoun. London: Collins and Harvill.

Drucker, Johanna. 2022. Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gordon, Richard. 2014. Charaktêres Between Antiquity and Renaissance: Transmission and Re–Invention. In Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, edited by Véronique Dasen and Jean–Michel Spieser, pp. 253–300. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Hamann, Byron E. 2008. How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152(1):1–68.

Hanks, William F. 2010. Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harkness, Deborah E. 1999. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Houston, Stephen D., Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, and David Stuart, eds. 2001. The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

———–, and Felipe Rojas. 2022. Sourcing Novelty: On the “Secondary Invention” of Writing. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 77/78:250–66.

Hayden, Henry H. 1855. “Mysterious Scrawl” in Queen’s College, Library, Oxford. Notes and Queries 11:159.

Kircher, Athanasius. 1652–1654. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 3 vols. Rome: V. Mascardi. 

Landa, Diego de. 1959. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Biblioteca Porrúa 13. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Langeli, Attilio B. 2020. Scritture nascoste scritture invisibili, ovvero: Giochi di prestigio con l’alfabeto. La Bibliofilía 122(3):557–72.

Restall, Matthew, Amara Solari, John F. Chuchiak IV, and Traci Ardren. 2023. The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa and the Account of the Things of Yucatan. Denver: University Press of Colorado.

Singer, Thomas C. 1989. Hieroglyphs, Real Characters, and the Idea of Natural Language in English Seventeenth Century Thought. Journal of the History of Ideas 50:49-70.

Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941. Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán: A Translation. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology XVIII. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Yeowell, J. 1855. “Queen’s College, Oxford.” Notes and Queries 11:146.

Tikal, Tecali, Teotihuacan

by Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Alabaster was a rarity among the Classic Maya, reserved for fine bowls in elite settings, especially tombs or palaces (Houston 2014:258; Kubler 1977:5n1). Known as xix, a spelling attested in at least two glyphic texts, it appeared to refer to rocks affected by water (Houston et al. 2018; Luin et al. 2022:907, fig. 4). Geologically, xix is a white sedimentary calcite (CaCO3) mined in, among other places, a source near Zinacantan, Chiapas (Berlin 1946:27; for other quarries, see Urcid 2010:fig. 56). A comparable term, tecali, named after a community of that name, was applied to banded stone of similar composition in Mexico (Diehl and Stroh 1978:74). The Maya evidently prized the translucency, crystalline texture, and hard, white surface of alabaster, the better to highlight delicate incisions that could be filled in with red pigment.

An unusual find of two alabaster effigies comes from Burial 195, under Structure 5D-32 in the North Acropolis at Tikal, Guatemala (Figure 1, Coe 1990:565-568, 920, figs. 198-199, 330; Coggins 1975:344; Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). The tomb almost certainly belonged to a ruler of Tikal, ‘Animal Skull’, who died around AD 600.[1] The product of a tumultuous phase in Tikal’s history, Animal Skull does not clearly descend from earlier rulers of the city. His reign took place after a “rupture [that] follows hard on the heels of a major military defeat” at Tikal, leading to a “130-year monument hiatus and an interruption to its dynastic line” (Martin 2020:104, 247, 345).

Figure 1. Burial 195 and its two animal effigies of alabaster, marked “22” (partial plan: Coe 1990:fig. 1998; effigies: Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 138).

 

Despite the gap in monuments, there is no textual hiatus at Tikal. A suprisingly large number of pots belonged to Animal Skull, a pattern seen also with his near-contemporary, “Aj Numsaaj/Aj Nunsaaj” at Naranjo (Zender 2019:35, for discussion of the ruler’s name; see also Houston 2018:71-74). Prestige ceramics must have flowed in special abundance at this time. Perhaps it was a way to reconstitute frayed relationships and build new ones by means of gifted pots. In Animal Skull’s tomb, there was also a quite literal flow of silt that washed into the tomb some years after its completion and sealing. Surrounding perishable objects, it left cavities when offerings in the tomb rotted away, preserving original shapes and coverings of painted stucco. Among the finds was a covered wooden bowl with a remnant text (Martin 2008). It referred to a ruler from the antagonistic kingdom of Caracol, Belize, from which the bowl may have arrived as a gift or as war booty. Apparently, Animal Skull had other broad connections, including ties to the dynasty of Altar de Sacrificios, a royal seat some 100 km southwest of Tikal (Martin 2020:412n16).

Said to be “somewhat eroded,” the alabaster effigies measure ca. 28 cm long, 12 cm wide, and 15 cm high (Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). They occur side-by-side but otherwise alone in a quadrant of Burial 195. One carving is blockier, less curved than the other. Poised on their front legs and haunches, almost ready to jump, they were intended, it seems, to stare eternally at the head of Animal Skull. He lay flat on his back nearby. What sort of animals were they? Some scholars see them as agoutis or sereques (Dasyprocta punctata), but the fuller, rather alert tails point to another identification (Coe 1990:566; Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 138): they are rabbits, perhaps cottontails in particular. The small ears cue that mammal rather than hares. Famously procreative as a genus, the rabbits were placed in the tomb as a pair, suggesting a buck and his doe.

It is highly likely these carvings were non-local, deriving instead from the metropolis of Teotihuacan, which was largely in ruins when these alabaster–tecali–pieces were placed in Burial 195. Excavations at the apartment compound of Oztoyahualco found just such a carving, also, probably, of a rabbit, in the center of courtyard (Figure 2a). The dimensions, style of carving, and disposition of limbs are quite close to those of the alabasters at Tikal. Other such finds include a piece in a photographic archive, head gone but with similar limbs (Figure 2b), and two very different creatures, felines both (Figure 2c), including a calcite or tecali example that entered the collection of the British Museum in 1926 (Figures 2d). Two appear to have receptables on their backs for offerings, and the evident dyad of predators (felines) and prey (rabbits) may not be a coincidence. The rabbit at Oztoyahualco dates to the Xolalpan phase, ca. AD 350-550), the shattered mammal (supposedly) to the subsequent Metepec period (AD 550-660), at the time of Teotihuacan’s decisive decline (Beramendi-Orosco 2009:106-107).

Figure 2. Animals at Teotihuacan, Mexico: (a) Oztoyahualco 15b apartment compound (Ortiz Díaz 1993:522, 387); (b) Metepec-period carving (exact provenance unknown, from photo supplied by Joshua Kwoka); (c) image of feline, ca. AD 250-550, 17 x 17.5 x 10 cm (Baez 2009:261, pl. 59); and (d) tecali-feline, Teotihuacan, British Museum Am1926-22, 33 x 21 x 16 cm.

 

Study of animal bones at Oztoyahualco reveal a notable preponderence of rabbit, with other evidence in the form of possible pens, hide-preparing tools, and osteological signs of butchering (Somerville et al. 2016:3; see also Somerville and Sugiyama 2021:63-64). This evidence indicates that these animals were a key resource for the apartment compound and for Teotihuacan in general. The rabbit effigy itself appears to have been placed on top of a small temple platform in the middle of a courtyard at Oztoyahualco (Figure 3a). Whether this was in homage to a succulent rabbit god is speculative, but it does suggest that such platforms displayed the effigies for local ritual, that these were central, if portable, votive carvings. Indeed, an example of a temple “maquette,” with the same portability as the carvings from Oztoyahualco–and marked by the distinctive talud-tablero (slope-panel) feature of Teotihuacan–has its own super-structure, with a chamber large enough to accommodate such effigies (Figure 3b). Courtyard temples of similar sort have been found at Tikal (Figure 3c), including, not far away, to the east, a recent find in Group 6C-XV (Román et al. 2023)–the latter being part of the city that was abandoned at the end of the Early Classic period, ca. AD 500-600.[2] Perhaps such a temple, with now missing chambers, contained the effigies, which might be switched out for votive need or removal and use in intermittent displays or processions.

Figure 3. (a) effigy atop miniature temple with talud-tablero, Xolalpan (Ortiz Díaz 1993:522); (b) miniature temple, Zacuala, Teotihuacan, 59.5 x 52 x 92.8 cm, likely Xolalpan (Jiménez Delgado 2009:213, pl. 3); and (c) courtyard temple, Structure 48, Group 6C-XVI-Sub, Tikal, Guatemala, AD 400-500 (Laporte and Fialko 1995:66, fig. 44, drawing by Paulino Morales).

 

The calcite rabbits in Burial 195 have not been linked before to Teotihuacan. Yet they correspond to a type of carving attested at that site, in a material employed for at least one animal effigy of comparable size. Calcite carvings of this nature and scale are not otherwise known in the Maya region. As tomb furniture, this may reflect the need of an upstart ruler, Animal Skull, to find roots in more distant pasts and places…or perhaps in ritual effigies taken from a part of his city abandoned prior to his death and burial.

Acknowledgement  I thank Joshua Kwoka for sharing the image in Figure 2b and Mary Miller for reminding me that we are, as of this writing, in the Year of the Rabbit!

[1] As an epithet, “Animal Skull” is an ersatz place-holder. The actual name remains a puzzle, for it includes a turtle head and, at times, a feline ear, along with a suite of other titles and affixes or infixes that come and go.

[2] Oztoyahualco does not only offer a parallel to Tikal (Taube and Zender 2009:188-189, fig. 7.15). A manopla or boxing cudgel from Caracol, Belize, bears a striking resemblance to an object found in the apartment complex (left below, Oztoyohualco Burial 13, Teotihuacan: Ortiz Díaz 1993:527, 533, 536, figs. 389, 391; right below, Caracol, Belize: Royal Ontario Museum, 971.466, Anderson 1959, mislabeled as a “monkey skull” but correctly noted to be Early Classic in date). Note the “dead” or discolored incisor on the skull, an idiosyncratic hint that it matches an actual person with this injury or decay.

 

References

Anderson, A. Hamilton. 1959. Actas del XXXIII Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, San José, 20-27 Julio 1958:211-218.

Baez, Miguel. 2009. Sculpture de Jaguar. In Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux, edited by Felipe Solís, 261. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Somogy Éditions d’Art.

Beramendi-Orosco, Laura E., Galia Gonzalez-Hernández, Ana Soler-Arechalde, Manzanilla LR. 2021. A High-Resolution Chronology for the Palatial Complex of Xalla in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Combining Radiocarbon and Archaeomagnetic Dates in a Bayesian Model. Radiocarbon 63(4):1073-1084.

Coe, William R. 1990. Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrace, and North Acropolis of Tikal. Philadephia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Coggins, Clemency C. 1975. Painting and Drawing Styles at Tikal: An Historical and Iconographic Reconstruction. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Diehl, Richard A., and Edward G. Stroh, Jr. 1978. Tecali Vessel Manufacturing Debris at Tollan, Mexico. American Antiquity 43(1):73–79.

Houston, Stephen D. 2014. Miscellaneous Texts. In Life and Politics at the Royal Court of Aguateca: Artifacts, Analytical Data, and Synthesis. Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase Monograph Series, Volume 3, edited by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, 258–269. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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

—-, David Stuart, and Marc Zender. 2018. If…Alabaster Could Talk. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography, Boundary End Archaeological Research Center.

Jiménez Delgado, Jonathan E. 2009. Miniature d’un Temple et de son Soubassement. In Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux, edited by Felipe Solís, 213. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Somogy Éditions d’Art.

Kubler, George. 1977. Aspects of Classic Maya Rulership on Two Inscribed Vessels. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology No. 18. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University.

Laporte, Juan Pedro, and Vilma Fialko. 1995. Un reencuentro con Mundo Perido, Tikal, Guatemala. Ancient Mesoamerica 6(1):41–94.

Luin, Camilo A., Dmitri Beliaev, and Sergei Vepretskii. 2022. La vasija de travertino del Museo Popol Vuh. In 34 simposio de investigaciones arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2021, tomo 2, edited by Bárbara Arroyo, Luis Méndez Salinas, and Gloria Ajú Álvarez, 903-912. Guatemala City: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Instituto de Antropología e Historia, Asociación Tikal.

Martin, Simon. 2008. A Caracol Emblem at Tikal. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography, Boundary End Archaeological Research Center

—-. 2020. Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moholy-Nagy, Hattula, with William R. Coe. 2008. The Artifacts of Tikal: Ornamental and Ceremonial Artifacts and Unworked Material. Tikal Reports 27A. Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.

Ortiz Díaz, Edith. 1993. Ideología y vida doméstica. In Anatomía de un conjunto residencial Teotihuacano en Oztoyahualco, 1: Excavaciones, edited by Linda Manzanilla, 519-547. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Román Ramírez, Edwin, Lorena Paiz Aragón, Angelyn Bass, Thomas Garrison, Stephen Houston, Heather Hurst, David Stuart, Alejandrina Corado Ochoa, Cristina García Leal, and Rony Estuardo Piedrasanta Castellanos. 2023. A Teotihuacan Altar at Tikal, Guatemala: Central Mexican Ritual and Elite Interaction in the Maya Lowlands, unpublished manuscript. 

Somerville, Andrew D., and Nawa Sugiyama. 2021. Why Were New World Rabbits Not Domesticated? Animal Frontiers 11(3):62–68.

—-, —-, Linda R. Manzanilla, and Margaret J. Schoeninger. 2016. Animal Management at the Ancient Metropolis of Teotihuacan, Mexico: Stable Isotope Analysis of Leporid (Cottontail and Jackrabbit) Bone Mineral. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0159982. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159982.

Taube, Karl A., 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 Heather Orr and Rex Koontz, 161–220. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

Urcid, Javier. 2010. Valued Possessions: Materiality and Aesthetics in Western and Southern Mesoamerica. In Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Number 3: Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Central Highlands, Southwestern Highlands, Gulf Lowlands, edited by Susan T. Evans, 127-220. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Zender, Marc. 2019. The Classic Maya Causative. The PARI Journal 20(2):28-40.

Seeing Blindness

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

In 1560, a pictorial census was compiled for the province of Huexotzinco in what is now the Mexican state of Puebla (Aguilera 1996:529). Taxation – or its avoidance – was the aim. Known today as the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, this document arose from local complaints about burdens on Indigenous nobility (Prem 1974:708-9). The census seems to have done its job. Don Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón, the second Viceroy of New Spain, cited it when turning down later attempts to tax native elites in the area.

Now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where it is labeled Ms. Mex. 387, the Matrícula offers a large trove of Aztec glyphs. Tributaries are shown with heads to specify age and gender, wrinkles for the former, disinctive hair for the latter, along with small lines leading to individual names in Aztec writing (see Houston and Zender 2018). Among other graphs, the Matrícula even has a way of denoting blindness (Wood 2020-present). This occurs on fol. 546v, which declares, in Nahuatl, yzcate yn popoyome, “here are the blind people,” just above a column of at least five heads (Figure 1). Each head has two horizontal bands across the face, one above the eye, the other below. Similar devices appear on fol. 608r, which records blindness, not with bands, but lateral smudges and globs of black ink (Figure 2).

Figure 1. “Here are the blind people,” Matrícula de Huexotzinco, with sample of two male heads and their respective name glyphs, fol. 546v (Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License,” CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).

 

Figure 2. Blind individual, Matrícula de Huexotzinco, fol. 608r (Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License,” CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).

 

As noted by David Stuart and his colleagues (2017), Aztec script drew at times on earlier systems of writing, including that of the Maya. Examples include the Aztec sign for “writing,” evidently copying a Maya “sky band,” and two distinct glyphs for “day, sun, heat” that are dead-ringers for the “day” (k’in) and “Venus” (ek’) signs (Figure 3). All are celestial in nature, suggesting a certain esotericism to these appropriations.

Figure 3. Aztec signs likely to have originated in Maya writing (source images: Wood 2020-present).

 

The mark for “blindness” may be a borrowing too. One Maya supernatural, ‘Akan, a being associated in the Classic period with death imagery and inebriation, has among his attributes a dark band and a sign for “night” or “darkness” across his eyes and, in places, his forehead (Figure 4; for ‘Akan, see Grube and Nahm 1994:707-9). To judge from the eyeband, he is probably a god who cannot see.

Figure 4. ‘Akan, a death god: (a) K927 (photograph by Justin Kerr); (b) a patron god of El Perú, Guatemala, with eyes covered by cross-hatching to show the color black, Tikal area, Guatemala (La Fundación La Ruta Maya, No. de Registro IDAEH: 1.2.144.1017, brought to my attention by David Stuart); and (c) the lordly title for Acanceh, Yucatan, ‘AKAN[KEH]-AJAW-wa (drawing by Simon Martin). Note the “percentage” sign that may indicate corruptive splits in flesh.

On the celebrated “Altar” vase, ‘Akan chops his own head off, but gropingly so, his eyes concealed (Figure 5).

Figure 5. CH’AK?-BAAH-‘AKAN-na, “Head-chopping ‘AKAN,” Altar de Sacrificios Vase, Guatemala, with concealed eyes and the “percentage” sign of death gods on his cheek (photograph copyright Inga Calvin).

 

‘Akan may embody recent death, the eyes open but unseeing, in contrast to skeletal beings stripped of flesh (on eye opening and loss of brain activity, see Laureys 2007). In a kind of taphonomic staging, he corresponds to the newly dead, not those long putrified and excarnated. Analogies may be found in the Kusōkan images of Japan, which contemplate “the nine stages of a decomposing corpse” (Kanda 2005).

For the Classic Maya, the disabling of sight is securely linked to those who have just died. This is attested in two phrases, one from a wooden box citing the death (or “road-entering”) of a lord from the kingdom of Tortuguero, Mexico; the other occurs on a panel from Lacanjá Tzeltal, also in Mexico (Figure 6). Rich in euphemism – both operate in complex cross-references to death – they categorically negate sight, reading: ma-‘a ‘i-‘ILA-ji, “not seeing.” That ‘Akan was also a creature of inebriation leads to another trope, that of being “blind-drunk,” a state in which the eyes coordinate poorly, if at all, with their ready cognition (Clifasefi et al. 2006; for ‘Akan as a drinking god, see Grube 2004).

Figure 6. Death as “not seeing”: (a) wooden box from area of Tortuguero, Mexico:C2-D2 (drawing by Diane Griffiths Peck [Coe 1974]); and (b) Lacanjá Tzeltal Panel 1:G2, Mexico (photograph by Omar Alcover, courtesy Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer [see also Golden et al. 2020]).

Blinding may not only have come from death. A captive with eyeband from Tikal Stela 39 could conceivably have received this torture at the hands of his captors (Figure 7; for the systematic blinding of captives, if in a Balkan context, see Holmes 2012). This was, to say the least, an immiseration that would hinder opponents and inflict broader psychological trauma.

Figure 7. A possible blinded captive on Tikal Stela 39, Guatemala (drawing by John Montgomery, FAMSI repository).

 

A captive who was likely blinded – his slit eye oozes with blood – occurs yet more clearly on a vase from the Ik’ kingdom of northern Guatemala (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Blinded captive, Ik’ kingdom, Guatemala, now in a private collection (photographer unknown).

 

That blindness was shown in Classic Maya text and imagery should not be surprising given the strong, positive emphasis on its opposite, the extromissive powers of sight (Houston et al. 2006:163-76). By comparison, there is, in recent literature on the senses, a latter-day deemphasis on sight, a dethroning of vision in favor of other senses (Jay 1993). To be “ocularcentric” is to miss larger worlds of perception and lend pernicious weight to “sensory normativity” (Petty 2021:297, 298). But the Maya might have disagreed: near-perfect humans were, according to mythic accounts from Highland Guatemala, capable of penetrative sight, to the extent of angering the gods of creation (Groark 2008:427-8). Removing that acuity, as the gods did, reduced the capacities of their hubristic creations. For most humans, death and sightlessness lay ahead in an inevitable future.

Acknowledgements  This essay benefited from comments by Charles Golden, Andrew Scherer, David Stuart, and Karl Taube.

 

References 

Aguilera, Carmen. 1996. The Matrícula de Huexotzinco: A Pictorial Census from New Spain. Huntington Library Quarterly 59(4):529-41.

Clifasefi, Seema L., Melanie K.T. Takarangi, and Jonah S. Bergman. 2006. Blind Drunk: The Effects of Alcohol on Inattentional Blindness. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 20(5):697-704.

Coe, Michael D. 1974. A Carved Wooden Box from the Classic Maya Civilization. In Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque (Part II), edited by Merle Greene Robertson, pp. 51–58. Pebble Beach, CA: Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pre-Columbian Art Research.

Golden, Charles, Andrew K. Scherer, Stephen Houston, Whittaker Schroder, Shanti Morell-Hart, Socorro del Pilar Jiménez Álvarez, Georg Van Kollias, Moises Yerath Ramiro Talavera, Mallory Matsumoto, Jeffrey Dobereiner, and Omar Alcover Firpi. 2020. Centering the Classic Maya Kingdom of Sak Tz’i’. Journal of Field Archaeology 45(2):67-85, DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2019.1684748

Groark, Kevin P. 2008. Social Opacity and the Dynamics of Empathic In-Sight among the Tzotzil Maya of Chiapas, Mexico. Ethos 36(4):427–48.

Grube, Nikolai. 2004. Akan: The God of Drinking, Disease, and Death. In Continuity and Change: Maya Religious Practices in Temporal Perspective, edited by Daniel Graña Behrens, Nikolai Grube, Christian M. Prager, Frauke Sachse, Stefanie Teufel, and Elisabeth Wagner, pp. 59-7. Mark Schwaben: Verlag Anton Saurwein.

__ , and Werner Nahm. 1994. Census of Xibalba: A Complete Inventory of Way Characters on Maya Ceramics. In The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 4, edited by Barbara Kerr and Justin Kerr, pp. 686–715. New York: Kerr Associates.

Holmes, Catherine. 2012. Basil II the Bulgar-slayer and the Blinding of 15,000 Bulgarians in 1014: Mutilation and Prisoners of War in the Middle Ages. In How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender, edited by Holger Afflerbach, and Hew Strachan, pp. 85-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Houston, Stephen, and Marc Zender. 2018. Touching Text in Ancient Mexican Writing. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography – Boundary End Archaeological Research Center.

Jay, Martin. 1993. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kanda, Fusae. 2005. Behind the Sensationalism: Images of a Decaying Corpse in Japanese Buddhist Art. The Art Bulletin 87(1):24–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067154.

Laureys, Steven. 2007. Eyes Open, Brain Shut. Scientific American 296(5):84-89.

Petty, Karis J. 2021. Beyond the Senses: Perception, the Environment, and Vision Impairment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27(2):285-302.

Prem, Hanns J. 1974. Matrícula de Huexotzinco: Ms. mex. 387 der Bibliothèque Nationale Paris: Ed., Kommentar, Hieroglyphenglossar. Graz: Akademische. Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Stuart, David, Stephanie M. Strauss, and Elliot Lopez-Finn. 2017. “Art from the Ancient East: Echoes of Classic Maya Writing and Iconography in Aztec-Period Aesthetics.” Paper presented at the University of Texas, Austin, Maya Meeting, Tlillan Tlapallan: The Maya as Neighbors in Ancient Mesoamerica, Jan. 14, 2017, Austin, Texas.

Wood, Stephanie, ed. 2020-present. Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs. Eugene: Wired Humanities Projects, University of Oregon, Version 1.0.

Design Transfer and the Classic Maya

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Printing designs on textiles goes far back in time. An example at the Hunan Provincial Museum in China dates to the Western Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC. Likely produced by stencil, it reveals the ease of reproducing designs in this way but also the need, in places, for hand-coloring and fussy adjustment. More than just hastening the process, it yields a pleasing consistency, an orderly repetition of pattern. But it was seldom the act of one person.

Think of a Japanese print, be it an ukiyo-e (Edo-period) or shin-hanga (Meiji and post-Meiji Japan). Despite many museum labels, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Hokusai, was not literally by his hand. Hokusai made the original drawing, which was destroyed when a carver attached it to a board and set to work, highlighting the original inkwork while shaving down the background. Another person, a printer, then created what we see today, building on the help of assistants of varying status, in a production supervised by a publisher who took most of the profit (Salter 2002:11, 37, 60, 64).[1] Such complexities must also have entered into textile printing at the time of Hokusai, and earlier still in China and India (Riello 2010:8-9).  

The question is, did block-printing or, more broadly, design transfer occur among the ancient Maya? Evidence of a direct sort is poor. Bark cloth, which must have been abundant, judging from implements to make it, is almost impossible to find archaeologically, although it is well-attested among groups such as the Lacandon of Chiapas, Mexico (Moholy-Nagy 2003:figs. 101-105; Soustelle 1937:60-62, pls. ID, VA, VIC; Tozzer 1907:fig. 1, 129; see also Tolstoy 1963). For their part, early Maya textiles are only preserved under exceptional circumstances. They might occur in water-logged deposits, well-aerated caves, or endure by contact with metal or as decayed impressions visible on other objects (e.g., Johnson 1954; Lothrop 1992; Morehart et al. 2004; Ordoñez 2015). This means that Maya textiles survive in limited samples, although they are frequently depicted in ways that reflect their cut, color, and kind of weave (e.g., Halperin 2016). The quantities of such cloth must have been staggering, and not just for dress, costume or sacrificial offerings. Renderings of textiles on walls at Xelha, Quintana Roo, and suspension holes for cloth at Palenque, Chiapas, point to the wide use of such materials as changeable wall hangings (Anderson 1985; Ruiz Gallut 2001:lám. 13). When exposed, such textiles could not have lasted long. Soon mildewed, soggy, and faded, they would need replacement on a regular basis.

The direct and indirect evidence is that textile threads were colored with dyes, and, as added decoration, when weaving was finished, with freehand and resist painting, a technique attested in cave finds from Chiapas, Mexico (Figure 1, Johnson 1954:fig. 16; see also Filloy Nadal 2017:36). There is no question that the Classic Maya painted textiles and, in a few instances, tagged the calligraphers or the owners of clothing….if in coy ways that never identified such people. Names curl out of view or hide behind other items of dress (see Miller and Brittenham 2012:230, 233 [Captions I-5B, I-5C, I-49B]; Tokovinine 2012:70-71, figs. 32-33; note that such labels probably marked garments passing through tributary networks).

Figure 1. Textile from Chiptic Cave, Chiapas, Mexico, with use of resist paint (Johnston 1954:fig. 16).

 

There is a paradox, however. Surviving textiles and images show few clear signs of block-printing and its tidy repetitions. Yet there are archaeological objects, all of rugged or durable ceramic, that must have been used for printing or stamping.[2] Several are cylinders, with step-fret designs that are common on textiles and well-suited to the warp-weft constraints of weaving. Such cylinders extend deeply into the Mesoamerican past (Field 1967:22-38). That these cylinders were used in body painting seems improbable. If charged with pigment, they would have left messy or indistinct patterns with their expansive fields of color, and the designs on the cylinders are step-fret or of fragrant blossoms attested on other textiles (e.g., Filloy Nadal 2017:fig. 34). In any case, all images of body painting involve brushes (e.g., K1491, K4022).

Three cylinders occur in the probable tomb of a princess or queen at the site of Buenavista del Cayo, Belize; the tagged weaving bones in that burial hint that such designs might also have been rolled over textiles created by high-ranking women (Figure 2, Ball and Taschek 2018:485-487, fig. 14; see also Moholy Nagy 2008:fig. 219l).

Figure 2. Ceramic roller-stamps, Burial BV88-B13; note that each design could also be applied in inverted orientation (drawings by Jennifer Taschek, in Ball and Taschek 2018:fig. 14).

 

Others were flat stamps that, more than the cylinders, would have been ill-suited for use on human bodies. A large set was discovered in Tomb 6, a royal burial in Structure II, Calakmul, Mexico (Figure 3, Carrasco Vargas 1999:31). With their figuration, the Calakmul examples are anomalous in comparison to other stamps, a hint of varied, more narrative or setting-oriented imagery on stamped materials. As at Buenavista del Cayo, this less well-reported tomb contained weaving bones and was said unequivocally to hold the remains of woman, perhaps the spouse of the ruler. These finds of weaving implements and stamps, flat or cylindrical, suggest that stamping was a gendered activity among the Classic Maya. Its tools were linked to the process of finishing textiles, and large areas of cloth or barkpaper could be decorated with both speed and care. Nonetheless, as in Japan and elsewhere, more than one person presumably wove, made stamps, concocted pigments, and pressed them onto textiles. The volume of production and need for varying expertise may have demanded it…and an elite or royal lady would not have operated without servants. There is also a suspicion, challenging to prove, that the stamps at Calakmul and at other sites formed part of a much larger inventory during the Classic period. In India, at least historically, most stamps or blocks were of wood, and these would have disappeared long ago in the Maya Lowlands (Lewis 1924:1-2; see [2]).

Figure 3. Flat stamps with water lily creature, hummingbirds over cavity, Venus sign, spirals, and full-frontal images of Teotihuacan-style warrior; from possible burial of royal woman, Tomb 6, Structure II, Calakmul, Campeche; on display, Museo Arqueológico, Fuerte de San Miguel, Campeche, Mexico (photograph by Stephen Houston).

 

A unique illustration of direct transfer exists in the collection of the Museo Regional de Yucatán, Palacio Cantón (Figure 4); see Mediateca INAH, CC BY-NC). It has no provenience but appears to be a slateware, possibly Muna or Dzitas Slate, the latter associated with Chichen Itza, Yucatan–the dish would need closer study to establish its precise affiliation (George Bey, personal communication, 2023). The central element is a sign for k’in, “sun,” but also, more telling here, for NIK[TE’] or NICH[TE’], “flower.” An extraordinary touch is that the interior rim has a series of designs in which, not a brush, but a flower has been dipped in ink and repeatedly pressed into the surface. The flower itself is difficult to identity yet could relate to the Asteraceae family of plants (Shanti Morell-Hart, personal communication, 2023). The double reference in image and mode of decoration is likely to be deliberate. Perhaps this flowery ceramic was intended to contain flowers, as seen in one mythic scene with an anthropomorphic hummingbird and a youthful God D (K8008). The repeated design itself might have triggered a synesthetic sense of fragrance. The flower on the dish served as its own instrument of depiction; the central glyph nailed the floral reference and standardized it into canonical form.

Figure 4. Painting with flowers on a dish, Museo Regional de Yucatán, Palacio Cantón, Mérida. Mediateca INAH, CC BY-NC.

 

Whether this object has any parallels remains unclear. There are two images that show scribal gods dipping (or having dipped) an undulating, near-vegetal “brush” into a conch inkwell (Figure 5). They cannot be conventional brushes but do open unexpected possiblities for the toolkit of Maya painters.

Figure 5. Two scribal deities dipping or flourishing near-vegetal “brushes” (images from Justin Kerr Maya archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC, CC BY-SA 4.0).

 

Acknowledgments   My new colleague at Brown, Shanti Morell-Hart, assisted with the flower identifcation, and George Bey and William Ringle helped to type and possibly date the plate in the Palacio Cantón, Mérida. Joanne Baron kindly forwarded a high-resolution image of a Kerr photograph.

 

[1] An exception would be the sōsaku-hanga (“creative-prints”) of the early 20th century in Japan. These were painted, carved, and printed by a single artist, often inflected by Western art and its focus on individual production (Binnie 2013:65).

[2] These were probably not the only such blocks. As in India, examples in wood may have been far more numerous (Lewis 1924:1-2).

References

Anderson, Michael. 1985. Curtain Holes in the Standing Architecture of Palenque. In Fourth Palenque Round Table, 1980, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, pp. 21-27. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Institute.

Ball, Joseph W., and Jennifer T. Taschek. 2018. Aftermath A.D. 696—Late 7th and Early 8th Century Special Deposits and Elite Main Plaza Burials at Buenavista del Cayo, Western Belize: A Study in Classic Maya “Historical Archaeology.”Journal of Field Archaeology 43(6):472-491.

Binnie, Paul. 2013. The Legacy of Shin Hanga, by an Artist Working in the Tradition. In Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints, by Carolyn M. Putney, Kendall H. Brown, Koyama Shūko, and Paul Binnie, pp. 64-73. Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art.

Carrasco Vargas, Ramón. 1999. Tumbas reales de Calakmul. Ritos funerarios y estructura de poder. Arqueología Mexicana 7(40):28-31.

Field, Frederick V. 1967. Thoughts on the Meaning and Use of Pre-Hispanic Mexican Sellos. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 3. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.

Filloy Nadal, Laura. 2017. Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview of Materials, Techniques, and Contexts. In PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII, edited by Lena Bjerregaard and Ann Peters, pp. 7–39. Lincoln: Zea Books.

Halperin, Christina. 2016. Textile Techné: Classic Maya Translucent Cloth and the Making of Value. In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Coastin, pp. 431-463. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Johnson, Irmgard Weitlaner. 1954. Chiptic Cave Textiles from Chiapas, México. Journal de La Société Des Américanistes 43: 137–47.

Lewis, Albert B. 1924. Block Prints from India for Textiles. Anthropology Design Series 1. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History.

Lothrop, Joyce M. 1992. Textiles. In Artifacts from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen Itza, Yucatan, edited by Clemency C. Coggins, pp. 33-90. Memoirs, 10(3). Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Miller, Mary, and Claudia Brittenham. 2013. The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. Austin: University of Texas Press; Mexico City: INAH and CONACULTA.

Moholy-Nagy, Hattula. 2003. The Artifacts of Tikal: Utilitarian Artifacts and Unworked Material. Tikal Reports 27B. Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.

Moholy-Nagy, Hattula, with William R. Coe. 2008. The Artifacts of Tikal: Ornamental and Ceremonial Artifacts and Unworked Material. Tikal Reports 27A. Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.

Morehart, Christopher T., Jaime J. Awe, Michael J. Mirro, Vanessa A. Owen, and Christophe G. Helmke. 2004. Ancient Textile Remains from Barton Creek Cave, Cayo District, Belize. Mexicon 26(3):50–54.

Ordoñez, Margaret T. 2015. Appendix V: Textiles. In Temple of the Night Sun: A Royal Maya Tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala, by Stephen Houston, Sarah Newman, Edwin Román, and Thomas Garrixon, pp. 258-262. San Francisco: Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Riello, Giorgio. 2010. Asian Knowledge and the Development of Calico Printing in Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Journal of Global History 5:1-28.

Ruiz Gallut, María Elena. 2001. Entre formas, astros y colores: aspectos de la astronomía y la pintura mural en sitios del área maya. In La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México, II Área Maya, Tomo III, Estudios, edited by Leticia Staines Cicero, pp. 283-293. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Salter, Rebecca. 2002. Japanese Woodblock Printing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Soustelle, Jacques. 1937. La culture matérielle des Indiens Lacandons. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 29(1):1–95.

Tokovinine, Alexandre. 2012. Carved Panel. In Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Number 4: Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine, pp. 68–73. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Tolstoy, Paul. 1963. Cultural Parallels between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica in the Manufacture of Bark-cloth. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 25:646–662.

Tozzer, Alred M. 1907. A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones. New York: Macmillan Co.

Sun Shadows and Maya Stelae

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

For the ever-sunny George Stuart, on his birthday

Humans have long been intrigued by the sun, its shadows, and the ways of monitoring them over time. The reasons for that interest are obvious: by paying attention to the effects of the sun, observers could tell the time of day, determine the seasons, and separate or mark parts of the year. But how does one do such tasks precisely? In antiquity, this was mostly made possible by that “simplest” of “scientific instrument[s],” the gnomon (Isler 1991:155). Often little more than a vertical stick or pole, the gnomon cast little shadow at midday. But when the sun rose or fell, shadows extended considerably, and, if observed at equinoxes, aligned with reasonable accuracy to “true” east and west (Isler 1991:180; see also Dash 2017). In China, gnomons (gui biao) showed another innovation. Holes in them would be used to project shadows onto horizontal scales laid out north-south in relation to the vertical gnomon (Li and Sun 2009:1380, fig. 2).

A sundial focuses on the direction of shadows to establish the time of day.[1] More elaborate gnomons target the length of shadows, for this allows the time of year to be determined. In some cases, as in imperial China and early India, measurements of shadows were tabulated over centuries (Yano 1986:26), and the instruments to measure them could be large or even monumental. At Denfeng in Henan province, China, the horizontal scale ran over over 31 m (Li and Sun 2009:fig. 2). Places to observe the positions of the sun have been proposed for much of Mesoamerica, including: caves with overhead openings to permit the entry of sunlight; the celebrated “E-groups,” in part with solar orientations, that coalesced in the Preclassic period; buildings oriented towards sunrise events; and solstitial alignments in doorways at Yaxchilan, Mexico (e.g., Anderson 1981; Aylesworth 2015:787–789; Espinasa-Pereña and Diamant 2012:table 2; Zaro and Lohse 2005:89–93; Tate 1992:94–96). These involved observations, but whether they were “observatories” per se depends on whether a particular feature is “performative rather than practical, a theater rather than a laboratory, a planetarium rather than an observatory” (Aveni 2003:163). In other words, they might have borne witness to solar events, those almost miraculous synchronizations of light, shadow, and place. But they were not “scientific” instruments collecting data over time.

The focus on the sun and its diurnal passage may elucidate an unusual stela erected at the city of Machaquila, Guatemala. Dating to Dec. 2, A.D. 711 (Julian), this monument is, on its front and back, an almost square carving with a head protruding from its top (Figure 1, Graham 1967:87–88, figs. 33). At the bottom is a witz or “hill” element, an emblem of fixity. Just above floats the local king as the embodiment of lordly time at the close of a katun (20-year) period. The glyphs frame that day sign portrait of the ruler with a relatively unembellished, angular sky band that once contained glyphs, now in a poor state of preservation. (Many stylized sky bands take this shape, suggesting a rather rectilinear view of that part of the cosmos.) As for the head, it shows many characteristics of the Classic Maya Sun God: the large “eagle eyes,” possibly crossed (pupils closer to the nose), and a polished mirror-like element in the forehead. Notably, this is the first datable monument at Machaquila, and Andrés Ciudad Real and colleagues have wondered if this carving came just after the movement of the Machaquila dynasty from another location on the Pasión river to the southwest (Ciudad Ruiz et al. 2013:77). The ruler of this time was one Sihyaj K’in Chahk, or Chahk [being] Born from the Sun, a fact inferred from a statement of parentage on the all-glyphic Stela 11 at Machaquila (Graham 1967:fig. 63). Stela 11 dates 30 years after Stela 13, and the reference to this individual by a sequent ruler fits the chronology. That this ruler was “born” from an entity highlighted on the carving is unlikely to be a coincidence. Stela 11 faces west, so viewers would see the Sun God rising from the east, framed above the sky and the floating image, doubtless a portrait, of the current ruler. Much like Chahk, his namesake, the king grasps an axe. He evidently hovered above or was about to land on the firmament of Machaquila itself.

Figure 1. Machaquila Stela 13 (Graham 1967:figs. 66, 67).

A superb visualization by Andrés Ciudad Ruiz and colleagues reveals the setting of Stela 13  (Figure 2). To the west is a sunken quatrefoil, found on excavation to contain incensario fragments, whistles, and other ceremonial artifacts (Cuidad Ruiz et al. 2010:133–141). As Stuart and Houston noted long ago, this quatrefoil matches the place name of Machaquila (Stuart and Houston 1994:33, fig. 37). On another carving, Stela 10, Chahk looks up from that quatrefoil, in the face-up position assumed by newborns (Graham 1967:fig. 60). This could be another allusion to the first-known ruler at the city, a figure whose very name refers to birth (sihyaj). We do not know for certain, but the quatrefoil could have been basin that filled with water; after all, its excavators note that it was probably plastered at one time, an effective means of keeping water in place (Ciudad Ruiz et al. 2010:133). Behind Stela 13 is an arrangement of two buildings, Structures 17 and 16, numbered from north to south. The cleft between them aligns closely with the top of Stela 13.

Figure 2. Central Machaquila, showing Plaza A, Altar 4, Stela 13, and Structures 16 and 17 (reconfigured and emended from Ciudad Ruiz et al. 2012:figs. 6, 8).

 

This is where the Sun God’s head comes into play. It was not just a deity above a sky band but possibly a gnonom, in the narrow sense of a vertical device used to cast shadows. The sun would rise between the buildings behind the stela, and the shadow of the head thereby reach to quatrefoil in the plaza. For its part, the head would be surrounded by an aureole of light in the early morning. In a straight line from there to the other side of the plaza was a stone model of a cosmic turtle: Altar 4, a conventional representation of the terrestrial world (Graham 1967:92–95, figs. 71–74). The carvings and plaza must have been planned with this alignment in mind. As a sequence of carvings and hollows, Plaza A at Machaquila enchained the sun, time, water, and the earth’s rocky surface (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Map by Ian Graham, with emendations, of Stela 13 in relation to the mythic turtle, Altar A; the sunken quatrefoil lies in between (Graham 1967:fig. 42, with emendations).

 

The shape of Stela 13 has parallels in other sites that are relatively close by. Stela with such everted “tangs” are also documented at the related site of Cancuen, Guatemala, where the Machaquila Emblem is attested in joint use with another, more local title. That second Emblem might have first been used at Tres Islas, a small settlement between the two, larger communities of Machaquila and Cancuen. It was also a place evincing close attention to solar alignments. The three Early Classic stelae at Tres Islas clearly form a single composite image of a central figure over a cave with an ancestral female (Stela 2), flanked by two figures in the dress of Teotihuacan warriors (Stelae 1 and 3); the layout in turn evokes the composition and content of the front and sides of Tikal Stela 31, with the main difference being the separation at Tres Islas of one overall image into  three separate carvings. More to the point, the stelae at Tres Islas have been credibly tied to solar alignments (Barrios and Quintanilla 2008: 215–217; Tomasic et al. 2005:392–396). A viewing point from an altar just to the west would look east to the stelae. Behind them, the sun would rise at “true” east for the central stelae, at the equinoxes (or quarter year) for the other two.

At Cancuen, the tanged sculptures include Stelae 1 and 2 (both carved), and Stelae 5 and 8 (both “plain” or unadorned, Tourtellot et al. 1978:227–231). In all cases, these carvings were oriented with one side to the east, another to the west (Maler 1908:fig. 8; Morley 1937:pl. 196b; but note that Gair Tourtellot and colleagues [1978:fig. 5] situated Stela 1 facing south, a fact countered by earlier sources reporting on the site before its carvings were disturbed or moved). Much like Machaquila Stela 13, the tangs on the carvings could also serve as gnomons on an east-west orientation. Indeed, according to Sylvanus Morley, who visited Cancuen in 1915, Stelae 1 and 2 were placed in an east-west line with respect to each others (Morley 2021:230). Stela 1 has another relevant feature (Figure 4). The east side depicts a local queen, the west a later ruler of Cancuen (Maler 1908:pl. 13). Yet the stela also has two quite distinct holes made with obvious care by the sculptor(s); he (or they) visually accommodated the holes by surrounding them with smoky volutes. In addition, there were smaller holes along the side, prompting Maler to speculate that “victims were bound …to these stelae, the sacrifice probably being usually performed with the victim in an upright position” (Maler 1908:44). Such perishable attachments are known in imagery and on Stela 1 from Ixkun, Guatemala (Houston 2016; Stuart 2014), but the main holes hint at conduits for sunlight, in ways that recall the deliberate, calibrated perforations of Chinese gnomons. In China these were arranged north-south, so the parallel cannot be exact. Yet the orientation at Cancuen suggests at least some solar motivation for the holes. At dawn or sunset light would pass through, to shine on some surface in front or behind the stelae, and perhaps on each other.

Figure 4. Cancuen Stela 1, east and west (viewer’s left and right respectively, Maler 1908:pl. 13).

 

The suggestion that the Sun God head at Machaquila, the “tangs” at Cancuen, or the perforations on Stela 1 at that site operated as gnomons for light and shadow accords with their position, orientation, and imagery, especially at Machaquila. If gnomons, they could have been performative, even providing a kind of cosmic theater, but the play of light perhaps helped with observations too. A careful study of them is impeded by looting and displacement of carvings; many monuments are no longer in their original position. Nonetheless, it seems possible that, at sites far beyond Machaquila and Cancuen, the Maya choreographed and manipulated beams and shadows from the sun. Stelae were freestanding, yet, by such displays, in ways not yet fully studied or understood, they interacted with spaces and surfaces nearby.

[1] In a recent email, Walter Witschey, a Mayanist colleague, informs me that, for a time, he held the record for the largest analemmatic (graduated scale) sundial ever made: “for size (1/3 acre)[,] gnomon height (25′)[,] and accuracy (30 sec midday and 5 sec early morning and late afternoon).” Clearly, this is not an exhausted skill or art form. After this was first posted, Kristin Landau also drew my attention to an intriguing paper on Copan Stela D as a possible gnomon (Pineda de Carías et al. 2017). 

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