Karla Huebner Prehispanic Art of Mexico April 2000 Maya Stela at de Young
T
he Maya stela recently acquired by the De Young Museum is a carved limestone work taller than the average person but surprisingly thin, with a rough back that
suggests it was detached from a larger slab—presumably when it was stolen from its original setting. The color of the limestone is a light ochre except on the upper right, where the color becomes darker and redder as if the stone had been accidentally stained. In a way, the buff color of the stone almost comes as a surprise, because it looks so much like certain kinds of clay and not at all like the marble, granite, porphyry, onyx, alabaster, and other stones that are more often seen in museums. The viewer almost expects the stone to be dusty or crumbly, yet it is obviously fresh from conservation and exceptionally clean. No signs of paint can be seen, although it was probably originally painted in several colors; the Yaxchilán lintels, for example, bear traces of red, green, and yellow.1 The qualities of the limestone itself, however, are of small interest in comparison to the scene depicted on its face. Framed on three or perhaps four sides by a plain band stands a female ruler engaged in a ritual vision quest. She stands upon a row of glyphs, and glyphs also appear to her side and (mostly missing) above her headdress. How do we know that this is what the stela shows and why is such a scene important? To answer the first question, we must look at how this person is represented. Maya iconography is mystifying at first glance, but fortunately some of its elements are easily 1
Mary Ellen Miller, The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 147.
learned. The human figure on this stela, which appears relatively genderless to someone from another culture, is recognizable as female by her long patterned dress; men in Maya art, like men in the art of many other cultures, were usually shown wearing shorter or no skirts since this was more practical for work and battle. Dresses of this beaded or woven pattern are typical of royal Maya women in the eighth century, as can be seen on other works such as Naranjo Stela 3 (Lady Wac-Chanil-Ahau), Yaxchilán Lintel 24 (Lady Xoc) and representations of Palenque’s Lady Zac-Kuk and Pacal’s wife. The image of Pacal shown on his sarcophagus depicts him in a short skirt of this same pattern, which Mary Ellen Miller identifies as the Maize God’s beaded skirt.2 (see figures) Rosemary Joyce, who notes three types of dress on Maya elite women, considers the beaded skirt on Pacal’s sarcophagus to be a modified female costume. Looking at how male and female Maya elite are distinguished by costume and glyphs, she proposes that Maya elite gender is complementary rather than oppositional, and that individual rulers to some degree take on dual gender roles. She observes that the Maya image of women shown on large-scale public monuments is one in which woman is “complement to man in ritual and political action” while that shown on pottery emphasizes female labor and physical characteristics such as breasts.3 Yaxchilán monuments tend to support the idea of a complementary role. The woman on the De Young stela has definitely taken on a dual gender role, as female rulers were unusual among the Maya. We can see that she is a ruler by the fact that she holds a ceremonial bar in her hands, a Mesoamerican symbol of rulership that predates the Maya and can be found even in the Olmec “El Rey” bas relief at Chalcatzingo some
Mary Ellen Miller, The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 146. Joyce, Rosemary. “Images of Gender and Labor Organization in Classic Maya Society,” in Cheryl Claassen, ed., Exploring Gender Through Archaeology. http://am.appstate.edu/top/dept/anthro/ebooks/gender/ch06.html. 2 3
1300 years earlier. Held against the chest with the ruler’s wrists back to back and the thumbs out, in the Late Preclassic it signified “sky;” later it indicated “both sky and the vision path, as well as the act of birthing the gods through the vision rite.”4 Another suggestion of this woman’s rulership is her ornate feathered headdress. As for how we determine her mental state, this is shown by the enormous serpent wrapped around her body and continuing over her head, culminating next to her headdress in an enormous open-jawed mouth from which issues a head and arm identified by the museum as belonging to the god K’awil (God K, god of lineages). As in many other cultures around the world, serpents were a Maya symbol of rebirth and transformation, and were considered intermediaries between the mortal and divine. Visions of gods and ancestors were one effect of the bloodletting rituals performed by Maya rulers, as the endorphins produced during severe blood loss can cause hallucinations. The Vision Serpent symbolizes the path taken by the gods and ancestors on their way from Xibalba to the human realm when called forth by such a rite.5 What, then, is unique and significant about this particular work? We don’t know its provenance, but it is believed to be from the Southern Lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, or Belize. While its remaining glyphs give dates of March 13, 761 and August 10, 760 (both Julian),6 our ignorance of the site and the ruler’s name make it both frustrating and intriguing. Is it from a known site whose history is fragmentary? Looking at works that are similar in one or more ways, what further can we tell about its origins or meaning? Like the Yaxchilán lintels and Palenque carvings, the relief is essentially done in two
4 Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990), 415-6. 5 Ibid., 417. 6 Kathleen Berrin, “Fine Arts Museums Acquire Maya Stela: Collaboration with Guatemala and Mexico Sets New Standards for Museums,” Fine Arts (Autumn 1999), 7.
levels rather than in a rounded style. Mary Ellen Miller notes that “static, single-figure compositions” like this one dominated in Central Petén in the Late Classic.7 She also notes that many Naranjo monuments show women rulers.8 Women rulers are known from both Naranjo and Palenque, and in 1996 archaeologists discovered that the occupant of the tomb believed to be that of Copan’s fifthcentury Ruler II was a woman of about 50. Her tomb was extremely wealthy and had been reentered more than once for ritual purposes, leading archaeologists to speculate that she was either Ruler II or the wife of Ruler II’s father Yax K’uk’ Mo’.9 Probably women rulers were more common among the Maya than hitherto believed. At Yaxchilán, wives of rulers certainly played a key role in ritual and succession.10 While I have not had much luck finding pictures of the women rulers at Naranjo to compare with the De Young stela—perhaps because Naranjo was recently “virtually obliterated” by looters11--Carolyn Tate mentions Naranjo Stela 24, on which “Lady Six Sky impersonates the Maize Deity in her attempt to institute her son as founder of a new patrilineage at Naranjo.” This does not suggest Lady Six Sky ruled in her own right, but in the same group Tate includes the Oval Palace Tablet from Palenque, which she describes as Lady Zak Kuk impersonating the Maize Deity to install her son Pacal as founder of a new lineage. We know that Lady Zak Kuk did rule prior to Pacal’s accession. Tate also mentions Site Q Altar 1 as portraying a queen impersonating the Maize Deity as she conducts a
Miller, 150. Ibid., 151. 9 Angela M.H. Schuster, “Who’s Buried in Margarita’s Tomb?” Archaeology 49 no. 4 (July/August 1996), http://archaeology.org/9607/newsbriefs/copan.html. 10 See Schele and Freidel, chapter 5. 11 Dorfman, John. “Archaeologists and the Looting Trade,” Lingua Franca (May 1998), http://www.linguafranca.com/9805/dorfman.html. 7 8
sacrificial ritual for her city, “whose kings have all been killed.”12 Tate doesn’t say whether the queen of Site Q holds a ceremonial bar or is shown with a Vision Serpent, which limits our ability to compare her with the ruler on the De Young stela. A drawing of Naranjo stela 24 shows Lady Six Sky (Wac-Chanil-Ahau) holding something to her chest in a gesture similar to but not identical with the standard manner of holding a ceremonial bar. There is a bound captive at her feet. Lintel 25 from Yaxchilán does show Lady Xoc (not a ruler in her own right) receiving a vision in which a warrior emerges from the mouth of the Vision Serpent. In many respects the style is similar to that of the De Young stela, but it is less complex for the viewer to work out because Lady Xoc kneels in one corner before her separate Vision Serpent, while the ruler in the DeYoung stela has her serpent wound all around her and apparently passing through her ceremonial bar. Lady Xoc’s basket of paper and bloodletting tools in also clearly shown, while our ruler doesn’t seem to be shown with these. Lady Xoc’s serpent is double-headed, whereas our ruler’s serpent appears to rise from a blood scroll. Later monuments from Yaxchilán also show wives of rulers bloodletting and with vision serpents. Clearly, then, the De Young stela demands further comparison with other works that depict elite and ruling women. Women rulers have certainly been known in other cultures, perhaps most frequently in cases where the direct male line failed (the queens of England and other European countries), but also where they to some degree shared power with male rulers (sibling marriage and joint inheritance in ancient Egypt) and occasionally where they actually seized power (Hatshepsut). Cultures in which women had crucial religious power as priestesses and sybils, such as the Minoan, would perhaps offer the closest parallel except 12
Carolyn Tate, “Art 4315: Art of Pre-Columbian America,” Fall 1998, Texas Tech University,
that we lack political records for most of these. In closing, it would be useful to know what the glyphs on the De Young stela reveal beyond dates. Perhaps the ruler’s name has merely not been deciphered. Also, sculptors in the Usumacinta River area and particularly in Piedras Negras often actually signed their work.13 Naranjo Stela 12 was also signed.14 Is the De Young stela signed? Plenty of fascinating questions remain to be answered about this work.
http://www.art.ttu.edu/artdept/undergraduate/ahweb/4315.html 13 Montgomery, John Ellis. “Style During the Reign of Piedras Negras Ruler 7,” University of New Mexico, 1992, http://copan.bioz.unibas.ch/meso/SculptorsoftheRealm/Sculptorsrealm.html 14 Ibid., reference Schele 1982, p. 128-9.
Bibliography Berrin, Kathleen. “Fine Arts Museums Acquire Maya Stela: Collaboration with Guatemala and Mexico Sets New Standards for Museums,” Fine Arts (Autumn 1999), 6-9. Dorfman, John. “Archaeologists and the Looting Trade,” Lingua Franca (May 1998), http://www.linguafranca.com/9805/dorfman.html. Joyce, Rosemary. “Images of Gender and Labor Organization in Classic Maya Society,” in Cheryl Claassen, ed., Exploring Gender Through Archaeology. http://am.appstate.edu/top/dept/anthro/ebooks/gender/ch06.html Miller, Mary Ellen. The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Montgomery, John Ellis. “Style During the Reign of Piedras Negras Ruler 7,” University of New Mexico, 1992, http://copan.bioz.unibas.ch/meso/SculptorsoftheRealm/Sculptorsrealm.html Schele, Linda, and David Freidel. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990. Schele, Linda, and Mary Ellen Miller. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986. Schuster, Angela M.H. “Who’s Buried in Margarita’s Tomb?” Archaeology 49 no. 4 (July/August 1996), http://archaeology.org/9607/newsbriefs/copan.html. Tate, Carolyn. “Art 4315: Art of Pre-Columbian America,” Fall 1998, Texas Tech University, http://www.art.ttu.edu/artdept/undergraduate/ahweb/4315.html
Right: Lady Ahpo Hei Palace Tablet, Palenque Blood of Kings p. 115 Pacal with beaded skirt Pacal’s Sarcophagus, Palenque The Art of Mesoamerica, 129 Lady Wac-Chanil-Ahau Naranjo Stela 24 A Forest of Kings, 190 Lady Wac-Chanil-Ahau Naranjo Stela 3 A Forest of Kings, 193 Woman (Lady Ahpo Hei?) holding ChanBahlum Pier, Temple of Inscriptions, Palenque A Forest of Kings, 235 Lady Zac-Kuk and Pacal Oval Palace Tablet, Palenque A Forest of Kings, 227 Ruler with ceremonial bar Petroglyph 1, Chalcatzingo The Art and Architecture of Ancient America, 127 Lady Great-Skull-Zero and her brother Yaxchilan Lintel 14 A Forest of Kings, 274 or 288
Lady Eveningstar, mother of Bird-Jaguar Stela, Yaxchilan A Forest of Kings, 274 Lady Balam and Bird-Jaguar Lintel 17, Yaxchilan A Forest of Kings, 287 or Blood of Kings, 189 Lady 6-Tun and vision serpent Lintel 15, Yaxchilan A Forest of Kings, 287 or Blood of Kings, 189 Lady Great-Skull and Bird-Jaguar Lintel 13, Yaxchilan A Forest of Kings, 288 Lady Xoc bloodletting Lintel 24, Yaxchilan The Blood of Kings, 198 Lady Xoc and vision serpent Lintel 25, Yaxchilan The Blood of Kings, 199 Lady Shellfish-Quincunx with God K Lintel, El Cayo? The Blood of Kings, 85
