Maya engraving 04
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Maya engraving 04
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Maya bas-relief. La Pasadita, Guatemala. Around 770 AD. Enhanced.
This piece was probably the carved lintel of a doorway from the site of La Pasadita in northwestern Guatemala. The relief panel would have been installed parallel to the floor of the entrance of a temple. Visitors were thus forced to look upward to view the monument, and perhaps even had to light the surface with raking torchlight in order to read the image and the text.
The lintel is striking for the amount of pigment preserved on the surface . A variety of red, yellow-orange, and blue-green pigment remains to give clues about the original brightly colored appearance of the lintels. The jade jewels of the main characters and the details on the ruler’s throne glisten in blue-green, a color that symbolized the ‘first/newest’ and most precious materials (original colors have been enhanced to increase clarity).
The lintel depicts an enthroned ruler, Shield Jaguar IV, seated on the right faced by two standing ones to the left. The main figure offering an elaborate headdress to the seated leader is the La Pasadita ruler named Tiloom, who ruled from approximately A.D. 750s-770s, using the title of sajal, a title for subsidiary regional governors.
The king leans forward towards his visitors, wearing an elaborate feathered hair ornament, a feathered nose plug, and a beaded jade necklace with bar pendant. Tiloom,a loyal provincial ruler, stands proudly presenting the Yaxchilan holy lord with a headdress and what could be packets of incense or a plate of tamales. Tiloom wears a jaded headband and human head pectoral, with an elaborate woven skirt with a geometric pattern. A third personage stands behind Tiloom in a similar outfit but with a type of sombrero associated in other scenes with travelers or merchants. The text names the Yaxchilan "divine" lord with his pre-accession name of Chel Te’ Chan K’inich, which he changed to Shield Jaguar early in his reign because it was a namesake of ancestral rulers of the kingdom. The text naming Tiloom as the sajal, provincial lord, is squeezed in next to the ruler’s arm and the offertory headdress, almost as if it had not originally been planned to include it. A bowl of sliced fruit with seeds visible sits under the throne, presumably part of the offering brought to the seated ruler.
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Weston Westmoreland
Uploaded
May 27th, 2021
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