Dr Mark Van Stone Professor of Art History at Southwestern College
Decode Stela 3
- By Marking Van Rock
- Posted 04.08.08
- NOVA
To many of u.s.a., Maya hieroglyphs may look similar just so many pretty pictures or symbols. But they actually say something, of form, as Mayanists have long known. In this feature, you can actually "read" a passage of glyphs carved into an ancient Maya stela, or dedicatory stone monument. You lot tin can both read the aboriginal Maya (transcribed using the Roman alphabet) and hear it spoken (past Mayanist Barbara MacLeod) also as read the English language translation and accompanying notes. Altogether, you'll get a good taste of the language, and you lot'll see just how important dates and numbers were to the Maya.
Launch Interactive
Read Maya hieroglyphs carved on an 8th-century stone monument, and hear them spoken aloud.
About Stela 3
This flat rock monument, which stands on a pyramid at the Maya site of Piedras Negras in northwestern Guatemala, shows Lady K'atun-Ajaw, Namaan-Ajaw seated cross-legged on a throne. Her three-year-old daughter is by her side. The monument celebrates the 25th anniversary of her husband's reign. This event happened 99 days before the "menstruation-ending" Maya Long Count engagement of 9.fourteen.0.0.0.
Just every bit nosotros exercise, the Maya felt "round number" jubilees and ends of decades were important. Hither the imperial couple'southward scribes have linked the two together with another pregnant number—99 days. Fanatical numerologists, the Maya appreciated events linked by numbers of days that were multiples of pocket-sized, pregnant numbers, such every bit the number 99 being 9 x 11.
Lady K'atun-Ajaw wears the aforementioned outfit in her portrait on Stela ane, some other carved stone slab erected at Piedras Negras five years earlier than Stela iii. Though she is standing in Stela 1 rather than sitting, she is property the same feather fan and making the same gesture with her hands. Gestures were every bit meaningful in Maya art and operation as they are in, say, Buddhist or Balinese art and dance, but they are even so largely undeciphered. This gesture must have something to do with anniversaries.
The cross-like figures that decorate her dress signify the Portal to the Otherworld, which was opened past vision and sacrifice. A like Portal adorns the jar abreast her, which appears to be emitting incense smoke. Her mosaic turban is spangled with disks of beat out and a triple diadem of long jade beads. Atop her turban is a "quadripartite bluecoat." An important emblem of sacrificial ritual, the badge carries symbols of the sunday, body of water, and sky as well equally a stingray-spine bloodletting lancet.
On her throne, just below her crossed legs, is a damaged paradigm of a reclining lord. (We know information technology's a human being considering men wore brusque skirts, women long.) The lord holds an enormous "Vision Serpent." Its ii heads spit out the same hieroglyph, which gives the name of the throne: "Black-Earth-Flower-Place." This glyph also appears—in a amend state of preservation—on each of the throne'due south two squat legs.
On the front of the stela—what you see in this feature is the rear—was a portrait of her husband standing before a similar throne. But it is about completely eroded from lying confront-up in the jungle for 1,300 years. The hieroglyphic texts on the sides of this stela are damaged but more often than not readable. Alas, this monument represents 1 of the better-preserved Maya carved stones. The jungle—and the vandals of history—are non friends of preservation. Fortunately, scholars estimate that what lies cached and thus protected remains far greater than what we have unearthed.—Chiliad.V.Due south.
Credits
Images
- (Photograph, PNG: St.three)
- Teobert Maler from Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 9, Part ane, Piedras Negras, © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard Higher
- (Drawing, PNG: St.three)
- David Stuart from Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 9, Function i, Piedras Negras, © 2003 past the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/decode-stela-3.html
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