Sacrifice in Stone

 

Yaxchilan lintel 24

Yaxchilan lintel 24 detail

In the classic Maya city of Yaxchilan, present day Chiapas, Mexico, we are going to examine a limestone  carving featuring a bloodletting ritual. These carvings were done on lintels, or load bearing stones fitted above doorways where the viewer would have had to have been looking up in order to see them. Bloodletting was a common practice for the Maya people and was viewed as a sort of rebirth. It was especially important to the ruling class due the power of royal blood. According to Maya belief, when a member of the royal family shed blood it opened up a portal for ancestral spirits to pass.(1)

 In this scene we are observing Lady K'abal Xook, the wife of Shield Jaguar the Great, perform an auto sacrifice by pulling a barbed rope through her tongue while the blood dripped into a basket full of paper bark. Shield Jaguar the Great, the ruler, stands above his wife holding a torch, suggesting that the ritual was done in a dark place. The glyphs above the figures and to the left tell us not only who the figures are, but also the name of the city and the date in which the ritual took place. We can still see a little bit of pigment on the panel suggesting it was once brightly colored.(2)The attire of the two subjects in this panel is quite elaborate with the queen wearing an intricately woven huipil and the king donning a battle trophy in the form of a shrunken head. The females headdress is quite elaborate and large and it looks like her dress has some sort of frog pattern woven into it. There is so much intricate detail to the sculpture that you can even see some blood scrolls on her face.

Yaxchilan was an important Maya city near the banks of the Usumacinta River. It was a center of power that reached its peak in the Late Classical period of 800 to 1000 C.E. These ruins are significant to the archeological record due to the descriptive hieroglyphic text explaining the dynastic history of the city. (3)

 

    Notes

    1. "Art Through Time: A Global View," Annenberg Learner, accessed November 19, 2020, https://www.learner.org/series/art-through-time-a-global-view/dreams-and-visions/lintel-25-of-yaxchilan-structure-23/

    2. Maestri, Nicoletta, "Yaxchilan - Classic Maya City-State in Mexico, Thought Co, March 18, 2017, accessed November 19, 2020, https://www.thoughtco.com/yaxchilan-mexico-maya-center-173249.

    3. "Yaxchilan Ruins, Ancient Mayan Site in Mexico," Maya-Ruins, accessed Novermer 20, 2020, http://www.mayan-ruins.org/yaxchilan/.