3 results
Tortuguero Box
This object, called the Tortuguero box because its inscriptions are comparable to those found in Tortuguero, Mexico, is a diminutive offering box, one of very few surviving Mayan personal objects made of wood. The full-length portrait of a Mayan lord on the cover of the box and the 44 hieroglyphic signs tell a story that yields important insights into the Mayan social system. The narrative begins with the image of the box’s owner, Aj K'ax B'ahlam, the holder of an important position under the patronage of the ...
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Monumental Jaguar Sculpture
This painted buff ceramic sculpture was made in southern Veracruz, Mexico, in 600-900 AD, or the Late Classic Period of Mesoamerican civilization. Scholars traditionally have defined Mesoamerica as a cultural region comprising the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador. Its history is divided into an Archaic Period (circa 12,000-1500 BC), a Preclassic or Formative Period (circa 1500 BC-200 AD), a Classic Period (circa 200-900 AD), and a Postclassic Period (circa 900-1500 AD). The tropical jaguar was a major sacred creature in much of Mesoamerica ...
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Collection of Drawings Copied from the Original Figures: Discovered in the ... Pueblo of Palenque
The ancient Mayan city of Palenque is located on a natural shelf in Mexico’s Chiapas State. It flourished as the seat of a powerful royal court in the 7th century AD, but was abandoned in the 9th century and reclaimed by the forest. It was discovered in the mid-1700s by villagers from nearby Santo Domingo do Palenque. In 1787, King Charles III of Spain ordered the governor-general of Guatemala to investigate the ruins and collect artifacts for the national museum in Madrid. The governor-general entrusted the work to a ...
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Library of Congress