Download or read book Lives of the Gods Divinity in Maya Art written by Joanne Pillsbury and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the complex stories of Mesoamerican divinity through the carvings, ceramics, and metalwork of the Maya Classic period Lives of the Gods reveals how ancient Maya artists evoked a pantheon as rich and complex as the more familiar Greco-Roman, Hindu-Buddhist, and Egyptian deities. Focusing on the period between A.D. 250 and 900, the authors show how this powerful cosmology informed some of the greatest creative achievements of Maya civilization.
Download or read book Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya written by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This nuanced account explores Maya mythology through the lens of art, text, and culture. It offers an important reexamination of the mid-16th-century Popol Vuh, long considered an authoritative text, which is better understood as one among many crucial sources for the interpretation of ancient Maya art and myth. Using materials gathered across Mesoamerica, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos bridges the gap between written texts and artistic representations, identifying key mythical subjects and uncovering their variations in narratives and visual depictions. Central characters—including a secluded young goddess, a malevolent grandmother, a dead father, and the young gods who became the sun and the moon—are identified in pottery, sculpture, mural painting, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Highlighting such previously overlooked topics as sexuality and generational struggles, this beautifully illustrated book paves the way for a new understanding of Maya myths and their lavish expression in ancient art.
Download or read book The Concept of Divinity in Maya Art written by Michele Mae Bernatz and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maya written by Nikolai Grube and published by . This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lost cities in the jungle and towering temple pyramids form only a small part of Mayan culture. This fascinating people achieved the landmarks of an advanced civilisation - such as a highly developed writing system and densely populated cities - in the classical period (AD 300-600), earning them a place among the greatest civilisations in the world. However, this period represents just one phase in the history of the Mayan culture, which extends over thousands of years. Our knowledge of Mayan life has increased dramatically in recent decades. As a result, specialists from a wide range of disciplines have contributed to this book in order to represent all of the latest research on the Maya. The contributions included in this magnificent volume range from the origins of Mayan culture all the way to today, giving insight into everyday life and religion as well as the artistic accomplishments and intellectual abilities of this important culture.
Download or read book Maya Gods of War written by Karen Bassie-Sweet and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous archaeological projects have found substantial evidence of the military nature of Maya society, and warfare is a frequent theme of Maya art. Maya Gods of War investigates the Classic period Maya gods who were associated with weapons of war and the flint and obsidian from which those weapons were made. Author Karen Bassie-Sweet traces the semantic markers used to distinguish flint from other types of stone, surveys various types of Chahk thunderbolt deities and their relationship to flint weapons, and explores the connection between lightning and the ruling elite. Additional chapters review these fire and solar deities and their roles in Maya warfare and examine the nature and manifestations of the Central Mexican thunderbolt god Tlaloc, his incorporation into the Maya pantheon, and his identification with meteors and obsidian weapons. Finally, Bassie-Sweet addresses the characteristics of the deity God L, his role as an obsidian merchant god, and his close association with the ancient land route between the highland Guatemalan obsidian sources and the lowlands. Through analysis of the nature of the Teotihuacán deities and exploration of the ways in which these gods were introduced into the Maya region and incorporated into the Maya worldview, Maya Gods of War offers new insights into the relationship between warfare and religious beliefs in Mesoamerica. This significant work will be of interest to scholars of Maya religion and iconography.
Download or read book Contemporary Maya Spirituality written by Jean Molesky-Poz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative study of the indigenous religion still practiced in Guatemala based on extensive original research and participant observation. Jean Molesky-Poz draws on in-depth dialogues with Maya Ajq’ijab’ (keepers of the ritual calendar), her own participant observation, and inter-disciplinary resources to offer a comprehensive, innovative, and well-grounded understanding of contemporary Maya spirituality and its theological underpinnings. She reveals significant continuities between contemporary and ancient Maya worldviews and spiritual practices. Molesky-Poz opens with a discussion of how the public emergence of Maya spirituality is situated within the religious political history of the Guatemalan highlands, particularly the pan-Maya movement. She investigates Maya cosmovision and its foundational principles, as expressed by Ajq’ijab’. At the heart of this work, Ajq’ijab’ interpret their obligation, lives, and spiritual work. Molesky-Poz then explores aspects of Maya spirituality, including sacred geography, sacred time, and ritual practice. She confirms contemporary Maya spirituality as a faith tradition with elaborate historical roots that has significance for individual, collective, and historical lives, reaffirming its own public space and legal right to be practiced.
Download or read book The Murals of Bonampak written by Mary Ellen Miller and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Description for this book, The Murals of Bonampak, will be forthcoming.
Download or read book Maya Sculpture of Cop n written by Claude F. Baudez and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-07 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Copán, one of the most important Classic Maya sites, is renowned for the artistry of its high-relief stelae and altars and for the wealth of detail on its freestanding and architectural sculpture. In Maya Sculpture of Copán: The Iconography, internationally known Mayanist Claude-François Baudez provides a masterful survey of these elaborate and intriguing carved images. In Part I, Baudez identifies and deciphers the specific motifs on each monument and shows how the elements were combined to produce meaningful iconographic messages. The architectural sculpture expresses the meaning and function of the buildings and complexes, many designed to represent the sky, earth, and underworld and to serve as stages for rituals. Photographs and drawings clarify the intricate forms. Part II relates the iconography to the religion and politics of the city-state. Baudez traces the evolution of the motifs in relation to the history of Copán and the multiple functions of the king—his cosmic role, the continuous reference to his ancestors, and the dynastic cycles. Sacrifice—bloodletting by the king and the sacrifice of captives—is of paramount importance. Growth and rebirth required constant offerings of blood to the earth and to the sun, to ensure its rebirth at dawn after its nocturnal journey through the underworld. The monuments give a coherent picture of Maya cosmology.
Download or read book Lords of Creation written by Virginia M. Fields and published by Scala Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a unique perspective on Mayan culture, documenting the
Download or read book Veiled Brightness written by Stephen Houston and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Color is an integral part of human experience, so common as to be overlooked or treated as unimportant. Yet color is both unavoidable and varied. Each culture classifies, understands, and uses it in different and often surprising ways, posing particular challenges to those who study color from long-ago times and places far distant. Veiled Brightness reconstructs what color meant to the ancient Maya, a set of linked peoples and societies who flourished in and around the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and Central America. By using insights from archaeology, linguistics, art history, and conservation, the book charts over two millennia of color use in a region celebrated for its aesthetic refinement and high degree of craftsmanship. The authors open with a survey of approaches to color perception, looking at Aristotelian color theory, recent discoveries in neurophysiology, and anthropological research on color. Maya color terminology receives new attention here, clarifying not just basic color terms, but also the extensional or associated meanings that enriched ancient Maya perception of color. The materials and technologies of Maya color production are assembled in one place as never before, providing an invaluable reference for future research. From these investigations, the authors demonstrate that Maya use of color changed over time, through a sequence of historical and artistic developments that drove the elaboration of new pigments and coloristic effects. These findings open fresh avenues for investigation of ancient Maya aesthetics and worldview and provide a model for how to study the meaning and making of color in other ancient civilizations.
Download or read book The Memory of Bones written by Stephen D. Houston and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican people through studies of figural works and inscriptions. All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed an approach to the human body that we can recover and understand today. Starting with a cartography of the Maya body as depicted in imagery and texts, the authors explore how the body was replicated in portraiture; how it experienced the world through ingestion, the senses, and the emotions; how the body experienced war and sacrifice and the pain and sexuality; how words, often heaven-sent, could be embodied; and how bodies could be blurred through spirit possession. From these investigations, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the Maya conceptualized the body in varying roles, as a metaphor of time, as a gendered, sexualized being, in distinct stages of life, as an instrument of honor and dishonor, as a vehicle for communication and consumption, as an exemplification of beauty and ugliness, and as a dancer and song-maker. Their findings open a new avenue for empathetically understanding the ancient Maya as living human beings who experienced the world as we do, through the body.
Download or read book Ancient Egypt Transformed written by Adela Oppenheim and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1650 B.C.) was a transformational period in ancient Egypt, during which older artistic conventions, cultural principles, religious beliefs, and political systems were revived and reimagined. Ancient Egypt Transformed presents a comprehensive picture of the art of the Middle Kingdom, arguably the least known of Egypt’s three kingdoms and yet one that saw the creation of powerful, compelling works rendered with great subtlety and sensitivity. The book brings together nearly 300 diverse works— including sculpture, relief decoration, stelae, jewelry, coffins, funerary objects, and personal possessions from the world’s leading collections of Egyptian art. Essays on architecture, statuary, tomb and temple relief decoration, and stele explore how Middle Kingdom artists adapted forms and iconography of the Old Kingdom, using existing conventions to create strikingly original works. Twelve lavishly illustrated chapters, each with a scholarly essay and entries on related objects, begin with discussions of the distinctive art that arose in the south during the early Middle Kingdom, the artistic developments that followed the return to Egypt’s traditional capital in the north, and the renewed construction of pyramid complexes. Thematic chapters devoted to the pharaoh, royal women, the court, and the vital role of family explore art created for different strata of Egyptian society, while others provide insight into Egypt’s expanding relations with foreign lands and the themes of Middle Kingdom literature. The era’s religious beliefs and practices, such as the pilgrimage to Abydos, are revealed through magnificent objects created for tombs, chapels, and temples. Finally, the book discusses Middle Kingdom archaeological sites, including excavations undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum over a number of decades. Written by an international team of respected Egyptologists and Middle Kingdom specialists, the text provides recent scholarship and fresh insights, making the book an authoritative resource.
Download or read book Star Gods of the Maya written by Susan Milbrath and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Download or read book Popol Vuh written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1996 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most extraordinary works of the human imagination and the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life was first made accessible to the public 10 years ago. This new edition retains the quality of the original translation, has been enriched, and includes 20 new illustrations, maps, drawings, and photos.
Download or read book Late Lowland Maya Civilization written by Jeremy A. Sabloff and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a series of essays that offers a framework for the study of lowland Maya settlement patterns, surveying the range of interpretive ideas about ancient Maya remains.--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos written by Prudence M. Rice and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2019-04-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos explores the sociocultural significance of more than three hundred Middle Preclassic Maya figurines uncovered at the site of Nixtun-Ch'ich' on Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala. In this careful, holistic, and detailed analysis of the Petén lakes figurines—hand-modeled, terracotta anthropomorphic fragments, animal figures, and musical instruments such as whistles and ocarinas—Prudence M. Rice engages with a broad swath of theory and comparative data on Maya ritual practice. Presenting original data, Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos offers insight into the synchronous appearance of fired-clay figurines with the emergence of societal complexity in and beyond Mesoamerica. Rice situates these Preclassic Maya figurines in the broader context of Mesoamerican human figural representation, identifies possible connections between anthropomorphic figurine heads and the origins of calendrics and other writing in Mesoamerica, and examines the role of anthropomorphic figurines and zoomorphic musical instruments in Preclassic Maya ritual. The volume shows how community rituals involving the figurines helped to mitigate the uncertainties of societal transitions, including the beginnings of settled agricultural life, the emergence of social differentiation and inequalities, and the centralization of political power and decision-making in the Petén lowlands. Literature on Maya ritual, cosmology, and specialized artifacts has traditionally focused on the Classic period, with little research centering on the very beginnings of Maya sociopolitical organization and ideological beliefs in the Middle Preclassic. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos is a welcome contribution to the understanding of the earliest Maya and will be significant to Mayanists and Mesoamericanists as well as nonspecialists with interest in these early figurines
Download or read book Scribes Warriors and Kings written by William L. Fash and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 1993-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Copan in modern Honduras was one of the great cities of the Classic Maya. Explorers found ruined temples, plazas, and more hieroglyphic inscriptions and sculpted monuments than in any other site in the New World. But the stones were silent, the script undeciphered.
