Copán I: Museum Works

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Coner Ceramic

This carved vase is characteristic of the Coner phase (700-850 AD) at Copan, Honduras. Its carved rim features glyphic script, and fine etchings decorate the side, in this instance with a heron facing left. The ceramic style is called "polychrome Copador," named after the region of Copan and western Honduras and El Salvador where it was developed.

Copan Museum


Altar T

Seated to the throne in the year 763, the ruler Yax Pasah or "Rising Sun" had one of the longest reigns in the dynasty of Yax K'uk' Mo'. Altar T dedicated the anniversary of the first katun, an interval of 7200 days (or 105 days short of twenty solar years), since his seating. Atop the monolithic altar the eroded relief remains of a great crocodile, outstretched afloat in a sea of fish and waterlilies. This was the way that the Maya symbolically saw their world, upon the back of a crocodile in the ocean. A procession of four supernatural figures flanks the east and west sides of this altar. You are looking at the west side, headed by a macaw symbolizing the setting sun. As the rising sun, a bat leads the eastern procession.

Copan Museum


Altar U

Yax Pasah dedicated Altar U in 795. The front side, pictured here, represents a colossal earth monster. Small glyphs for ajaw, "lord," form the pupils in the monster's "Sun Eyes." The reverse side of this stone monument is inscribed with a text known as the "Rites of the Rulers," commemorating the rites performed by the new ruler Yahaw-Chan-Ah-Bac, the half-brother of Yax Pasah under the same mother. Yahau-Chan-Ah-Bac assumed office in this year: not with the full power of the king, but under the dynastic succession and authorization of the "Rising Sun."

Copan Museum


Stele 11

Yax Pasah in the guise of the bearded Corn God, standing upon the jaws of the Underworld that he is about to enter, appears in this stele. Its text reads that the death of Yax Pasah, which probably occurred around 795 AD, officially concluded the dynasty founded by Yax K'uk' Mo' in 426 by "knocking down its foundation." It was written no earlier than 801.

Copan Museum


Stele 35

Stele 35 is the earliest Copan stele, from approximately the 5th century. The figure in low relief is the K'awiil rulership deity, recognizable for its grotesquely pointed nose and tongue. Above the figure is an upward bow, frequently the sign for the moon. Other early stele fragments have been discovered, but these had usually become construction fill for building projects later in the city's ancient history.

Copan Museum


Carved Polychrome Vase

A fine example of Maya carved pottery. Two black bands are carved with symmetrical figures like the spirals in the upper set. Even the central row, with its repeating motif of an intertwined human pair, bears a black carving. Various repeating designs fill in the remaining spaces in both the interior and exterior of the vase. It had been buried near the dedicatory Stela J, presently at the archaeological site.

Copan Museum


Eccentric Flint

Here is one of four exceptional "eccentrics" on display at the archaeological museum at Copan Ruinas. Count how many facial profiles are carved within and around the flint. These profiles represent the god K'awiil, with a flaring projection of smoke spewing from his forehead. These eccentrics were posted upon wooden staffs, and it is likely that the word k'awiil itself refers to the effigy scepter hewn from stone and staff.

Copan Museum


King Effigies

One of the most spectacular sections of the Copan Ruinas museum is the hall of the "Scribe's Tomb," which included a worn-down codex, numerous assemblages of jade jewelry, polychrome ceramic wares, and twelve effigy censers. What is especially remarkable about the effigy censers is their embellishment, unique to each individual figure and thereby identifying each as one of the eleven dynastic predecessors to the buried king Smoke Imix and the twelfth as the buried king himself. The goggled figure at right, for example, portrays Copan's dynastic founder Yax K'uk' Mo', the "First Quetzal Macaw." These effigies had covered vessels containing ash, and they were ceremonially smashed prior to closing off the tomb. They owe their present condition to archaeological restoration.

Copan Museum


Carved Bone

This deer bone was carved to depict the king Yax Pac in ornate attire. The details on this piece include his beard, jewelry, coiffure, and wardrobe, to prepare him for his passing into the afterlife.

Copan Museum


Las Sepulturas Bench

Far off from the principal city acropolis where the elites administered, the Sepulturas complex lay nearly a kilometer to its northeast and linked to it via a causeway. The Sepulturas complex was an elite residence during the 8th century. This stone bench, from Las Sepulturas Structure 9N-82, is carved with glyphs and high-relief figures of Pawahtun beings, the "pillars" of the world's four corners. The glyphs on the bench rim are unconventionally elaborate for this writing system, but it is unique to Copan script. They record that the patriarch of the Sepulturas noble family dedicated their house at this complex, with the attendance of the king, in 781.

Copan Museum


Replica of the Rosalila Temple

The Rosalila Temple was dedicated under king Moon Jaguar in 571 AD, but it was eventually built over with the structure known today as Temple 16, part of the Acropolis of Copan. While parts of the original structure are visible through windows in the site's excavation tunnels, this life-sized reconstruction stands across the two stories of the Copan Sculpture Museum. This video begins as I step in from the museum entrance, a "cave" fashioned from the jaws of the Maya earth. I follow the temple's four sides and then walk within it.

Copan Sculpture Museum