The plate was discovered by chance by a Dutch engineer, S.A. van Braam, in 1864.[5] He was part of a team employed by a lumber company to dig a canal near present-day Puerto Barrios, in the lower Motagua Valley, a border area of Guatemala and Honduras. The team transected what looked like an ancient Central-American funeral mound.[5] There, together with copper bells and pottery fragments, the little jade plate was found.[6][7] The plate was taken to the Netherlands in 1864 and gifted to the National Museum of Ethnology.
The first scientific description of the plate was made by Leeman in 1877, and many others followed, notably Holden in 1880 and Valentine in 1881, who started deciphering the inscriptions.[5] A lot of ground work on the dating of the plate was done in 1938 by Frances and Sylvanus Morley. Their study remains one of the more conclusive made on the plate.[8]
The date on the plate was used to study time and calendar in the Maya world, and the plate remains one of the earliest examples of the usage of a cyclical calendar in the Central-American world.[6] It is remarkable for being the oldest known usage of a Maya ordinal zero,[9] which symbol (graphically derived from the drawing of a sitting man, typically representing a king's crowning) appears two times, one to form the date "0Yaxkin" from the first day of the seventh month of the festive year in Haab' calendar, and one to denote the Moon-Bird king accessing its throne on the other side of the plaque.
Description
Carving on the Leiden Plate
The plaque is a small rectangular object of pale green jadeite measuring 21.7 by 8.6 centimeters.[10][11] Its faces are carved with both drawings and glyphs. A hole at its top hints that it was used as a pendant, probably as a waist plate. While it was found far from its possible original location of Tikal in a post-classic archeological context,[12] it dates from the Early Classic era. It poses as an example of precious object preserved and used several centuries after its making, which is common in Mesoamerica.
The front face has a picture of a richly-dressed man. His head and the lower part of his body are seen from profile, but his breast is turned toward the front, with the feet placed one behind the other.[13] It represents a victorious lord, possibly an otherwise-unknown ruler of Tikal,[11] wearing six celts and some trophy heads around his waist, standing with bound captives he vanquished.[14][8] He also carries an atlatl, or two head serpent, in his hand.[15][14] The serpents have a human head in their mouth, a characteristic feature of the Sun God.[13][5] The motif of the inauguration of a ruler depicted on the Leiden Plate is a common one, similar carvings being found on stelae and other celts around the Maya world.[10]
The plaque's posterior face has been engraved with an inscription bearing traces of cinnabar, documenting the crowning of a king on 15 September 320 (Gregorian) in the Long Count calendar, one of the earliest registered dates of the Maya Classic period.[11] The inscription is composed of fifteen glyphs neatly carved in one column.[10] The date written is 8.14.3.1.12 1 Eb 0 Yaxk'in (15 September 320 A.D. using the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation). The plate probably represents the accession of a ruler.[8] This accession may have happened at the Moon-Zero-Bird Place and involved a ruler named Way Ko? Chanal Chak Wak.[16]
For a long time authors considered "Moon-Zero-Bird", to be the name of the king (despite carrying the NAL-"place" affix) and one of the first kings of the Tikal dynasty.[17][18] This interpretation is contested in recent publications: though the plaque may be tied with Tikal, there is no hard evidence of this,[19] and "Moon-Zero-Bird" does not appear in Tikal dynastic listings.[20] It does, however, appear as a place name associated with creation and the Maize god at Tikal on Stela 31.[21]
The Leyden Plaque today
The Leyden Plaque is now displayed in the Central-American gallery of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, the Netherlands. Formerly, its original archaeological context was shown as well, but for unknown reasons, this has been removed from the permanent exhibition.
The Leyden Plaque is the most recognisable object of the museum collection, with replicas gifted to museums, politicians and organisations around the world.[6] Its image is also featured on the one quetzal bank note, the Guatemalan currency unit, after it was chosen as one of the national symbols of Guatemala in 2006.
Some controversy exists regarding the object's ownership.[6] During the 1988 "Blood of Kings" Maya exhibition in the Kimbell Art Museum, Texas, the National Museum of Ethnology of Leiden asked for a Declaration of Immunity From Public Seizure in order to protect the plate .[22] It is highly doubtful, however, if the object could legitimately and legally be classified as "looted art"; in the opposite case, 2020 Dutch policy guidelines would make its repatriation to Guatemala almost inescapable.
Bibliography
Éric Taladoire & Brigitte Faugère-Kalfon, Archéologie et art précolombiens: la Mésoamérique, École du Louvre, 1995
1 2 3 4 Van Broekhoven, Dr. Laura N.K. (2013). "Authenticity and Curatorial Practice". Creating Authenticity: Authentication Processes in Ethnographic Museums. Sidestone Press. pp.152–161. ISBN978-90-8890-205-5.
↑ "The Leiden Plate". Uitgeverij Micromys. 29 April 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
1 2 3 Schele, Linda; Miller, Mary Ellen (May–June 1986). "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art". Archaeology. 39 (3): 60–63. JSTOR41730354.
↑ Èric Taladoire & Brigitte Faugère-Kalfon, Archéologie et art précolombiens: la Mésoamérique, École du Louvre, 1995, p. 155
1 2 Spinden, Herbert Joseph (1976). A Study of Maya Art, Its Subject Matter and Historical Development. England: Dover Publications. pp.172–173. ISBN978-0-486-21235-7.
↑ Parsons, Lee Allen (1986). "The Origins of Maya Art: Monumental Stone Sculpture of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, and the Southern Pacific Coast". Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology. 28 (28): i–216. JSTOR41263466.
↑ Jespar Neilson and Christophe Helmke (eds.), The Maya in a Mesoamerican Context: Comparative Approaches to Maya Studies, Acta Mesoamericana 26. Proceedings of the 16th European Maya Conference. Copenhagen, 2011, p. 58
↑ Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya (5th ed.), Stanford University Press, 1995, p. 176
↑ Linda Schele & David Freidel, A Forest of Kings. The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, Quill William Morrow, p. 143
↑ Simon Martin & Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.), Thames & Hudson, 2008, p. 27
↑ Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya (6e éd.), Stanford University Press, 2006, p. 311
↑ Jesper Nielsen and Christophe Helmke (eds.), The Maya in a Mesoamerican Context: Comparative Approaches to Maya Studies, Acta Mesoamericana 26. Proceedings of the 16th European Maya Conference. Copenhagen, 2011, p. 58
Maya or Mayan mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The myths of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition are not considered here.
The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico.
Tikal is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in the department of El Petén, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Uaxactun is an ancient sacred place of the Maya civilization, located in the Petén Basin region of the Maya lowlands, in the present-day department of Petén, Guatemala. The site lies some 12 miles (19 km) north of the major center of Tikal. The name is sometimes spelled as Waxaktun.
"Spearthrower Owl" was a Mesoamerican person from the Early Classic period, who is identified in Maya inscriptions and iconography. Mayanist David Stuart has suggested that Spearthrower Owl was a ruler of Teotihuacan at the start of the height of its influence across Mesoamerica in the 4th and 5th century, and that he was responsible for an intense period of Teotihuacan presence in the Maya area, including the conquest of Tikal in 378 CE.
Seibal, known as El Ceibal in Spanish, is a Classic Period archaeological site of the Maya civilization located in the northern Petén Department of Guatemala, about 100 km SW of Tikal. It was the largest city in the Pasión River region.
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian ; the Archaic, the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (900–1521 CE); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present).
Linda Schele was an American Mesoamerican archaeologist who was an expert in the field of Maya epigraphy and iconography. She played an invaluable role in the decipherment of much of the Maya hieroglyphs. She produced a massive volume of drawings of stelae and inscriptions, which, following her wishes, are free for use to scholars. In 1978, she founded the annual Maya Meetings at The University of Texas at Austin.
K’uk’ulkan, also spelled Kukulkan, is the Mesoamerican serpent deity of the Pre-Columbine Yucatec Maya. It is closely related to the deity Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people and to Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology. Prominent temples to Kukulkan are found at archaeological sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan.
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to most of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. In the pre-Columbian era, many societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas begun at Hispaniola island in 1493. In world history, Mesoamerica was the site of two historical transformations: (i) primary urban generation, and (ii) the formation of New World cultures from the mixtures of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples with the European, African, and Asian peoples who were introduced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Ancient Maya art is the visual arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture made up of a great number of small kingdoms in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions existed side by side, usually coinciding with the changing boundaries of Maya polities. This civilization took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period, when the first cities and monumental architecture started to develop and the hieroglyphic script came into being. Its greatest artistic flowering occurred during the seven centuries of the Classic Period.
Altar de Sacrificios is a ceremonial center and archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, situated near the confluence of the Pasión and Salinas Rivers, in the present-day department of Petén, Guatemala. Along with Seibal and Dos Pilas, Altar de Sacrificios is one of the better-known and most intensively-excavated sites in the region, although the site itself does not seem to have been a major political force in the Late Classic period.
David S. Stuart is an archaeologist and epigrapher specializing in the study of ancient Mesoamerica, the area now called Mexico and Central America. His work has studied many aspects of the ancient Maya civilization. He is widely recognized for his breakthroughs in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs and interpreting Maya art and iconography, starting at an early age. He is the youngest person ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, at age 18. He currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and his current research focuses on the understanding of Maya culture, religion and history through their visual culture and writing system.
The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating base-20 and base-18 calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the MayaLong Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.
The Southern Maya Area is a region of Pre-Columbian sites in Mesoamerica. It is long believed important to the rise of Maya civilization, during the period that is known as Preclassic. It lies within a broad arc going southeast from Chiapa de Corzo in Mexico to Copán and Chalchuapa, in Central America.
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.
Maya stelae are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall, sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief, although plain monuments are found throughout the Maya region. The sculpting of these monuments spread throughout the Maya area during the Classic Period, and these pairings of sculpted stelae and circular altars are considered a hallmark of Classic Maya civilization. The earliest dated stela to have been found in situ in the Maya lowlands was recovered from the great city of Tikal in Guatemala. During the Classic Period almost every Maya kingdom in the southern lowlands raised stelae in its ceremonial centre.
An eccentric flint is an elite chipped artifact of an often irregular ('eccentric') shape produced by the Classic Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. Although generally referred to as "flints", they were typically fashioned from chert, chalcedony and obsidian.
Maya belt plaques were decorative and functional pendants worn by ancient Maya ajawob (rulers) to validate their rulership through referencing major deities and important ancestors. They can be seen as significant elements of the costumes of rulers on stelae and in other representations found in ancient Maya art. These plaques, which hung from belts, were used during rituals to memorialize important events and dates.
The history of Maya civilization is divided into three principal periods: the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods; these were preceded by the Archaic Period, which saw the first settled villages and early developments in agriculture. Modern scholars regard these periods as arbitrary divisions of chronology of the Maya civilization, rather than indicative of cultural evolution or decadence. Definitions of the start and end dates of period spans can vary by as much as a century, depending on the author. The Preclassic lasted from approximately 3000 BC to approximately 250 AD; this was followed by the Classic, from 250 AD to roughly 950 AD, then by the Postclassic, from 950 AD to the middle of the 16th century. Each period is further subdivided:
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