I usually hate April fools but this is immaculate. That’s so fuckign funny. “We listened to the criticism so we’re taking the series in a new direction: we killed him.”
Temple guardians of a little vanishing world, brave and full of passion, they valiantly defend the meeting places for human exchange and relationships, set in unpretentious frames, nibbled by the passing of time. As survivors on a tiny damaged raft , they face restlessness and greed, on a dangerous sea that doesn’t care about the past and its traditions, smashing together people and principles, obeying the march of progress.
Before it’s too late I shelter memories smelling of yellow paper, and “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” , like a freshly gathered broad bean listening to the gossip of old pilgrims, religiously sitting on green Formica chairs, conserving cloth in dusty trunks and expert hands. They cut cloth in the dead of night, while I preserve pure white clouds made by an ancient pink oven, as old as time ; work done by glue and saw, buds and sharp prickles, made by a real good morning and good night!
It depicts K’inich Janaab’ Pakal falling into the jaws of the earth monster, a stylized tree of life (i want to say a ceiba tree, to be exact), rising in the background. The SCUBA apparatus is the consequence of an unfortunate tangent between a leaf of the tree and Pakal’s nose.
I never saw the spaceship thing myself, but Maya iconography is not exactly widely understood
Oh it’s Maya! Sorry Egyptologists, false alarm.
Oh good! My just awake brain sat there for 5 minutes thinking “I’ve never seen Horus do that before”
I wrote a paper on this exact sarcophagus lid for an art history class
A = the world tree/axis mundi type deal. it is indeed a ceiba tree (often combined with imagery of caimans, which may be the heads spouting from the branches of tree?). it connects the realms of the cosmos, of earth, and of the underworld all together.
B = “Principal Bird Deity”. it’s a macaw perched on top of the ceiba. it’s meant to symbolize accession. macaws are often associated with accession. as Pakal dies, his son succeeds him, an event significant enough to warrant such a major deity to oversee it.
C = “Vision Serpent” maybe, given that the heads of people (ancestors? gods?) are coming out of their mouths. if they are gods, it’s probably the unnamed “Jester God” associated with rulership and K’awiil associated with royal lineage. they’re seeing Pakal off as he passes.
D = skeletal jaws of the underworld swallowing Pakal as he dies. you can see the teeth. they’re similar in imagery to the way jaguar jaws are drawn actually, and that’s probably on purpose given the associations between jaguars and royalty and divinity. the sides of the jaws morph into serpents. pretty cool. the serpent jaws here act as a portal, placing Pakal as either emerging from the portal or slipping into it. this is sorta like a rebirth deal.
E = “Cosmic Monster”, as my professor put it. when the Milky Way passes across the sky from Guatemala and Mexico it looks like a serpent turning into a tree and back (connecting serpents and the world tree concepts). this is as close as any extraterrestial shit can get to Pakal since it is based on a celestial body. The glyph for “sun” (k’in) is on its forehead, and on top of its head is an offering plate (we know this because they tend to depict the same 3 objects: a spondylus shell, stingray spine, and an object representing “way” which is a Maya concept similar to dream/sleep/death).
F = the man himself, Pakal. he’s in a state of falling, hence the odd pose. Pakal is dressed in a way to reference the unnamed “Maize God” figure, often associated with rebirth or resurrection. one could argue his pose is the way it is to resemble a baby since there’s the rebirth theme going on there. while the thing coming out of his nose could be part of the jaw (D), the interpretation i discussed in my paper was that it looked a lot like the tube spouting smoke/fire that K’awaiil has, which would make sense given the also-present theme of succession/accession.
i am NOT a professional here, i am not majoring in mesoamerican anthro or art history, but i did do well in this class and it was my final project.
here’s a cool little graphic that helps paint the picture, too, using some of the same images as the lid itself uses 🙂 i hope any of this helped or made things more clear
