Earliest Maya Depiction of Women
The earliest known Maya stone carving of a woman was found at a site in northern Guatemala called Naachtun. The stela is about six feet high and three feet wide, with many inscriptions, some of which have been too damaged to read. The damage was most likely caused in an attack on the city. The stela dates to 300-400AD, showing that women held positions of power early in Maya society, either as queens or deities. The stela shows the head of a woman wearing an elaborate headdress with her hands on each side holding the glyphs for “7 Black K’an,” and “9 Ajaw.” A hieroglyph above her head reads her name, Ix Tzutz Nik. This name is found on many other artifacts as well. Archaeologists do not know whether the woman is a queen of Tikal or a mythological figure, or both. The Maya later buried the monument during the 6th or 7th century near Naachtun’s temples, in a ceremony meant to honor the woman whose image is shown. The burials of monuments were usually reserved for important founders or rulers.
Read more about this topic: Women In Maya Society
Famous quotes containing the words earliest and/or women:
“I grew up confidently expecting to have a profession and earn my own living, and also confidently expecting to be married and have children. It was fifty-fifty with me. I was just as passionately determined to have children as I was to have a career. And my mother was the triumphant answer to all doubts as to the success of this double role. From my earliest memory she had more than half supported the family and yet she was supremely a mother.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others—into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one’s future.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)