Maya Art - Precious Stone and Other Sculpted Materials

Precious Stone and Other Sculpted Materials

It is remarkable that the Maya, who had no metal tools, created many objects from a very thick and dense material, jade (jadeite), particularly all sorts of (royal) dress elements such as belt ornaments, celts, ear spools, pendants, and also masks. Celts (i.e., flat, celt-shaped ornaments) were often engraved with a stela-like representation of the king. The best-known example of a mask is probably the death mask of K'inich Janaab' Pakal, ruler of Palenque; it had a "skin" made from jade and "eyes" made from mother-of-pearl and obsidian. Many stone carvings had jade inlays, and certain cylindrical vases had an outer layer of square jade discs.

Among other sculpted and engraved materials are flint, shell, and bone, often found in caches and burials. The so-called 'eccentric flints' are ceremonial objects of uncertain use, in their most elaborate forms of elongated shape with usually various heads extending on one or both sides, sometimes those of the lightning deity, more often resembling the head of the Maya maize god. Shell was often worked into small disks showing human, possibly ancestral heads and deities, and into other decorative elements. Human and animal bones were decorated with incised symbols and scenes. A collection of small and modified, tubular bones from an 8th-century royal burial under Tikal Temple I contains some of the most subtle engravings known from the Maya, including several scenes with the Tonsured maize god in a canoe.