We describe a remarkable artifact discovered during our 2015 excavations at the Maya site of Nim li Punit, Belize. It is a T-shaped jade pectoral worn on the chest by ancient Maya kings during rites in which they scattered copal incense (Figure 1). These rituals are described or depicted on six carved stone monuments (stelae) at the site. What is more, two stelae at the site depict rulers wearing the pectoral. The reverse side of the jade contains a long historical hieroglyphic text. Had the piece been recovered by illegal means and ended up in a private collection, much of the text would make little sense and it could not possibly be ascribed to Nim li Punit. The priceless worth of the Nim li Punit pectoral, therefore, lies not only in its hieroglyphic inscription but also in its known archaeological context and contemporary images of its use. We briefly describe that context and present a translation of the important text on the jade pectoral, which we interpret as a “wind jewel.”
The discovery of Stela 87 in situ in a secondary context, as a reused element of sacralization in a possibly royal residence from the Early Classic, allows us to locate the time of the original function as a stela in the Late Preclassic. It is in the Late Preclassic that the image and the text with 4 glyphic signs allude to the ruler represented there. It is in the early part of the Late Preclassic that stelae at Tak’alik Ab’aj and other early cities represent their rulers, still without a long count date. This was implemented in the second part of the Late Preclassic, of which a good example is Stela 5 (126 ad). For this reason, the iconography and writing of Estela 87 adds another exponent and opportunity, particularly for the Pacific Coast region, to the study of the still small universe of early texts, and more precisely, of the first part of the Late Preclassic (100 BC-50 ad) (Schieber de Lavarreda, 2020a). It is this opportunity that motivated the present collaborative study.
Spanish priests burned hundreds of images of idols, cult objects, and manuscripts with Mayan hieroglyphs following the conquest of the Yucatan Peninsula, convinced that this would encourage the indigenous population to renounce their ancient beliefs and turn to the Christian God. In so doing they destroyed the memory of a written culture that had existed for over two thousand years. Only four Maya manuscripts—the so-called codices—survived this missionary zeal and the tropical climate of the Yucatan, and these are today kept in museums and libraries in Mexico City, Madrid, Paris, and Dresden. Unlike hieroglyphic texts on stone monuments they do not relay historical events, but instead are mainly divinatory and related to the 260-day Tzolk’in calendar, holding predictive information about the success or failure of everyday activities on favourable or unfavourable days. The author uses a farmers’ almanac from the Dresden Codex to explain the function of Maya calendars, to discuss the significance of time, and to reconstruct how Mayan calendar priests would read daily predictions in the correlated images and texts and apply them to daily practice.
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