Masterpieces of Copan Sculpture

For display in one area of the Copan Sculpture Museum (exhibits 16-19), my colleagues and I selected a sample of works that we considered masterpieces (94). Their aesthetic quality, artistic attributes, and iconographic themes make them exemplary of sculptural artistry at Copan. As exciting new sculptures are discovered, the exhibited pieces may be rotated to accommodate them. Continuing beyond these four niche exhibits on the museum's lower level (exhibits 24-29), we placed other sculptures illustrating a variety of stylistic developments in Copan's history and highlighting the creativity of the sculpture genre in both form and meaning (95).

Exhibit 16: Collection of Ajaw Sculptures

Exhibit 16 displays examples of what is called the ajaw symbol, a sculptural facial motif found frequently at Copan and other Maya sites (96, 97). The word ajaw is a title for a ruler and also the twentieth day name in the Maya calendar. The symbol's appearance as a puffy face has been interpreted in many ways over the years. One early Western observer of these jovial faces described them as monkeys' faces. This seemed to fit with the hieroglyphic day sign ajaw, which occasionally appeared as a howler monkey within a cartouche. Other researchers suggested that ajaw motifs should be understood as bones, not as monkey heads. As more ajaw sculptures became known, sometimes as appendages on headdresses and borders, they clearly needed a reevaluation.

In the 1980s, phonetic decipherment of the hieroglyphs opened the way for another interpretation of the ajaw symbols. According to this line of reasoning, the ajaw face is derived from a flower sign, or nik. The sign nik is often coupled with the sign sak, meaning white. The combination sak nik, "white flower," is a known metaphor for "soul" among the Maya, so the ajaw sign may symbolize the soul. Flowers embody a spiritual force equated with the soul, and ungerminated maize kernels and fruit pits, the sources of plant regeneration, embody the unborn soul. These seeds are described as "little bones," or huesos, in many Mesoamerican cultures and, like bones, are perceived as containing the life force of animate beings. Perhaps the association between bones and souls explains the similarity the ajaw motif also bears to a skull.

Why would flower souls be depicted in grand scale all over buildings in Copan? The ancient Maya, like their modern counterparts, were concerned with the soul from before birth until after death. The souls of newborn babies were fragile and needed to be watched closely. The souls of ordinary people were at constant risk of being lost or damaged. After a person's death, beings in the supernatural world tended to the soul until it was ready to be reborn in another individual. The regeneration of plants, especially maize and fruits, paralleled the cycle of human life. The abundance of ajaw motifs on Copan's sculptural façades suggests that they were reminders of the life cycle and of the ancestors' souls waiting to be reborn. The epigrapher David Stuart has suggested that ajaw, when used as the title of a ruler, means "he who shouts." The open, toothy mouths of many ajaw sculptures, as well as their monkey associations, lend support to that interpretation. Perhaps the word was used interchangeably for shouting rulers, howling monkeys, and the soul's outcry at the moment of rebirth.

Exhibit 17: Two Heads and a Monster Mask

Exhibit 17 displays two oversize, carved human heads and a grotesque mosaic mask (98).The nearly identical heads are each carved from a single stone, and each wears a zoomorphic headdress. Their serene countenances are typical of the carving style used during the eighth and ninth centuries at Copan. Sculptural patterns there suggest that these heads were parts of either torsos or full bodies that once adorned a prominent building façade. Unfortunately, no information exists about where or when, in the early twentieth century, they were collected and placed in storage. No other heads like them have appeared in excavations in the Principal Group, so perhaps they came from an outlying site in the Copan Valley. Their facial features, such as the prominent nose and chin and the shallow, slightly skewed eyes, are less refined than the Classic Maya features that typify sculptures from the Principal Group. A good example of the latter is a beautiful head from Structure 20, about the same size as the two heads in the sculpture museum, that is displayed in the Copan Regional Museum of Archaeology in Copán Ruinas (99).

The mosaic mask in exhibit 17 was excavated from the southwest corner of Structure 22. Whereas human forms at Copan were generally carved almost fully in the round and placed in roof crests or niches, this mask shows how extremely high relief was achieved within wall courses. Cut stones were blocked out in rough forms and placed in the walls during construction. Massive tenons on the backs of the blocks were needed to anchor them into the walls. Later, sculptors finished the images and added details. This practice enabled those of us studying the sculpture to match up the carved lines and rejoin the fallen pieces with certainty.

Skeletal features such as the fleshless nose and mouth on this piece indicate that it was a death mask. Possibly it served as an underworld support for a figure, much the way a similar carving does on a bench inside Structure 22. There, a skeletal death's head supports the supernatural sky bearers, or bacab figures, that hold a celestial monster arching across the doorway. Structure 22 was laden with mountain, or witz, masks on all sides, so this singular death mask was probably part of an isolated feature on the façade. Some much larger blocks with similar features were found during excavations at the rear of the building. These pieces have not been reassembled, but they might form a similar mask that had larger proportions and faced north.

Exhibit 19: Waterbird and Streams from the "Híjole" Structure.

The amazing sculpture of a waterbird at the center of exhibit 19 is the highest-relief carving so far uncovered at Copan. It was unearthed along with what appear to be "water cascade" sculptures during tunnel excavations into the northeast corner of the pyramidal base of Structure 26 (100). A small, buried building was found at this spot and named "Híjole," an exclamation of surprise, because both the building and the flamboyant sculptures were completely unexpected. When ancient people buried the Híjole structure, they placed these sculptures on or near a bench at the west end of the building's interior (101). All the sculptures were then partially broken or demolished, perhaps as part of a termination ritual for this and other, earlier buildings beneath Structure 26. Similar fragments of waterbirds were discovered during excavations on the exterior of the final-phase construction of Structure 22, to the northeast of Structure 26. The buried bird sculptures probably once adorned an earlier version of Structure 22, given the continuity of themes in each building complex. Structure 22 is considered a representation of the "First True Mountain of Creation," a place of fertility and the rebirth of maize.

The dramatic form of the bird, carved from a single stone, is a remarkable sculptural achievement. The soft volcanic tuff from Copan's hillsides lent itself to the sculptor's style of fluid carving with open contours. The Híjole pieces all exhibit multiple projecting elements that give the works an airy, naturalistic quality. Many other small, flaring fragments like these, broken at the time they were buried, have been excavated and restored onto the sculptures. The waterbird and cascades in exhibit 19 are part of a larger complex of water symbolism best represented on Structure 32 (exhibit 49), described in chapter 11.

Exhibit 20
Toads

Toad sculptures were popular in rural areas around the Copan Valley, and it is thought that they were part of an early folk religion or fertility cult that flourished into the Late Classic period (102). The largest known toad sculpture in the city of Copan itself is one called El Rey Sapo ("the king toad"), which sits on the hillside site called Los Sapos, to the south of the Principal Group (103). It is carved into a natural rock outcrop along with other animals and a sculpture that seems to depict a person in the act of bloodletting by penis perforation. Although no date is carved into the outcrop, it is thought to be a Late Classic shrine on the basis of excavated material from the adjoining site.

Smaller toad sculptures have turned up from all parts of the val- ley but have lost their original proveniences over the years. The largest, most comical freestanding version, displayed in exhibit 20 with several others (but not illustrated here), was found in 1993 dur- ing excavations directed by E. Wyllys (Will) Andrews V, of Tulane University, in the residential compound of the last ruler of Copan, south of the Acropolis near Structure 86. Its whimsical smile and arms folded over a pudgy belly have endeared this toad to modern archaeologists and visitors as surely as they did to the ancient inhabitants of the ruler's compound.

Exhibit 21
Stone Incensarios

Archaeologists working at Copan have found many large vessels hollowed out of large blocks of tuff, which they have dubbed incensarios, or censers (104). Two of them are displayed in exhibit 21. Because these vessels show no direct evidence of having been used to burn incense, an alternative explanation is that they held offerings of liquids or foods during rituals. In contrast, the abundant clay incensarios discovered throughout the ruins-in burials and offerings, for example-do show evidence of burned substances. Some scholars suggest that clay censers were placed inside the stone containers, and smoke escaped through small openings, or smoke holes, in the larger vessels. The stone containers, many of them with elaborate lids, appear also to have functioned as portable monuments. Several of them have hieroglyphic inscriptions on either their walls or their lids. David Stuart has deciphered a glyph from these inscriptions that reads sak lak tuun, "white stone vessel," which he believes was the ancient Maya name for the incensarios (105).

Researchers believe that the great majority of the stone containers known from Copan were commissioned during the reign of Ruler 16, Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat. Dates in the inscriptions generally refer to the creation of the vessel and its ritual dedication during the years of his reign. Many sak lak tuun, both whole and fragmentary, have been found sitting on the ground near buildings and platforms throughout the Acropolis, sometimes on or near a plain, circular, pedestal base. It is thought that they were left where they were used during ceremonies held at the Principal Group. Two platform buildings across the East Court plaza from each other on the Acropolis, Structures 17 and 25, were both heavily covered with the stone containers (106). Structure 18, abutting the Structure 17 platform on the southern edge of the East Court, was Yax Pasaj's funerary chamber, and the sak lak tuun might have held offerings left by visitors for the deceased ruler. I think Structure 25, on the opposite side, was a dance platform near Structure 22A, and the containers there might have been used for offerings or for serving food during the feasting associated with performances.

Some of the vessels have deep cavities, and others are relatively shallow. The shallow ones might have held clay censers in which ritual participants burned offerings of copal, the resin of certain tropical trees. The containers with deeper cavities might have been those used for food offerings or storage. Some of the deep incensarios, including one of those displayed in exhibit 21, are decorated with cacao pods and have ornate lids carved to represent miniature cacao trees (107). This suggests that they were used to hold offerings of cacao beans or drinks made from cacao. Others, featuring maize plants and mountain effigies, might have contained maize beverages or kernels. The Maya ritually consumed both maize and cacao beverages and offered them to the gods. Epigrapher and iconography specialist Simon Martin identified the dried maize plant in Maya art as the regenerative fertilizer for fruit tree plantings, especially cacao trees. This relationship served to spiritually embody the soul of the maize god in chocolate drinks made from the bean. Mountains and caves were important places where humans could communicate with their ancestors and the supernatural world. Stone vessels incarnating cave or mountain deities created a portable sacred landscape for ceremonial and ritual offerings wherever they were transported.

Exhibit 22: Macaw Ballcourt Bench Markers

Copan's ballcourt is famous for its elegant architecture and setting (108). When people think of the Mesoamerican ball game, the Copan court and the famous court at Chichen Itza in Yucatán often come to mind. Unlike the Yucatecan version, with its stone rings for scoring, the Copan ballcourt featured stone macaw heads as side-alley, or bench, markers for points when players deflected the rubber ball. Three of the bird heads were placed on the sloping bench on either side of the playing alley, one at the center and one at each end, presumably for scoring purposes. They mirrored the whole macaws with outstretched wings that appeared on the building's upper façades (see chapter 8, exhibit 34).

The ballcourt underwent four renovations or stages of construction over time, which archaeologists have labeled Ballcourts I, IIa, IIb, and III. Ballcourt III is the version visible at Copan today. The earlier, buried versions of the ballcourt were found in the 1930s when the Carnegie Institution of Washington began reconstructing the final-phase ballcourt. With each construction phase, a new set of macaw markers was carved and inset into the sloped playing benches, and the markers from the previous phase were removed.

It is possible that markers were sometimes broken during games and later replaced with similar but not always identical versions. However the sculptures became broken, the pieces were discarded and often thrown in with construction fill. In one instance, the tenon of a broken macaw head (not displayed) was found in a tunnel beneath Structure 26. The huge tenon was later hoisted over to another tunnel excavation and shown to fit into a hole in the early Ballcourt IIb bench, from which it had been removed in ancient times.

A macaw head game marker from each construction phase of the ballcourt is displayed in exhibit 22, showing the progression of styles and artistic skill during Copan's Classic period (109-112). The earliest versions are small and blocky; one has holes gouged in it to indicate the wrinkled skin of the macaw's face. The larger, more naturalistic heads are later and reflect the flamboyant carving style used during the reign of Waxaklajun Ubaah K'awiil, Ruler 13. With the exception of the one displayed in the museum, all the Ballcourt III macaw heads are visible at the site, restored in the 1930s to their original places along the playing walls. These enormous macaw Copan, La Unión and heads have counterparts at only two sites near Asunción Mita.

The head from Ballcourt IIb shown in exhibit 22 was one of two unearthed by the Carnegie expedition (see 111). Until it was installed in the museum it had been lying underneath a large guanacaste tree across the plaza from the ballcourt and the Hieroglyphic Stairway. In 1986-87, Bill Fash and his students discovered other, earlier markers from Ballcourts I and IIa buried inside a room under the west side of Structure 26. The room was part of a structure nicknamed "Papagayo" that was built over during the reign of Waxaklajun Ubaah K'awiil. When Papagayo and the neighboring ballcourt were buried. the macaw heads were deposited inside the room, probably as part of the termination ritual (113). Stela 63 (exhibit 30), which had originally been erected at the rear of the room, and the upper surface of a hieroglyphic bench in front of it were also found broken and burned. One of the macaw heads on display was found on top of the burned stone bench and still has a chunk of carbon adhering to its beak. This evidence is left untouched for visitors to see as part of the archaeological record.

Exhibits 24 & 25: Structure 29, Head and Death Mask

Structure 29 at Copan is an L-shaped building in the royal residential area known as El Cementerio, or Group 10L-2, directly south of the Acropolis below Structure 16. It had nine interior niches, perhaps for offerings or statues, but no sleeping benches, the usual hallmark of a residential building. For this reason archaeologists refer to it as a shrine structure (114).

Excavators, students, and architectural restorers worked with me to reassemble the abundant sculpture fallen from the exterior façades of Structure 29 (see chapter 11, exhibit 52), revealing a pattern that repeated on all sides. Its motifs included 10 solar cartouches, each carried on the shoulders of a supernatural figure, 13 half-quatrefoil niches spaced along the molding between the cartouches, and numerous S-shaped scrolls representing clouds or smoke. The head of one of the supernatural figures is displayed in the museum as exhibit 24, without the cartouche. The iconographic theme appears to be celestial; the 10 solar cartouches and 13 niches are relevant to the diurnal passage of the sun and the Maya belief in 13 levels of the heavens. Because solar cartouches often contain images of ancestors in Maya art, they may mark this building as an ancestor shrine.

Structure 29 rests on a low, broad platform with access by staircases on the eastern and southern sides. On the corners of the platform facing northeast and southeast, two large death masks, found fallen from their positions, marked the space as an abode of the deceased. One of these ominous creatures has been reassembled in exhibit 25 (115). Note the plain eyes, important pieces that could easily have been overlooked if they had not been carefully excavated as part of the group of sculptures forming this particular mosaic.

Exhibits 26 & 27: Human Figures in the Round

Depictions of the human form fully in the round are artistic as well as intellectual achievements in any society. Although examples are rarely found in the Maya area, many come from Olmec sites in Tabasco and Veracruz, Mexico, and from much later Aztec ruins in the Valley of Mexico. Stylistically the handful of Copan examples are closely related to the Olmec carvings, even though the Olmec were geographically distant and flourished some 1,200 years earlier. Small jade statuettes, first carved during Olmec times but later made and prized by the Maya in the Preclassic and Early Classic periods, might have served as the inspiration for the life-size Copan figures. The rigidly seated figures, each carved from a single block, are frequently depicted crossed-legged, hands on or directly in front of their knees, sometimes holding objects in their hands. Scholars often refer to Olmec figures in similar postures as priests or "mediators"-those who communicate with the supernatural realm. The Olmec sculptures' realistic features illuminate the spiritual qualities integrated into the sculptures, which the renowned art historian Beatriz de la Fuente described as "the human form in which divine power has a seat."

Exhibit 26 shows the earliest representation of a seated figure fully in the round known at Copan (116). Ricardo Agurcia found it in a tunnel excavation beneath Structure 16 of the Acropolis. Stratigraphically it dates to about A.D. 550, although it could have been carved much earlier and buried only then. The piece is remarkable for the sculptor's attempt to carve in this style, but the genre seems still to have been in a formative stage. The figure's arms are noticeably short in proportion to the rest of the body, and the graceful pose and more naturalistic musculature of later versions are not in evidence. The body is covered in light red pigment, and the figure wears a sectioned shell pendant around its neck. Interestingly, the rigid arms and forward tilt of the torso reflect the characteristic posture for this category of figure dating back to Olmec times. Another Maya version from about the same time as the Copan image is the Early Classic seated figure referred to as the "Man of Tikal," from that ancient city in Guatemala (117).

In the plaza to the east of the Structure 29 ancestor shrine at Copan, two large, seated figures carved in the round once sat together in the grass (118). Broken limbs and missing heads, removed long ago, left them aesthetically unappealing to scavengers and scholars alike, so they went relatively ignored in modern times. Their posture, with crossed legs and pudgy bellies, led to their being compared to Buddha sculptures from Southeast Asia, although no direct connection exists. Carved at least 200 years after the statue in exhibit 26, they were two of the last seated figures left associated 118. Seated figures in the grass in the plaza near Structure 29, 1977. PHOTOGRAPH BY JEAN PIERRE COURAU, COURTESY IHAH ARCHIVES, COPAN. with the shrine, too battered and heavy to merit being carted away. In 1990, don Daniel Lorenzo, an older workman from Copan, told us that in his youth, some 65 years earlier, people had called this area "Plaza de los Muñecos," or "Plaza of the Dolls," and it was littered with crossed-legged statues of all sizes.

One of the seated Structure 29 figures is displayed in exhibit 27, with a head next to the body but unattached (119). The head fragment was found during tunnel excavations beneath Structure 32, across the plaza from Structure 29. How the head found its way into that structure's fill is a mystery. As is the case with many sculptures from the Olmec area, the seated figures from Copan are almost exclusively found decapitated. The Maya saw decapitating a statue as a means of destroying its spirit, or ch'ulel. This is why we find many figures without their heads. Another example is the well-known escribano, or scribe, found with its body and head broken, each part buried separately at Group 9N-8, Las Sepulturas. It is now displayed in the Copan Regional Museum of Archaeology with its head reattached to its body (see 164). In contrast, we decided not to reattach the head of the Structure 29 figure but to leave it separate as a testimony to this practice. Even so, the possibility that in other cases vandals removed the heads of surface sculptures in recent times cannot be ruled out.

If the seated figures are representations of powerful personages, then we can speculate that their strengths and skills were ritually killed when the figure, or part of it, was buried. This might have coincided with the death of the person it represented or with the death of the statue's owner. Perhaps someday we will understand whether the statues represented deceased ancestors, patron gods, or images of divine rulers or priests. It is even conceivable that intruders deliberately decapitated the sculptures in an effort to vanquish their enemies and destroy a source of their authority.

Exhibit 29: Tuun Elements from a Royal Residence

At Copan's royal residential compound, many household structures were adorned with mosaic sculpture façades. Structure 41 sits at the southern edge of the group, facing west onto Plaza B. Excavated in 1992 by Will Andrews and his students, it is a long building with several rooms, each having individual sleeping benches (120). By all evidence, the structure served as living quarters for a segment of the royal family. A mosaic façade once decorated the exterior of the central section of the building. The predominant motifs, presumed to be from the upper register, form stepped designs with beaded clusters in their centers. I interpret these stepped forms, refit by Jodi Johnson, as stylized representations of dripwater formations found in caves (121). The interior beaded clusters with wavy strands label the formations as "water-stones," or stalactites. They are read as either witz (mountain) cave symbols or glyphically as tuun, stone. Ethnographic accounts describe Maya people collecting pure water in caves for ceremonial use in foods, ritual beverages, and curing rites. The tuun signs on Structure 41 might have symbolically transformed the house into a cave dwelling. It is likely that the occupants collected water during the rainy season from the stone drains found in debris collapsed from the roof.

The roof ornaments on this building are also in keeping with the cave or mountain theme. Stone-carved maize sprouts set vertically into the roof would have appeared to be growing out of the structure. According to Maya myths, humans found the first maize kernels beneath a stone inside a mountain cave. The iconography on Structure 41 seems to recount the maize creation story in a diminutive version of Structure 22 (see also chapter 8, exhibits 39–41).