Maya belt plaques were decorative and functional pendants worn by ancient

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...

ajaw Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya political title attested from epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the ''tzolkʼin'', the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's ''kʼatun''-ending rituals would fal ...

ob'' (rulers) to validate their rulership through referencing major deities and important ancestors. They can be seen as significant elements of the costumes of rulers on

stela A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

e and in other representations found in

ancient Maya art Ancient Maya art is the visual arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture made up of a great number of small kingdoms in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions e ...

. These plaques, which hung from belts, were used during rituals to memorialize important events and dates. Leiden Plate (Frontal Design Linework)

Description

Belt plaques were usually carved from

jadeite Jadeite is a pyroxene mineral with composition sodium, Naaluminium, Alsilicon, Si2oxygen, O6. It is hard (Mohs hardness of about 6.5 to 7.0), very tough, and dense, with a specific gravity of about 3.4. It is found in a wide range of colors, bu ...

, which was a precious stone because of it had to be traded from the

Motagua River The Motagua River () is a river in Guatemala. It rises in the western highlands of Guatemala where it is also called Río Grande, and runs in an easterly direction to the Gulf of Honduras. The final few kilometres of the river form part of the ...

in Guatemala, making this stone a precious and valuable material. On one side of the plaque was a beautifully decorated ruler with a left-facing profile and on the other side was a double-column hieroglyphic inscription explaining the significance of the plaque. They display rulers on their inauguration, important calendar dates and ancestral and deity worship.

Interpretations

David Mora-Marin asserts that wearing these belts were based on "symbolic (ideology and ritual) and objective (staple and wealth) sources of power." The ancient Maya stimulated all senses of the human body, the natural world and the invisible world. The sounds of the plaques hitting together would have made a tinkling sounds, which would have been especially noticeable during dance rituals. Maya rulers were seen as divine through ancestry and closest to the gods, therefore, wearing these belts during rituals and death was a way of communicating and celebrating the gods and their ancestors.

Examples

The most famous example is the Leiden Plaque (sometimes referred to as the Leiden Plate), discovered in 1864 in Bahia de Graciosa in northern Guatemala and named for its location in the collection of the National Museum of Ethnology in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Dated from the Early Classic period and is believed to have come originally from the central lowlands

Petén Basin The Petén Basin is a geographical subregion of Mesoamerica, primarily located in northern Guatemala within the Department of El Petén, and into Campeche state in southeastern Mexico. During the Late Preclassic and Classic periods of pre-Columb ...

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

, more specifically, the Maya site of

Tikal Tikal () (''Tik’al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Co ...

. It is an important artifact to ancient Maya archaeology because it has one of the earliest known Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. Maya belt plaques can also be seen in the costumes of Maya

ob (rulers) on the stelae of sites such as

Copán Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. This ancient Maya city mirrors the beauty of the physical landscape in which it flourished—a fert ...

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

Notes

References

* * * *{{cite journal , last1=Taube , first1=Karl A. , title=The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion , journal=Ancient Mesoamerica , date=2005 , volume=16 , issue=1 , pages=23–50 , doi=10.1017/S0956536105050017 , id={{ProQuest, 196682572 , jstor=26309392 , s2cid=161573832 Maya civilization