Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Kings: The Politics of Belief on a Classi Maya Lintel (11.01.17)
Lecture by Stephen Houston Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences, Departments of Archeology and Anthropology, Brown University. Professor Houston’s latest work, entitled “Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Kings: The Politics of Belief on a Classic Maya Lintel” covers a set of monuments that graft Maya dynastic politics onto concepts of sun, moon, seasons, and other solar patterns. Among the most potent images in the Maya world are those that fuse dynastic needs with mythic verities. Kings and nobleman come to discharge, or are seen to discharge, roles and duties set in the remote past. Expansive beings, the gods themselves, undertake tasks that humans can emulate. Through deity impersonation, those same people become one with supernatural figures. A compact illustration of these themes is a set of lintels taken over 50 years ago from what is now the Republic of Guatemala. For the most part, the carvings have languished in obscurity, only to re-emerge, after decades, in the recent past. A fresh set of images and technical assays permits a re-examination of their content, in sculptures commissioned for an unknown site under the control of the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. One carving in particular, to be studied closely here, grafts the supernatural and the political in a work that exemplifies Classic Maya fusions of identity. In doing so, it engenders a sense of inevitability, likening dynastic statecraft, hierarchy, and acts of building to the cosmic order of gods. Hosted by BU Program in Scripture and the Arts.
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