Following Odysseus Not the end of the world Amarna city of light ...

Mayan archaeologyMayanMurray Eiland says the Mayancalendar has been misinterpreted,daysso we need not prepare for the endof the world after all3The popular imaginationhas been darkly capturedby the fact that the ancientMayan calendar comes toan end on this year’s winter solstice,21 December. But what exactly doesthis date, which was singled out bythe Maya, signify? Was there reallya unified Mayan world view culminatingin a catastrophe?What scholars think of this theoryis comprehensively covered in anew exhibition, entitled Maya 2012:Lords of Time, currently on showat the University of PennsylvaniaMuseum of Archaeology andAnthropology in Philadelphia. Itruns until January 2013, just tomake the point.A team from the Penn Museumwas actively involved in excavationsat Copan in western Honduras. TheEarly Copan Acropolis Programran from 1989 until 2003. Duringthe Classical Mayan period (AD250-900) Copan, now a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site, was an importantcapital city.Impressive architectural ruins stillremains. The acropolis is the mainroyal complex, and extensive excavationhas yielded solid informationabout the rulers whose nameswere recorded on Altar Q up to severalhundred years later. The firststructures of stone and adobe dateto the 5th century AD, when kingK’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ establishedthe dynasty.From the beginning, the Mayawere intimately concerned with thepassage of time, and searched formeaning in natural cycles. Manystone monuments erected by kingsincluded calendars. Mesoamericanbooks that survive are, in part,devoted to numbers. The DresdenCodex (a book of Mayan astronomydating from the 11th or 12thcentury) is awash with bar-and-dot1. This head at Copan,in Honduras, probablyrepresents one ofthe progenitor gods.Photograph:Barry Brukoff.2. Temple 22 at Copanis dedicated to theMaize God. The toprepresents the sky; thesides are supportedby two old gods;and the skulls atthe base representthe underworld.Photograph:Barry Brukoff.3. Deer effigy vessel,circa 437 AD, fromthe Hunal Tomb,Copan. It once held afood offering madewith cacao beans.Photograph:Kenneth Garrett.2numerals. Since the deciphermentof Mayan text, it has also becomeclear that there is no clear line dividingart from mathematics and manyrepresentations of supernatural figuresalso seem to represent divisionsof time. Ancient cultures from1around the world conceive of daysand months as deities, but the Mayatook this to extremes. The sky wasregarded as the home of perfection,while the underworld was ruled bydeath. A paradox is that it was theunderworld that produced the firsthumans, water and plants.Existence was seen as cyclical, abalance between life and death and,at the heart of the cycle was knowledge,with four old men (portrayedas living stones) holding up the skyto prevent it from crashing down onto the earth. Since the Mayan wordtun meant ‘stone’ or ‘rock’, as wellas ‘year’, so their monumental stonecalendars also reflected those fourold men holding up the sky.Although calendars are thoughtto have been developed by theOlmec, it appears that the Mayawere particularly concerned withaccuracy, and theirs (along withlater Aztec examples) are the bestknown. Colonial-period sources,and Late Classic and Post-Classictraditions, suggest that the godItzamna brought the knowledge ofcalendars, along with writing, to34Minerva November/December 2012