- 255
A Large Maya Lidded blackware vessel, Early Classic, ca. A.D. 250-450
Description
Provenance
Literature
Catalogue Note
This fine blackware vessel is an important Early Classic ceramic vividly depicting the iconography of the watery Underworld of Maya mythology. The tropical and swampy environment of the lowland Maya regions, was the literal foundation for the elaborate pantheon of deities and creation myths. Hellmuth (1987:347) notes that within Early Classic art ''one cosmological locus was illustrated more than any other." The watery Underworld was a sacred place giving rise to spiritual power and cosmological order. Likewise, the amphibious creatures including members of the crocodile and iguana family, were respected for their ability to habitat both the upper and lower worlds, as were waterbirds who hunted in the air and water. These creatures, both the caiman or serpent, and the long-beaked bird, become keystones of Maya zoomorphic iconography as portrayed by the Celestial Monster, serpent monster scepter, and the Vucub Caquix Principal bird deity.
For examples of blackware lidded vessels with animal handles see (ibid.: figs. 165, 172); see also (ibid.: figs. 176-184) for the incised motifs depicting the surface of the Underworld.