Maya Polychrome Plate, Deity Head, Kill Hole
Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A broad earthenware plate with steeply flaring walls, slipped cream and painted in red, orange, and black. The central roundel holds a profile deity head in three-quarter scale: fanged mouth, scrolled snout, dotted cheek, and a sweeping feathered headdress rendered in fine dark line. A ring of black triangles frames the medallion, and the interior wall carries a broad register of abstract geometric and scroll motifs beneath a red-painted rim. A small hole drilled through the center, at the deity's eye, is the customary kill hole, opening the vessel so it could accompany the dead. Presented on a custom metal display base.
Late Classic Maya polychrome plates of this scale were serving wares for elite feasting before they became grave furniture. When interred, many were ritually "killed," a hole punched or drilled through the base to release the vessel's animating force so that it could travel with its owner. That the perforation here falls precisely on the painted deity's eye is unlikely to be accident: piercing the eye of a supernatural is a recurring gesture in Maya termination ritual.
The fanged, scroll-snouted profile with dotted cheek markings belongs to the broad family of zoomorphic supernaturals painted on Peten and adjacent lowland wares, often read as an aspect of a saurian or jaguar deity. Without an accompanying glyph band, a firm identification of the individual god is not possible.
Item #
73086
Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A broad earthenware plate with steeply flaring walls, slipped cream and painted in red, orange, and black. The central roundel holds a profile deity head in three-quarter scale: fanged mouth, scrolled snout, dotted cheek, and a sweeping feathered headdress rendered in fine dark line. A ring of black triangles frames the medallion, and the interior wall carries a broad register of abstract geometric and scroll motifs beneath a red-painted rim. A small hole drilled through the center, at the deity's eye, is the customary kill hole, opening the vessel so it could accompany the dead. Presented on a custom metal display base.
Late Classic Maya polychrome plates of this scale were serving wares for elite feasting before they became grave furniture. When interred, many were ritually "killed," a hole punched or drilled through the base to release the vessel's animating force so that it could travel with its owner. That the perforation here falls precisely on the painted deity's eye is unlikely to be accident: piercing the eye of a supernatural is a recurring gesture in Maya termination ritual.
The fanged, scroll-snouted profile with dotted cheek markings belongs to the broad family of zoomorphic supernaturals painted on Peten and adjacent lowland wares, often read as an aspect of a saurian or jaguar deity. Without an accompanying glyph band, a firm identification of the individual god is not possible.
Item #
73086
