New at the Museum???

 

Last Thursday, after viewing the special exhibit on sculpture from Mexico, Africa and Oceania, I wandered around the Anthropology Museum for a while.  I have been to the museum countless times, and, of course, there have been changes since I first came here in the 1970s.  But as I went through a few of the halls this time, it seemed that there were quite a few items that I had never seen before.  I suppose that like most great museums, there is a vast collection of items that are in storage, and that from time to time some of those are brought out.  Also, new archaeological discoveries are constantly being made,and additions are made to the museum's holdings.  I asked a guard in one of the galleries if there were new objects on display.  He said, there might be items that had been on tour to other museums that had returned home.  But these were things that I had never noticed over years of visits, so that could not have been the case.  Anyway, for whatever reason, here are some things that I do not remember seeing before...

In the Mayan Hall

This fragment of a stone tablet records the death of Kan Balam II, the son of Pakal, the great king of the Mayan city of Palenque.  (We know this from the hieroglyphics on the stone, which archaeologists are able to decipher.)  The figure might be of Kan Balam himself.  He is shown kneeling and holding a plate with an offering.

"Stela" (plural "stelae") is an archaeological term for an upright slab of carved stone usually with an inscription commemorating some event.  Numerous large stelae have been found at the ruins of Mayan cities, and there are several on display in the museum.  However, there was a set of three in the Mayan Hall that I had not noticed before.  They had obviously been recently placed there since two of them still had plastic wrapping around the base, and only one of them had a descriptive sign.

This one is identified as coming from the Mayan city of Sayil on the Yucatan Peninsula.  It shows a noble performing a ritual dance.

This carving is from a door frame from the ruins of Yaxchilán in the rainforest of the state of Chiapas.  

 Although badly eroded, you can make out the figures of two nobles.  They have probably just performed a ritual of auto-sacrifice by perforating a part of the body such as the earlobe, tongue or foreskin.  These rituals were performed while under the influence of hallucinatory drugs.

Their blood from the ritual was collected onto bark paper which was then burned as an offering to the gods.  Rising from the smoke of the offering is the face of an ancestor whom they have invoked.

This carved tablet from Chichén Itzá shows two men, probably ceremonial dancers, dressed as birds.

 

From the Aztec (or more correctly Mexica) Hall

This large sculpture of a female nude was done in the city of Texcoco, an ally of the Aztecs.  Although the face is inexpressive and mask-like, the body is quite realistic.

This stone sculpture portrays an "ahuítzotl", a mythological animal in the service of the rain god Tlaloc.  Its role was to trap men who had fallen into the water and carry them to the house of Tlaloc where they would be the god's servants.

This Aztec sculpture portrays a man wearing a jaguar helmet.

From the Teotihuacan Hall

There was an entire case I had not seen before filled with elaborate braziers used for burning incense.

Whether all of these items are new or not, continued visits to the superb Anthropology Museum are in order.