A Maya Vase from the Ik Site

Abstract

In May 1895 Teobert Maler visited the site of Motul de San Jose, a Maya ruin near Lake Flores, Peten, Guatemala. His report of a stela found at the site, which showed two rulers with great headdresses facing each other, was published by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University in I9Io.1 The physical features of these rulers are now recognized as resembling the figures on ceramic vases from this area. The publication of this portrait in stone probably provided the outside world's first view of a Maya now known as the Fat Cacique. The glyph blocks on the stela are quite eroded, but the Ik emblem glyph (an emblem glyph is a unique device associated with a specific site) is discernible (fig. I). In a seminal paper in I959 Heinrich Berlin showed that certain glyphs could be related to particular cities.2 Since Berlin's paper, much work has been done to clarify the many aspects of the form that the emblem glyphs take. In most cases, the glyph has a central icon unique to the site. This icon is surmounted by two glyphs that read ah po, lord or ruler (fig. 2).3 This combination is preceded on the left by a symbol made up of a crescent of dots that used to be known as the water group but is now recognized as meaning blood in the context of blood lineage.4Joyce Marcus cited the Ik emblem glyph with a question mark in 1976, attributing it possibly to the site of Motul de San Jose.5 Peter Mathews, however, has now definitely recognized it as that of Motul de San Jose.6