The Maya devoted much stone sculpture to royal portraits, usually of men. The museum is fortunate to have two reliefs that feature noble women-this one and another, much larger, in the main corridor to your left, across from the entrance to the Asian Art galleries.
In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman's static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty whose traits are a serpent leg and grotesque head with a smoking torch above its brow (known today as God K). Further signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphic text refers to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in AD 795. We do not know whether she was a ruler or a ruler's wife or mother. Her face was deliberately damaged, perhaps in antiquity.
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<P>The Maya devoted much stone sculpture to royal portraits, usually of men. The museum is fortunate to have two reliefs that feature noble women-this one and another, much larger, in the main corridor to your left, across from the entrance to the Asian Art galleries.</p><p>In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman's static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty whose traits are a serpent leg and grotesque head with a smoking torch above its brow (known today as God K). Further signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphic text refers to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in AD 795. We do not know whether she was a ruler or a ruler's wife or mother. Her face was deliberately damaged, perhaps in antiquity.</p>
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