Term Paper on "Sarcophagus Lid"

Term Paper 6 pages (1760 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Pacal Sarcophagus

A Guide to Xibalba

I'm so glad that you and the rest of your sixth-grade class have come to the museum today because it gives you the chance to see one of the most impressive artifacts from one of the New World's classical cultures, that of the Mayan Empire. There are a number of lessons that we can learn from this sarcophagus. (I'll talk more about what a sarcophagus is in a few minutes.) We can divide this information in two separate categories, and both are important because they both tell us something important about the way in which people try to understand how life and death are connected to each other.

On the more obvious level, this artifact reveals a great deal about one era in Maya history, politics, culture, and art because it tells the story of one of the most important Maya leaders, the ruler of the city-state Palenque. But this sarcophagus lid also reveals almost as much about our own culture today (Feder, 2010, p. 208). That part may surprise you, but we'll take more about that later as well. Just as the sarcophagus lid reveals the ways in which the dead and the living were linked to each other in Maya culture (as well as the ways in which the Maya viewed the power of their rulers to be reborn), it also reveals the ways in which modern American culture borrows from the past to create stories about the future.

Let us take a closer look now at this sarcophagus lid. It is a part of the funerary equipment with which Mayan ruler Pacal (sometimes also transliterated as "Pakal") was buried. "Funerary equipment" is a way of describing everything that a person is buried with, and this is very different in different cultures. For example, in some cultures, people are buried with food so that they have something to eat in the afterlife. This may seem very strange to us, but for people in other cultures it would probably seem disrespectful -- and indeed absolutely cruel -- to allow the spirits of our loved ones to starve in the afterworld.

Many cultures, including the Maya, buried their dead in sarcophaguses, which are a form of large, stone coffin. Sarcophaguses (or sarcophagi, which is another way of spelling the plural form of the word) means "body eating stone" in Greek, which is the language from which the word came from. which also sounds rather strange to us today. However, if one thinks about the ancient world, the idea of a large stone coffin that could "eat" or dissolve a body inside of it would have made a lot of sense. Dead bodies, even the bodies of loved ones or of powerful rulers, could be dangerous to be around because they could pass diseases on to the living. Because of this it became common in many cultures to put bodies inside of some sort of coffin so that the living were protected from the dead.

It was not only the living, however, who needed to be protected. The dead also needed to be protected as they moved from the land of the living to the land of the dead. For the Maya, again as for many other civilizations, it was important to include prayers to the gods as a way to protect the spirits. That this particular sarcophagus should be so beautifully carved should not be surprising, given the fact that Pacal was such an important ruler. Pacal ruled for almost 70 years in the city-state of Palenque, his reign ending when he died in 683. He oversaw the construction of some of Palenque's most elaborate buildings, a fact that has resulted in his being one of the most famous Mayan leaders (Feder, 2010, p. 207).

His sarcophagus was not found until the middle of the last century and its discovery led to a number of speculations, prompting as many questions as it answered. However, these questions are mostly silly. But first we'll look at the sensible questions. The first of these is about the bones that were found inside the sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is clearly identifiable as belonging to Pacal through the carvings on the lid of the coffin; however, the bones inside appear to scientists as likely belonging to a much younger person (Feder, 2010, p. 206).

Pacal was about 80 when he died. In an age before dentists (and even in our own time, for that matter!) the teeth of an old man should have shown a very high degree of wear. The teeth of the skeleton in the sarcophagus appear to be from a man only half of Pacal's age. While there is no final answer to explain this, scientists now generally believe that the answer to the mystery of the too-young teeth lies in the fact that because Pacal was an elite leader, he would have been fed food that was more processed and therefore less damaging to teeth than would have been the case for the diet than most Maya had.

In addition to the skeleton that was found inside the sarcophagus, there was also a mask made up of over 300 small pieces of different types of blue and green minerals including jadeite, malachite, serpentine, amazonite, and travertine. While the mask is a piece of beautiful art, it is in some ways less interesting to scholars than the sarcophagus lid because it is the lid that contains the complex "story" (written in signs and symbols rather than in letters) of how the Maya thought that the living entered into the land of the dead (Feder, 2010, p. 208).

The sarcophagus was found in the Temple of Inscriptions, and is in fact covered with inscriptions itself. The lid depicts Pacal moving from the earth and the home of the living into Xibalba, which is the Maya afterlife or underworld. This central image are symbols (or "glyphs," which can be understood as being something between a word and a picture) that represent other important ideas in Maya religion and philosophy. These glyphs include the Sun, the Moon, the planet Venus, and a number of different star constellations. Beneath this nighttime sky is depicted the Maya water god, among whose duties is to guard Xibalba (Feder, 2010, p. 208).

This same set of symbols and glyphs tell the story of Pacal's entrance into the Underworld. When I use the word "story" here I do not mean that it is something that is not true, but rather a way of talking about something so that it makes sense to viewers, listeners, or readers. Paintings of Christ's crucifixion are a similar kind of "story," a narrative that is central to a system of belief. Because most Americans are familiar with images of Christ as a part of a contemporary religion (regardless of whether they themselves are Christians or not) we do not usually think of such images as telling the narrative of the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead. But this is what it is -- just as the images on top of Pacal's sarcophagus are a way of conveying the steps from life into death (Kubler, 1984, p. 166).

Below the images of the planetary bodies on the periphery of the sarcophagus lid is a dragon (or perhaps a snake) with its jaws opening up to receive the spirit of Pacal. This sequence of events -- the representation of the dead being "eaten" by a serpent -- has been found at other Maya sites as well as sites from the related Olmec civilization. One of the most recent sites where a similar narrative carved into stone was found was at San Bartolo, Guatemala. In each case it has been interpreted by scholars as being representative of the voyage from life to death (Laughton, 2011, p. 98).

The sarcophagus lid also contains the image of the "Cosmic Tree," which was a central idea in Maya cosmology -- or the way in which the Maya believed that the universe was constructed. The Cosmic Tree was an arboreal form that stretched from the heavens down to the underworld, where its power extended through its roots. On Pacal's sarcophagus, the Cosmic Tree (or "World Tree") grows up out of the jaws of the serpent creature (Laughton, 2011, p. 100). On top of the tree is a heaven-sent bird. Together these three images (the jaws of the serpent, which could also be seen as simply the jaws of death; the tree extending branches to the sky and roots to the earth's core; and the bird on the top of the tree) present a complex but abbreviated story about how the Maya understood the connection between life and death (Laughton, 2011, p. 102).

Death has taken Pacal like the jaws of a hungry creature snapping up a meal. But even in the middle of dying, there is a hope for both Pacal and his subjects that rebirth is possible. Every tree… READ MORE

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