An unusual and puzzling object, this carved limestone sphere features a portrait carved in relief on top, four incised cartouches around the sides, and a flattened bottom that forms its base. The portrait appears to depict the head of an ancestor, whose jeweled breath emanates from his mouth. His elaborate headdress includes a number of fantastic elements, such as a serpent with a shark’s tooth, that spell his name. The four incised cartouches depict different personages, ancestral and divine. In one, a figure whose body is marked with dark spots, a characteristic associated with Huun Ajaw, one of the Maya “Hero Twins,” raises a stone above his head. Moving counterclockwise around the sphere, the next cartouche depicts an old man with fishy attributes, including a watery spiral that forms his eye and a fin at the back of his head. In the next, a human head appears in the open mouth of a serpent with a shark’s tooth, the same elements that appear on the top of the sphere in the ancestor’s headdress. The final cartouche features a personage whose voluminous hair is bedecked with jewels.
This quartet of characters forms an Early Classic (c. 250–600) text, which, though partially undeciphered, can be read as a dedication of the stone sphere by its owner, the depicted ancestor. The first cartouche names a stone-raising event (k’al-tuun) used to describe the dedication of stelae or stone monuments. The subsequent three cartouches name the owner of the sphere as an ancestor (mam), provide his personal name, and give his title as the lord of an unknown city in the Classic Maya lowlands. The final cartouche resembles later versions of the Emblem Glyph (i.e., a glyph that denotes a political lineage associated with a Classic Maya city) of Tikal, a major political center in the region, though there may be other possible readings. Given this inscription, it stands to reason that the sphere once stood in a place of importance, perhaps raised upon an altar.
Alyce de Carteret
2024
