Cylinder Vessel with Hero Twins and Lords of Death600–900 CE

Not on view

Maya ceramic cylinder vessel with brick-red slip, painted with hieroglyphic glyph band at rim and multi-figure narrative scene below, in cream and dark brown

Maya polychrome ceramic cylinder vessel with red ground, painted with figural scenes including a seated elaborately dressed figure and standing figures, with a band of Maya glyphs encircling the rim.

Maya ceramic cylinder vessel with polychrome slip-painted decoration in red, cream, and black; a band of hieroglyphic glyphs encircles the rim above a narrative scene depicting elaborately dressed standing figures, one holding a large circular feathered device and a staff, surrounded by serpentine forms and additional glyphic columns.

Maya ceramic cylinder vessel with red-orange slip, painted with multiple standing figures in elaborate headdresses and regalia, one holding a large circular shield; band of Maya glyphs encircles the rim.

Maya ceramic cylinder vessel with red-ground slip painting depicting seated and standing figures in elaborate regalia, flanked by Maya glyphs; band of cartouche glyphs encircles the rim.

Maya ceramic cylinder vessel with red slip ground, painted in cream and dark brown with a frieze of human and supernatural figures in animated poses, topped by a band of Maya glyphs.

Title: Cylinder Vessel with Hero Twins and Lords of Death
Culture: Maya
Place Made: Guatemala, Petén
Date Made: 600–900 CE
Medium: Slip-painted ceramic
Dimensions: Diameter: 6 1/2 in. (16.51 cm) Height: 10 3/8 in. (26.35 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost
Accession Number: M.2010.115.409
Classification: Ceramics
Collecting Area: Art of the Ancient Americas
Curatorial Notes: Two youthful figures sitting under leafy arbors receive a host of unsettling otherworldly creatures known as wayob (sing. way). These liminal and sinister beings, who in Classic Maya society shared their essential self with a human counterpart, populate primordial and sunless realms, emerging at night while their counterparts sleep. Fourteen wayob, including two skeletal beings with extruded eyeballs, crowd the vessel’s cylindrical surface. Color creates a spatial environment for the scene, conveying the dark and perilous underworld setting with a blood-red background. The leafy arbors that shelter the seated youths comprise a Classic Maya convention for the forest, the chaotic wilderness, further underscoring the fact that this mythic episode takes place outside of the moral order of the cosmos.

Alyce de Carteret

2024
Selected Bibliography: Freidel, David A., Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path. New York: W. Morrow, 1993.
Taube, Karl A. "Ancient and contemporary Maya conceptions about field and forest." In The Lowland Maya Area: Three Millennia at the Human-Wildland Interface, edited by Arturo Gómez-Pompa, Michael F. Allen, Scott L. Fedick, Juan J. Jiménez-Osornio, 461-92. Binghamton, NY: Food Products Press, 2003.
Houston, Stephen D., David Stuart, and Karl A. Taube. The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience Among the Classic Maya. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
O'Neil, Megan E. Forces of Nature: Ancient Maya Arts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Beijing Shi: Wen wu chu ban she, 2018.
Magaloni, Diana, Davide Domenici, and Alyce de Carteret. We Live in Painting: the Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
Selected Exhibition History: The Ancient Maya World: Masterworks from the Permanent Collection. Saturday, December 1, 2012- Sunday, March 2, 2014

Related Exhibitions

Cylinder Vessel with Hero Twins and Lords of Death600–900 CE

Not on view

Title: Cylinder Vessel with Hero Twins and Lords of Death
Culture: Maya
Place Made: Guatemala, Petén
Date Made: 600–900 CE
Medium: Slip-painted ceramic
Dimensions: Diameter: 6 1/2 in. (16.51 cm) Height: 10 3/8 in. (26.35 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost
Accession Number: M.2010.115.409
Classification: Ceramics
Collecting Area: Art of the Ancient Americas
Curatorial Notes: Two youthful figures sitting under leafy arbors receive a host of unsettling otherworldly creatures known as wayob (sing. way). These liminal and sinister beings, who in Classic Maya society shared their essential self with a human counterpart, populate primordial and sunless realms, emerging at night while their counterparts sleep. Fourteen wayob, including two skeletal beings with extruded eyeballs, crowd the vessel’s cylindrical surface. Color creates a spatial environment for the scene, conveying the dark and perilous underworld setting with a blood-red background. The leafy arbors that shelter the seated youths comprise a Classic Maya convention for the forest, the chaotic wilderness, further underscoring the fact that this mythic episode takes place outside of the moral order of the cosmos.

Alyce de Carteret

2024
Selected Bibliography: Freidel, David A., Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path. New York: W. Morrow, 1993.
Taube, Karl A. "Ancient and contemporary Maya conceptions about field and forest." In The Lowland Maya Area: Three Millennia at the Human-Wildland Interface, edited by Arturo Gómez-Pompa, Michael F. Allen, Scott L. Fedick, Juan J. Jiménez-Osornio, 461-92. Binghamton, NY: Food Products Press, 2003.
Houston, Stephen D., David Stuart, and Karl A. Taube. The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience Among the Classic Maya. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
O'Neil, Megan E. Forces of Nature: Ancient Maya Arts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Beijing Shi: Wen wu chu ban she, 2018.
Magaloni, Diana, Davide Domenici, and Alyce de Carteret. We Live in Painting: the Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
Selected Exhibition History: The Ancient Maya World: Masterworks from the Permanent Collection. Saturday, December 1, 2012- Sunday, March 2, 2014