The proximity of prisoners depicted in their vulnerable states would have been even more striking to viewers. On Piedras Negras stelae from the early seventh to late eighth centuries, captives are shown sitting or kneeling at the base of the warrior monuments. On K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s Stela 26, Itzam K’an Ahk I’s Stela 35, K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s Stelae 4 and 7, and Itzam K’an Ahk II’s Stela 9, the captives sit or kneel on the same ground level as the ruler. Although most stelae were installed on small platforms, people could stand near or just below the monuments, and living prisoners may have been posed next to them, such that their bodies would have been close to or at the same level as the portrayed captives.
In some cases, sculptors highlighted the proximity and assimilation of viewer, performer, or prisoner to the portrayed captives by depicting them on a lower level congruent with that of the viewer.16 For example, on the front of Stela 8, which
Bears an enormous image of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II dressed in Teotihuacan-inspired warrior costume, two captives kneel on a step below the upright ruler; in fact, they kneel on the same level on which the observer stands (fig. 2.13).17 The disparate levels in the image—especially in relation to its ambient space— further emphasized a living person’s assimilation to the humiliated captives and distance from the ruler, who towers over all of them.
Figure 2.13. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 8, ca. 724-29 CE. Photograph combines images from Teobert Maler (1901) and Ian Graham, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 43, Stuart and Graham (2003), Peabody Museum Press.
Figure 2.14. Detail, Piedras Negras Stela 8, limestone, ca. 724-29 ce. Detail of drawing of front by David Stuart and Ian Graham, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, Piedras Negras, reproduced courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The placement of hieroglyphic captions highlights this assimilation. The emaciated captive kneeling on the right side is a sajal of Yaxchilan’s Itzamnaaj Bahlam III; this sajal was captured in 726 CE (Martin and Grube 2008:123, 147). A text describing his capture appears in a vertical line next to his body that continues horizontally across his bent leg. It is, in fact, K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s name that appears on his leg and effectively marks ownership of his body (fig. 2.14). Reading this caption guides a reader’s eyes down and across the captive’s body, and the minuscule size of the inscription obliges an observer to get close to his emaciated form.
The spectator’s implied approximation to the prisoner is analogous to what Miller (2002:20-21) has described for the experience of viewing the paintings and
Figure 2.15. Bonampak Structure 1, Room 2, North Wall. Illustration by Heather Hurst with Leonard Ashby. Image courtesy of the Bonampak Documentation Project, Mary Ellen Miller, © Bonampak Documentation Project.
Architecture of Bonampak Structure 1. To people sitting in the room, she says, a person entering the doorway of Room 2 would appear as part of the tableau of the north wall’s display of injured, humiliated prisoners (fig. 2.15). In the midst of the grisly scene, the entering person would appear as if the next potential captive, a most humbling and vulnerable position.
Those humbled by Piedras Negras Stela 8’s physical form, content, and composition may have been local courtiers, captives, or esteemed visitors. The humbling effect may have been especially poignant for captives and esteemed visitors from polities such as Yaxchilan, with which Piedras Negras had relationships alternating between alliance and conflict—particularly because Stela 8 portrayed a Yaxchilan
Figure 2.16. Piedras Negras Structure O-13, 8th century ce; drawing by Kevin Cain, INSIGHT, after rendering by Mark Child and Heather Hurst. Courtesy of Kevin Cain and Heather Hurst.
Captive. As Piedras Negras Panel 3’s image indicates, during times of alliance, esteemed Yaxchilan visitors had access to the throne room and palace, and they may have seen Stela 8 on the J-1 terrace. The display of their captive compatriot may have served as an important reminder of the importance of loyalty to the Yokib kings.
We see this effect again with K’inich Yat Ahk II’s Stela 12, dated to 9.18.5.0.0 (11 September 795 ce). It was erected on the upper terrace of the O-13 pyramid (Morley 1937-38, 3:247), Itzam K’an Ahk Il’s funerary pyramid (Escobedo 2004; Houston et al. 1999). Stela 12 has a vertically oriented pictorial narrative that integrates with the vertical structures of the pyramid on which it was installed (figs. 2.16, 2.17).
The image carved in low relief on Stela 12’s front face is a multi-figural scene that includes thirteen figures sitting and standing on five levels of a building. Ten captives are at the bottom in three levels, and two warriors, one of them a La Mar ruler, Mo’ Ahk Chahk, who had close ties to Piedras Negras, stand in the middle (Houston 2004:276; Zender 2002:177-81). K’inich Yat Ahk II is seated at the top. The image’s subject matter is similar to Panels 4 and 15, with captives presented to a ruler, though here the figures are stretched out vertically on the rising levels of a stairway. As in Stela 8, the captives are separated from the ruler by steps.
The Stela 12 image creates an illusion of three-dimensional space, architecture, and human interaction. Its sculptors also played with the convergence of represented and actual three-dimensionality, for the depicted levels resemble the rising levels of Structure O-13. The stela may in fact depict a captive presentation that happened on this temple.
Figure 2.17. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 12, limestone, 795 CE. Photograph by author. Courtesy of the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala and the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia de Guatemala.
The image on the front of Stela 12 guides a viewer’s eyes vertically, from the captives at the bottom to the enthroned ruler at the top, and vice versa, and up and down the O-13 pyramid. Moreover, although some of the image—particularly when colored—might have been visible from the plaza, one would have had to move at least partway up the pyramid to see the image’s complex details. Miller has suggested that a person in the plaza would have seen just the monument’s upper portion and the enthroned ruler; only those who ascended the pyramid could have seen the captives (M. Miller 1999:122).
Ascending the building’s vertical levels thus mediated one’s experience of the stela: more of the carving was revealed as one rose higher up the pyramid and closer to the stela. Likewise, the image’s vertical layering accorded with the kinetic activity of moving up or down the pyramid. In a further integration of representation and context, this vertical movement aligns with archaeological evidence of how the pyramid was used. Specifically, it corresponds with a series of buried caches that both materialized and inspired another rising—a ceremonial pathway up the pyramid’s stairs from Itzam K’an Ahk Il’s tomb at its base to the shrine at its summit, as described in chapter 4.
At the same time, the Stela 12 representation also marked the vertical levels of the pyramid as socially charged spaces in which social hierarchies were per-formed—where captives were presented before K’inich Yat Ahk II, with war lieutenants mediating. The integration of the stela’s image and its physical context mapped these hierarchies onto the building’s facade, acknowledging or even creating differentially charged social spaces on the pyramid’s vertical levels. Looking at the monument and ascending or descending the pyramid situated people in this charged space, both in relation to the representation and to the social hierarchies mapped onto the pyramid’s levels.
Figure 2.18. Comparison of figures on Stela 12 and Panel 3. a. Detail of front, Piedras Negras Stela 12, limestone, 795 ce. Detail of drawing by David Stuart, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, Piedras Negras, reproduced courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. b. Detail of Piedras Negras Panel 3, limestone, ca. 782 ce, from drawing by John Montgomery © Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Www. famsi. org. Drawings not to scale.
People in the plaza would have seen little detail of the Stela 12 images, though its bright colors would have aided legibility. In contrast, people with access to Structure O-13’s upper terraces may have been allowed to walk around stelae and engage with their architectural contexts, activating the sculptures and spaces with the presence and motion of their bodies. Access to the upper terraces also permitted visual access to images—such as the captives carved on Stela 12’s lower register—not visible to people in the plaza. Those who could ascend the pyramid may have been privileged members of the Yokib kingdom—such as the ruler, royal family, or war lieuten-ants—or dignitaries or captives from other kingdoms.
Yet anyone’s position in front of Stela 12 was at the level of the captives and not of the king, and observing it may have induced discomfort, particularly for those visitors whose alliances and diplomacy were essential to prevent them from becoming one of the doomed prisoners at the bottom of the stairway. The portrayal of the Stela 12 captives recalls that of the members of the court seated below the ruler’s throne on Panel 3, which was installed on Structure O-13 near Stela 12.18 They, too, are separated from the ruler by their placement on a lower stair (plate 5, figs. 2.17, 2.18).
The articulations of the Panel 3 court members’ bodies and the Stela 12 captives’ bodies resemble each other. For instance, their hips, upper legs, knees, and feet are in similar positions; their hands are raised and gesturing in comparable directions and forms; and the fringes on the edges of the courtiers’ garments visually rhyme with the ropes binding the captives’ bodies. Also, in both compositions, multiple figures have titles such as sajal, although their status has been calamitously transformed from trusted advisers of one ruler to humiliated captives of another. The presence of Stela 12 near Panel 3 on Structure O-13 may have been a reminder to both local advisers and visitors of their potentially precarious position and the necessity for alliance—so that they would not become humiliated captives at the bottom of the stairway.
World History
