Sacrifice: Adults

Ancient imagery pertaining to the sacrifice of adults shows a variety of methods of killing and post-mortem body treatment, including decapitation, heart extraction, disembowelment and immolation.

Sacrifice by bow and arrow is also reported at the time of the conquest. All of the epigraphically named captives who are presumed to have become victims of sacrifice are identified as enemies taken during war. However, considering the political and historical emphasis in Maya inscriptions, it is entirely possible that noncaptured adults of inconsequential identity were also sacrificed. At the time of the conquest the Maya of the Yucatan are reported to have sacrificed slaves, although we do not know whether slavery was also practised during the Classic period. Although the majority of all images of captives show men,

examples of female captives are known and conquest era documents indicate that women were also sacrificed.^{^[1015]}

The Maya perceived a parallel between warfare and the hunt, and presumably the burning of captives was understood as akin to the roasting of game. One unusual figurine likens a captive to a deer, the victim garbed in a deer headdress and lashed in impossible quadrupedal (i.e., animalistic) position, each of his four limbs tethered to the corner of a square wooden scaffold. Scaffolds were an important element of a variety of Maya rituals, presumably set on fire at the culmination of the rite. An unprovenanced ceramic vase curated at Dumbarton Oaks (K2781) depicts a captive bound to a wooden scaffold, surrounded by two men wielding torches. Altars from Tikal and other Classic period sites show captives trussed, lying on their stomachs, dumped over wooden scaffolds or surrounded by burning torches. Similarly, a figurine from the Baltimore Museum of Art depicts a captive with torches strapped to his back, his body arched in the throes of agony.

The burned prone bodies of two men were recently uncovered at Tikal, the remains of an Early Classic period sacrificial rite. Conquest era accounts indicate that the immolation of captives was still practised in the Yucatan in the sixteenth century.^{^[1016]}

Although not always easy to access, we must consider the full sensory experience of Maya sacrifice: the grisly sight of bleeding, disembowelled and dismembered bodies. Sacrifice was accompanied by the smell of blood and roasting flesh and the screams of the tortured. These intense phenomena, coupled with sonorous music, elaborate costumes and wafting incense, helped frame ritual as grand spectacle. However, the Maya were quite cognisant that the real consumers of this sensory feast were the gods, much as the sights and sounds of contemporary Maya festivals are understood as necessary to appease the saints and other supernaturals. Indeed, of the corpus of imagery relating to captives and sacrifice from the Classic period, only a small selection of imagery shows the act of killing or the body post-mortem. Rather, the bulk of imagery relating to violent ritual pertains to the display and torture of captives who cower, whimper, and even wail in pain, quite in contrast to the stoicism demonstrated by Maya lords and ladies in their own acts of bloodletting as noted earlier. The Maya even reserved a specific term for torture by fire, pulyi, an act that was directed against both real and mythic captives.^{^[1017]}

After death, body parts of sacrificial victims (and enemies slain on the battle field) were taken as ‘trophies', objects of display and remembrance. Maya lords are shown wearing skull pectorals and actual trophy crania have been found at Copan and other Maya sites. Flayed skin masks, often shown stretched over shields, were another common trophy. Skulls demonstrating evidence of flaying have been found at a number of Maya sites, including the famous skull pit from Colha, Belize.^{^[1018]}

The taking of trophies was part of a broader practice of memorialisation of war.

These acts were not, however, simply for the sake of bravado and posturing. Rather, captives were probably used to leverage tribute from defeated kingdoms and even in death their names (and perhaps body parts) served as powerful metonyms for the vanquished places. At the Maya site of Yaxchilan, the scribes frequently used the ‘count of captives' epithet in place of the king's name, as for example when Bird Jaguar IV is named as ‘He of Twenty Captives'. The Maya term for captive, baak, is the same as that for bone, perhaps suggesting a double meaning whereby the Maya king also retained bone trophies from those very captives. The other common epithet for Bird Jaguar is ‘Master/Guardian of Aj Uk', the first captive he claimed prior to acceding to the throne. Aj Uk was from Santa Elena, a site located to the north of Yaxchilan's arch-rival, Piedras Negras, and presumably of some geo-political significance. When captives' names are given in Maya inscriptions they are invariably paired with the polity from which they originated, not the place where the battle occurred. Thus, the memorialisation of captives relates less to the memory of specific battles but more to the potential political, economic and historical outcome of those battles.^{^[1019]}

The celebration of particular captives also hints at the vendettas that may have fuelled Classic Maya conflict. Bird Jaguar's father, Shield Jaguar III, proclaimed himself ‘Master/Guardian of Aj “Nik”', his first captive that he took from La Florida/Namaan in 681 ce. Significantly, the wife of Shield Jaguar's rival, K'inich Yo'nal Ahk II, king at Piedras Negras, was also from Namaan. The queen, Lady K'atun Ajaw, is one of the most celebrated in Maya history and is honoured on numerous monuments at Piedras Negras. The betrothal took place under the dying supervision of Yo'nal Ahk's father in 686 ce, five years after Aj ‘Nik' was captured and when the queen was a young princess of 12 years. In that context, the celebration of Aj ‘Nik's' capture was perhaps as much a statement of the military prowess of Shield Jaguar III as it was an insult to the homeland of the Piedras Negras queen.^{^[1020]}

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Source: Gordon Matthew, Kaeuper Richard, Zurndorfer Harriet (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: AD 500-AD 1500. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 696 p.. 2020

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