Somehow it sounds better in the original – El Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, but we still have to name it in English. The Grand Museum of the Mayan World is located in the city of Merida, titled as the unofficial “capital” of Yucatan. Competently designed, situated in a wide space, with convenient parking lots around and an impressive museum atmosphere, I must say with regret that for some reason they had left the work unfinished. The exhibitions occupied only the first floor, and neither a cafe nor a museum shop were available.
Those of you who have been following me for some time now, know my passion for museums. Especially historical ones, and especially centers of ancient history. You can imagine what it meant to me to discover unprecedented styles of ceramics, sculpture, jewelry, and basically everything else. A very different heritage, even though we are all the same people all over the globe and we are dying to brag about who has the biggest necklace and who will be more beautiful (in the case of the Mayans – having the largest nose) on stone or clay.
In the Grand Museum of the Mayan World, one can learn an awful lot about this interesting culture. For some reason, they really liked to fight all the time. Fighting with their neighbors seems to me like a daily activity for the Maya, along with eating, drinking cocoa, and filling the cities with new generations, if you know what I mean. However, the organizers of this activity had to earn the honor of sending others to their deaths. And it wasn’t easy for them, as can be seen from these sculptures:
What you see on their faces is not fiction. Members of the elite, and especially the royal family, were required to prove that they were chosen by God by disfiguring themselves. This included piercing their tongues and cheeks, cutting the corners of their mouths, “tattooing” body parts by wounding, and other similar ritual acts. Considering where these things were happening, namely in the warm and humid climate of the jungle, surviving such wounds probably meant that the person was terribly lucky. Here I show you some of the ritual equipment:
The ceramics exhibited in the Grand Museum of the Mayan World are also different from those known in our latitudes. Of course, there are certain specifics depending on whether we are talking about ritual or everyday utensils; the former were given much more care. The bowls intended as offerings to the gods are true works of art, usually executed in warm colors and masterfully inscribed. Where do I see letters, you may ask? The Mayans did not write with letters, but with glyphs – this is text on the edge of the plate.
More text, and even more beautiful, can be found in the so-called Mayan Codices. These are accordion books made of special paper. The name “paper” is conditional, since the technology of its production is completely different. Strips of bark are soaked in water and then pressed with stone hammers until they stick together into a sheet. Productivity was probably not high. Only a few copies have survived to this day, as the nimble Spanish missionaries declared early war on Mayan books and saw their end right from the start.
We should mention the Mayan love for jade. Where we worship gold and silver, the Mesoamerican civilization worshipped jade. The funerary jade masks of the local greats are particularly impressive, but the amulets and ornaments are not to be ignored. Sometimes it is obvious how the emphasis was put on quantity instead of beauty, but can we blame the people? Let’s not forget the Bulgarian wife who fled the Aegean territories in the late 19th – early 20th century with 10 kilos of precious metals hanging on her head.
It’s time to look the ancient Maya in the face. Our hosts at the Grand Museum of the Mayan World had made the effort to produce facial reconstructions from skeletons discovered during excavations, and try to tell the story of the people who lived many centuries ago. I present to you a typical hard-working housewife who died at the respectable age of 40, after giving birth to a bunch of children and working hard in the corn fields. Her joints were painfully worn out, despite her fragile physique and small stature (under 150 cm).
And since we mentioned cocoa, let’s finish with this most common drink in the empire. It is said that some rulers drank up to 40 cups a day. I don’t know how they managed that, they must have been buzzing around like wasps. Most Mayans had their own cocoa cups, which they never parted with, apparently you never know where thirst will strike you. Some of the cups were particularly beautiful; I liked a more unusual one, made in the shape of a pumpkin and inscribed with the owner’s name and address – either in case they got lost, or just as a show-off.
More stories from Yucatan you can read here.
Hi Simana, thank you for your review of this new museum in my part of the world (I live in Costa Rica). You did a nice job of covering the contents of the museum which, embarrassingly I didnt know existed (and I am a member of the Mexican Association of Heritage Interpreters), and at the very outset of your blog you hooked my interest by stating, “I must say with regret that for some reason they had left the work unfinished.” Given your background in heritage interpretation, I was sure you were going to comment on the deficient interpretation. But you never talked about the interpretation and did not mention what was unfinished about the museum. I dare say I thought the ending of the blog was unfinished as I was left hanging. Can you add a part two to discuss its interpretation and what did you find unfinished? That would be an awesome sequel.
And by the way, Merida is actually the official capital of Yucatan Province.
Thank you for the comments, Jon! I will seriously consider writing a Part 2 of the article in some form. I actually meant that they made an intriguing packaging and did not fill it with contents; with travel blogs it is always hard to decide what to include for a short read.