CYLINDRICAL DRINKING VESSEL
Pottery vessels like these were often exchanged as gifts between Maya kings and members of the nobility, and used for drinking chocolate or other beverages at feasts and ceremonies. Although it was good to be a Maya king or noble, their lives of privilege included strict obligations, sometimes painful, as the painted scenes on this vessel prove. Maya elites were expected to make offerings of their own blood to the gods to assure bountiful harvests, good health, and success for their subjects. Carved scenes show elite women drawing blood from their tongues, and the upper register of this vessel depicts the preferred blood letting method practiced by Maya men. Six elite men are shown squatting above offering bowls. In their right hands each holds a sharply pointed obsidian blood-letter. This was used to pierce the foreskin, so that paper strips in the bowls absorbed the drops of blood. These blood-soaked papers were then burned to dispatch the blood offerings to the gods in the sky.
Pottery vessels like these were often exchanged as gifts between Maya kings and members of the nobility, and used for drinking chocolate or other beverages at feasts and ceremonies. Although it was good to be a Maya king or noble, their lives of privilege included strict obligations, sometimes painful, as the painted scenes on this vessel prove. Maya elites were expected to make offerings of their own blood to the gods to assure bountiful harvests, good health, and success for their subjects. Carved scenes show elite women drawing blood from their tongues, and the upper register of this vessel depicts the preferred blood letting method practiced by Maya men. Six elite men are shown squatting above offering bowls. In their right hands each holds a sharply pointed obsidian blood-letter. This was used to pierce the foreskin, so that paper strips in the bowls absorbed the drops of blood. These blood-soaked papers were then burned to dispatch the blood offerings to the gods in the sky.
