History of the Mystery of the “Blom Plate”

Posted January 20, 2025
by Nicholas Hellmuth

In 1950 Frans Blom published a black-and-white photo of a polychrome Maya plate that shows the Hero Twins, the Principal Bird Deity, and a well-preserved Primary Standard Sequence of hieroglyphs. For my 1980’s PhD dissertation I wanted a full color photograph and close-up photos of each part of the scene. But how do you find the plate—it was obtained by the engineer who was working on building the landing field of the Chetumal airport. The bulldozers flattened pyramids and obviously there were Maya tombs there in the 1940’s.

The FLAAR Reports on this plate details how I finally found where in Oaxaca the engineer had retired to. He kindly allowed me to photograph the plate. Since he noticed how much interest I had in studying the plate, and since he had it since at least 1949 and now in the 1980’s he himself was no longer interested in it, he asked me what he should do with the plate—but I explained that I do not collect artifacts and that since the plate was an important part of the national patrimony of Mexico, it should be available to all scholars and it should be donated to IHAH. As a result the plate is now in an IHAH museum in Mexico.

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The Story of the Blom Plate: a Masterpiece of Maya Iconography and Primary Standard Sequence, PSS, Hieroglyphs

Early Classic Maya Cylindrical Tripods—List and Descriptions

Posted January 9, 2025
by Nicholas Hellmuth

This is a comprehensive Corpus of Maya Cylindrical Tripods in Site Reports and in Museums and Private Collections Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, USA, Canada, Europe, and Asia that were known up to 1985.

244 pages of lists and description of the iconography of Early Classic Maya cylindrical tripods known from publications and a quarter-century of photography around the world in museums and private collections by Nicholas Hellmuth. 6 photographs. This is a scan of the original published monograph to make the book available today to students and scholars as an easy download. Provides the FLAAR Photo Archive contact sheet number of the majority of the photos to assist Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, to catalog the FLAAR Photo Archive that was donated there in late 2024.

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MAYA CYLINDRICAL TRIPODS, and Related Early Classic Art: ICONOGRAPHY AND FORM, in Site Reports and in Museums and Private Collections, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, USA, Canada, Europe, and Asia

Holiday Greetings with 403-page Gift for you

Posted January 3, 2025
by Nicholas Hellmuth

Decades of research and photography of Maya art in museums around the world resulted in a 403-page coffee-table publication of Hellmuth’s 1986 PhD dissertation. Michael Coe wrote the Foreword (in English). Book text is auf Deutsch but captions, summary, list of deities, and discussion of Maya archaeology are in English. Beautifully published by ADEVA, Graz.

727 illustrations make this book a helpful resource for iconographers, epigraphers, and archaeologists. These illustrations also assist students for their term papers, theses, and PhD dissertation. Any illustration can be used by students and scholars simply by citing the book, publisher, author, illustrator, and figure number--in other words, we waive the copyright for the FLAAR illustrations—the goal of research and publications should be non-profit and to assist the academic community.

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Monster und Menschen in der Maya-Kunst, 727 drawings and photos in book of 403 pages. 109 MB file size so the drawings can be enlarged to help your research in iconography or epigraphy.

This book on iconography and cosmology introduces the Surface of the Underwaterworld of Maya mythology. Also features God GI cache vessels (front cover and lots more inside). Has chapter on the Jaguar God of the Underworld (JGU). Introduces the Lily Pad Headdress Monster, the Shell Wing Dragon, and the Tubular Headdress Monster. Documents that the Principal Bird Deity is a Snake Hawk. Lots of illustrations of God N.

Two more holiday gifts are the two volume English edition in 1987 of Hellmuth’s 1986 PhD dissertation at Karl-Franzens Universitaet, Graz, Austria. While living in Graz for many years, I appreciate the hospitality of Hasso Hohmann and Annegrette Vogrin for living space and library and photo archive space in their home. We appreciate the sharing of information with Karl-Herbert Mayer.

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Surface of the Underwaterworld, 1987 publication of English edition of Hellmuth’s PhD dissertation, Vol. I, text, 306 pages.	Surface of the Underwaterworld, 1987 PhD, Vol. II, illustrations, 255 pages. 159 MB file size so that the line drawings are at a digital resolution to help you see details.

The purpose of posting these books is to make the illustrations available to students and scholars so they can advance Maya cosmology, iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological discussions since today as we enter 2025 a lot more documentation is available to allow advances over what was known in the 1980’s.

Merry Christmas 2024 and Happy New Year 2025

Posted December 24, 2024
by Nicholas Hellmuth

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This is "Santa Nicholas" being pulled by native deer of Guatemala. In Classic Maya art deer are associated with monkeys. And paintings of monkeys often show them with deer antlers and deer ears. We have four volumes to release in 2025 from our 2024 research on the iconography of deer in Maya art plus a monumental volume on iconography of monkeys.

The circular path is the Maya Sky Band with celestial motifs. We have published many PDFs on this topic. Just Google Sky Band Hellmuth FLAAR.

Often the Sky Band is the body of a Bicephalic Cosmic Monster, with "starry-eyed" deer at the left and an upside-down Quadripartite Badge Headdress monster at the right. Just Google Bicephalic Cosmic Monster, crocodile lecture, Hellmuth and you will see lots of Maya art with this monster. We have six chapters of our lecture on iconography of crocodiles in Maya art for The Pre-Columbian Society, University of Pennsylvania Museum. Peccary are not shown in this Christmas card, but our research results on iconography of peccary in Maya art are already published--just Google peccary, Maya iconography, Hellmuth.

The setting features palm trees since that will be our focus for the RBM area of Peten in 2025: which palms have edible parts for the Classic Maya and which palms were used as thatch and walls. In recent years for our CONAP project of the RBM we have studied tasiste palms as an indicator of savannas in PNYNN. Tasiste palm, nance trees, and calabash trees (Crescentia cujete) tend to grow in the Savanna East of Nakum and the Savanna West of Naranjo Sa’al. We have also studied the Savanna of 3 Fern Species and lots of tasistal areas in the RBM and on the west side of Arroyo Petexbatun, upstream from Rio la Pasion, Sayaxche.

Iconography of Crocodiles in Classic Maya Art: Stelae and Ceramics

Posted December 17, 2024
by Nicholas Hellmuth

Crocodile iconography was a December 14, 2024 lecture for The Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This is an update and in English for the lecture given in Spanish for the Museo Popol Vuh, Universidad Francisco Marroquin, July 2023.

FLAAR has many lecture topics available for your museum, your classroom, or your society or organization, in-person or via zoom. These lectures are available in Spanish or in English.

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God N Iconography Research Reports now available

Posted November 19, 2024
by Nicholas Hellmuth

God N, God D, and God L are three very elderly male deities in the Maya pantheon. We have posted three FLAAR Reports on God D recently, are finishing our God L reports, and now are posting the corpus of available photos of God N in Classic Maya art.

God N, like a hermit crab, lives in a conch shell or elsewhere—at Chichen Itza you see God N with a spider web background. Since God N is often associated with supernatural water cosmology, he has been of interest since Hellmuth’s PhD dissertation on the Surface of the Underwaterworld. Lots of capable scholars have produced excellent reports on Maya deities so the goal of the FLAAR Reports is to show a complete corpus of known portraits of this deity so that epigraphers, iconographers and archaeologists have additional research material. So these FLAAR Reports include previously unpublished digital rollouts by Hellmuth and findings in the FLAAR Photo Archive.

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Iconography of remarkable cosmological motifs of Sky Bands in Classic Maya art

Posted November 13, 2024
by Nicholas Hellmuth

Sky Bands have a row of celestial motifs of stars, planets, and constellations that the Maya could see from Mesoamerica. We have dedicated many months this year to preparing six FLAAR Reports to show tons of documentation from Maya murals, stucco sculptures, stone stelae and panels, and all sizes and shapes of pottery (especially plates, vases, and bowls). The only Sky Band report that we are still working on is Sky Bands in the Maya codices. But in the meantime, here are six Sky Band reports to show you lots of remarkable information.

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Part I: Sky Bands on Plates of Classic Maya of Peten	Part II: Sky Bands on Classic Maya Vases and Bowls	Part II: Sky Bands on Kerr and Hellmuth Rollouts of Vases
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Part IV: Sky Bands on Stelae, lintels and other sculptures of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize	Part V: Sky Bands of Late Classic Maya on stucco reliefs and sculptures at Palenque	Part VI: Sky Bands on woven textile hems of Maya clothing at Palenque, Tikal, Yaxchilan

List of dozens of reports on Maya iconography

Posted Octuber 16, 2024
by Nicholas Hellmuth

This 33-page document lists the names and page quantity of all the books and reports on iconography of Maya vases, bowls, plates, cache vessels, etc. photographed during the 1970’s-1990’s. Also lists all the ethnohistory reports on Cholti-Lacandon of Chiapas and Maya cultures of Peten.

We are working to find each of these original hand-typed reports so we can scan them and make them all available as a downloadable PDF. Several libraries such as Harvard, Yale, etc. probably have 90% of these titles but once in PDF format on the Internet these documents can assist more students and more scholars.

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Peten Ytza, Quejache, Verapaz Chol, and Toquegua Maya ethnohistory

Posted by Nicholas Hellmuth
October 10, 2024

This report is an introduction to four Maya ethnic groups of Guatemala based on ethnohistory research conducted by Hellmuth in the archives of Sevilla, Spain, June-August 1971.

Discussed different Maya languages, agriculture, etc.

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