Painted cylindrical vase
Late Classic Jaina
In a palace scene, a lord sits cross-legged on a jaguar skin, surrounded by four attendants. The ruler wears an ornate headdress containing a large-billed bird, earflares and a necklace. The artist made an attempt to convey depth by overlapping the two figures on the ruler’s right. Of the figures on the ruler’s left, one is kneeling with his feet turned in an unnatural position and the other is standing, but is cut off at the knees. The ruler and his attendants are marked by body painting. Above the figures is draped cloth with an intertwined serpent.
HM532
PALACE LIFE
Scribes (called ah ts’ib, or “he of the writing”) were probably the literate younger sons of nobles not in the direct line of inheritance for offices and wealth. They lived in elite palace compounds and worked in royal workshops. Their job was to produce objects for use in palaces and rituals and as elite gifts. Given their background and patrons, it is not surprising that scribes painted scenes of palace life and elite rituals and ignored commoners when they depicted the world of humans.
Hieroglyphic texts are an integral part of many ceramic vessels. Epigraphers (writing experts) have identified a formulaic text known as the Primary Standard Sequence, which is usually located just below the rim of some pots. The PSS generally begins by dedicating the act of painting, a surface treatment which makes the completed vessel proper, records the vessel's original contents, names the owner for whom it was made and sometimes ends with the signature of the artist. Not all sequences of glyphs below the rim are the PSS. Texts which discuss the images on a pot appear as short passages within the scene or, occasionally, replace the PSS.