Live by the Pen, Die by the Sword
No royal court in the classic Maya period, especially from about
A.D. 600 to 900, seems to have been without scribes of high rank. In
paintings and sculptures, they are seen seated cross-legged and
wearing a sarong and headcloth, with a bundle of pens and brushes at
the ready. Some of the painted or carved figures are accompanied by
inscriptions identifying the person as keeper of the royal library,
the chief scribe. The court scribes, archaeologists have concluded, came from the
noble class, sometimes from the royal family itself -- younger sons
of rulers or sons by secondary wives and concubines, and even some
daughters. Their duty was to prepare art and text for elaborate
public displays glorifying the king's triumphs. They were, in modern
parlance, propagandists and spinmeisters. When times were good, scribes lived well, sometimes too well. One
painting of drunken revelry reveals that even then, writers on
occasion had an unbounded thirst. When their king met defeat in
battle, though, the scribes were among the first to suffer a cruel
fate. And that, as much as anything, an archaeologist has now
pointed out, affirms the paramount place of scribes and writing in
Maya politics. In a close study of texts and three imposing pieces of art, Dr.
Kevin J. Johnston, a Maya archaeologist at Ohio State University in
Columbus, determined that those who lived by the pen for a defeated
ruler could expect to die by the conqueror's sword. These scribes
were captured, humiliated in a public ceremony, mutilated and
finally executed. A favorite form of mutilation was breaking their
fingers and tearing out their fingernails. Writing in the June issue of the journal Antiquity, Dr. Johnston
concluded, "Texts were a medium through which kings asserted and
displayed power, and thus they and the scribes who produced them
were targeted during warfare for destruction." The fact that many of the captured scribes were kinsmen of the
conquered king and suspected of continued loyalty might have
contributed to their fate. But the methods of public torture suggest
that the conquerors also intended to send an unambiguous
message. "What captors chose to emphasize in public documents was not the
physical elimination of the scribes through sacrifice but the
destruction through finger mutilation of their capacity to produce
for rivals politically persuasive texts," Dr. Johnston wrote.
"Finger breaking was a significant political act because it produced
and revealed the vulnerability of enemies and competitors." Dr. Johnston said in an interview that these previously
unrecognized practices underscored the importance of the written
word and monumental art in reinforcing the power and authority of
Maya kings. They were forms of what he called "competitive display,"
meant to intimidate people into a state of loyalty. Because most Maya city-states were small and inherently weak,
Mayanists say, kings typically had to resort to such ceremonial
strategies to help justify and maintain their power. In the late
classic period, there were at least 40 city-states across the heart
of the Maya domain, which included what is now southern Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize and part of Honduras. No single king apparently
ever managed to control a wide section of the land. Dr. David Webster, a Mayanist at Penn State, said he agreed with
much of Dr. Johnston's thesis, particularly the role of scribes in
proclaiming royal authority through competitive displays. "A king who is not very confident brags a lot," Dr. Webster said.
" ĀI am the king,' he brags all over the lowlands. The next king is
only 30 kilometers away and he's saying, ĀNo, I am the king.'
There's a lot of status rivalry, and so they build lavish palaces
and have a lot of feasting and other ceremonial displays." A more risky alternative course for enhancing a king's reputation
was warfare, which among the Maya often stemmed from "status
rivalry" between neighboring rulers, not necessarily from an
appetite for more territory. After a war, a monument prepared by a
loyal scribe- painter soon went up in the victor's city. The
triumphant king is shown standing heroically on the backs of
prostrate captives -- the Maya version of a photo-op. Several other specialists in Mayan archaeology said they found
Dr. Johnston's research convincing. "It's a new perspective based on what had been stray pieces of
evidence that we haven't been putting together before," said Dr.
Stephen D. Houston of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Dr. David Freidel of Southern Methodist University in Dallas said
the research provided important insights into "a war of words" the
Maya seemed to have waged through much of their classical period,
before the civilization went into sharp decline around 900. In his judgment, Dr. Freidel said, the Maya were a history-minded
people and their scribes were not just mechanical transcribers but
were the historians, intent on defining their culture and imposing
their own interpretation of history. The destruction of monuments
and inscriptions was one city's way of erasing the history of an
enemy. But he questioned the premise that the Maya civilization was
more politically fragile than most others. Modern scholars think that the Maya glyphs are one of only three
writing systems -- the other two being Sumerian cuneiform in ancient
Mesopotamia and Chinese -- to be invented independently. All others
were probably modeled after or influenced by existing scripts. Maya
was the last of the three scripts to be deciphered, beginning in the
1950's; it has given scholars a clearer picture of Maya history. In an attractive and definitive book on the subject, "The Art of
the Maya Scribe," Dr. Michael D. Coe, a specialist in Maya writing
at Yale, said studies of monumental inscriptions since the
decipherment began had "revealed entirely unsuspected details not
only of the social and political organization of particular Maya
cities, but of their relationships -- often but not always hostile --
between them."
Live by the Pen, Die by the Sword
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
t the
height of the Maya civilization, the only literate society in
pre-Columbian America, kings fervently, perhaps desperately,
believed in the power of the pen. Whether they thought it mightier
than the sword is doubtful, but a growing body of evidence from Maya
writing and art shows that scribes played a central role in
magnifying their king's reputation and solidifying his political
hold on the realm.
Page Top