At 21:00 "It shall not be lost" perhaps is a reference to to the altar's durable stone-tough self, a way to declare 'I will stand forever' or 'I shall survive the ages' or is 'I shall never be lost from memory', it's the kind of thing monuments declare, permanence in stone. And it's true! The fact that it survived the ages and is still read supports that declaration. Thank you for these lectures, I enjoy them immensely.
Maybe these holy men hoped to emulate the corn god...hoped to have a corn stalk sprout from their head, which would make their transformation to the holiest of holiness complete...to become a reincarnation of the corn god.
You say the crosshatching represents a net, I've wondered about that. Clearly the Maya were proud of this graphic invention. Speaking as a draftsman the advantage of crosshatching is that if it's laid down in a clean regular way you can draw considerable detail on top of it, the crisscross of lines doesn't cross out the detail. So a dark cave -so important to the Maya- can be shown full of detail. The crosshatching reads as 'darkness' to me, not 'blackness'. Also, blobs and expanses of ink can be sticky and messy (the Patent Office forbids expanses of black from patent drawings for that reason) and many inked lines dry faster than a blob, plus they consume less ink, so the crosshatching is better in a practical scribal sense. And you mention Mayan clowns -pictures please! Wearing nets, folks found this funny. Why? I'd guess that these people did a lot of fishing, and a fisherman's clown would be a fool tangled in his own net.
At 21:00 "It shall not be lost" perhaps is a reference to to the altar's durable stone-tough self, a way to declare 'I will stand forever' or 'I shall survive the ages' or is 'I shall never be lost from memory', it's the kind of thing monuments declare, permanence in stone.
And it's true! The fact that it survived the ages and is still read supports that declaration. Thank you for these lectures, I enjoy them immensely.
Maybe these holy men hoped to emulate the corn god...hoped to have a corn stalk sprout from their head, which would make their transformation to the holiest of holiness complete...to become a reincarnation of the corn god.
You say the crosshatching represents a net, I've wondered about that.
Clearly the Maya were proud of this graphic invention. Speaking as a draftsman the advantage of crosshatching is that if it's laid down in a clean regular way you can draw considerable detail on top of it, the crisscross of lines doesn't cross out the detail. So a dark cave -so important to the Maya- can be shown full of detail. The crosshatching reads as 'darkness' to me, not 'blackness'. Also, blobs and expanses of ink can be sticky and messy (the Patent Office forbids expanses of black from patent drawings for that reason) and many inked lines dry faster than a blob, plus they consume less ink, so the crosshatching is better in a practical scribal sense.
And you mention Mayan clowns -pictures please! Wearing nets, folks found this funny. Why? I'd guess that these people did a lot of fishing, and a fisherman's clown would be a fool tangled in his own net.