Second largest Maya jade found in Belize has unique historical inscription
Second largest Maya jade found in Belize has unique historical inscription
February 24, 2017 by Inga Kiderra
UC San Diego archaeologist Geoffrey Braswell holds a replica of the Maya jade pendant.
Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications
To say that UC San Diego archaeologist Geoffrey Braswell was surprised to discover a precious jewel in Nim Li Punit in southern Belize is something of an understatement.
"It was like finding the Hope Diamond in Peoria instead of New York," said Braswell, who led the dig that uncovered a large piece of carved jade once belonging to an ancient Maya king. "We would expect something like it in one of the big cities of the Maya world. Instead, here it was, far from the center," he said.
The jewel—a jade pendant worn on a king's chest during key religious ceremonies—was first unearthed in 2015. It is now housed at the Central Bank of Belize, along with other national treasures. Braswell recently published a paper in the Cambridge University journal Ancient Mesoamerica detailing the jewel's significance. A second paper, in the Journal of Field Archaeology, describes the excavations.
The pendant is remarkable for being the second largest Maya jade found in Belize to date, said Braswell, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego. The pendant measures 7.4 inches wide, 4.1 inches high and just 0.3 inches thick. Sawing it into this thin, flat form with string, fat and jade dust would have been a technical feat. But what makes the pendant even more remarkable, Braswell said, is that it's the only one known to be inscribed with a historical text. Carved into the pendant's back are 30 hieroglyphs about its first owner.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-largest-maya-jade-belize-unique.html#jCp
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