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A Fine Maya / Mayan Peten Bowl

Currency:USD Category:Antiquities / Pre-Columbian Start Price:900.00 USD Estimated At:1,800.00 - 2,500.00 USD
A Fine Maya / Mayan Peten Bowl

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Auction Date:2012 Jul 13 @ 10:00 (UTC-06:00 : CST/MDT)
Location:P.O. Box 714, Erie, Colorado, 80516, United States
From ancient Mexico, Mayan, Peten region, ca. 500 to 800 AD. Extremely fine and rare polychrome pottery bowl depicting the three failed attempts to create human beings - as published in the Maya Popol Vuh. ]From the Introduction of Dennis Tedlock’s translation of the Popol Vuh: "For the gods, the idea of human beings is as old as that of the earth itself, but they fail in their first three attempts (all in Part One of the present translation) to transform this idea into a living reality. What they want is beings who will walk, work, and talk in an articulate and measured way, visiting shrines, giving offerings, and calling upon their makers by name, all according to the rhythms of a calendar. What they get instead, on the first try, is beings who have no arms to work with and can only squawk (the bird with beak), chatter, and howl, (the monkey – hind legs and tail) and whose descendants are the animals of today. On the second try they make a being they make a being of mud (the brown back of the composite creature) , but this one is unable to walk or turn its head or even keep its shape being solitary, it cannot reproduce itself, and in the end it dissolves in nothing. Before making a third try, the gods decide, in the course of a further dialogue, to seek the counsel of... The question the younger gods put to them here is whether human beings should be made out of wood (the front legs)...” 6-1/4"D x,4"H small pressure crack, else intact and excellent.

Provenance: Ex-private East Coast USA Collection.