Bonampak

Bonampak is an old Maya site of the state of the Chiapas, with the Mexico, located at approximately 30km in the south of the larger site of Yaxchilán, at the border of the Guatemala.

It is about a Maya small site, which depended on Yaxchilán. The whole of the structures seems to be built between 580 and 800. Bonampak was redécouvert in 1946 by the photographer Gilles Healy; it was guided there by the Mayas Lacandon which continued to practice, at certain periods, of old Maya rites in the temples.

Description of the site

Bonampak counts many temples of intermediate size around a town square, like some finely worked steles, but in fact the frescos decorating its acropolis make a single and famous archeological site of it.

This building, commonly called Temple of Paintings (or more technically “Structure 1”) comprises 3 rooms laid out in length with the top of a pyramid. It is on their interior walls that one finds the most beautiful vestiges of the Maya painting, whose only other testimonys are small fragments soiled or details on pottery.

By a fortunate coincidence, rainwater was introduced into the plaster of the roof, recovering the interior walls of a slightly transparent layer of Carbonate of calcium. Little time after the discovery of Healy, the Carnegie Institute sent a forwarding to Bonampak. The walls were painted with Kérosène, which returned the layer recovering paintings temporarily transparent. Paintings then largely and were entirely photographed, and two different artists carried out doubles of paintings. In 1996 a team of the Université of Yale launched the Projet of documentation of Bonampak , which included/understood the realization of a study even more detailed, a photographic filing and reproduction of the murals.

Paintings go back to 790 and were carried out in the form of Fresque S. the absence of joint in the plaster indicates that each part was painted of only one draft, for the short period when the plaster was wet. They carry the mark of a Master, and two qualified assistants. The three parts depict with much realism a series of events. The first describes clothing of priests and noble; a ceremony where a child becomes the heir to a noble family; a playing orchestra of trumpets out of wooden, drums and other instruments; the noble ones discussing at the time of a debate. The second part shows a scene of war and captures prisoners; then these same prisoners bleeding of the fingers, ritually gashed, sitting in front of the lord of Bonampak, the Chaan Muan , richly vêtu. It is generally supposed that the prisoners are being prepared for a human Sacrifice, even if the frescos do not show it. The third part depicts a ceremony, with dancers with the refined costumes carrying of the masks representing of the gods; the lord and his family ritually plant needles in their languages, to pour blood of it. The hieroglyphic text which accompanies paintings dates the scene and names the principal participants.

According to professor Mary Miller, of Yale, person in charge of a full study of painting: “There is certainly no other Artifact of the antiquity of the Nouveau World offering a as complex vision of the prehispanic company as paintings of Bonampak. No other work puts in scene as many Mayas in their life of courtiers, with as many details, which makes frescos of Bonampak a resource without equal for the comprehension of the ancient companies. ”

Tourist information

Although Bonampak is a tourist site, there does not remain about it less difficult of access and distant from all. Nevertheless, since the construction of the highway of the border by the Mexican government at the beginning of the Years 1990, Bonampak became much more accessible to the tourists.

The frescos are not any more as clear as on the photographs of the Années 1940. No photography with flash is authorized in the Temple of Paintings. One can have today an good idea of the frescos by visiting the reproduction of the temple on real scale with the National museum of Anthropologie and Histoire of Mexico City. Even if the remainder of the site is less impressive than Yaxchilán, the frescos amply deserve to be seen.

See too

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External bonds

  • Seen panoramic of Bonampak
  • Maya civilization
  • history of the Mayas
  • '' Mesoamerican Photo Files: Bonampak ''
  • '' Virtual Reality Bonampak Murals '' - Zip Files of the reproductions of Antonio Tejeda

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