The second event, Chan-Muwan's dedication of the building itself, took place two hundred and thirty-six days later, on November 15, A.D. 791. At sunset on that day Venus first appeared as the Eveningstar. The artists depicted this second event, the ensouling of the temple, in the entire upper zone of the north wall and on the entire lower register. The narrative scenes concentrate on two moments in the long ceremony - the dressing of three dancers and their public performance.

The dressing scene shows a group of people busily accoutring three lords in the elaborate feathered costumes of the dance. Attendants on a lower terrace open bundles and chests and then pass their contents up to their counterparts above. One attendant ties wrist cuffs on the central dancer's arm, while another paints his skin. Various people are straightening out the feathers of a backrack that is about to be inserted into another dancer's belt. A group of bystanders watch as they talk among themselves.

The same three lords reappear in the lower register performing what the accompanying text calls literally a feather dance. To the right of the dancing rulers, we see thirteen lords?all of them vassals of various ranks - in an informal processional array, talking among themselves while they move toward the dance area. The first man in line holds a battle standard, which he points straight down toward the floor. The sixth holds a staff over his head, and the ninth and tenth carry large feathered battle standards attached to long staffs. The battle standards anticipate the war that must follow the first phase of the dedication rites so that suitable sacrificial victims can be taken for later ceremonies.

To the left of the feather dancers, we see a procession of musicians and dancers cast in the roles of gods. The first five wear tall white headdresses and painted leather skirts and they shake large magical gourd rattles. Behind them, a drummer beats on a chest-high drum, accompanied by three other musicians who counterpoint his rhythm on turtleshell drums beaten with deer antlers. Two other men, hidden by the turtle-shell players, carry more feathered battle standards, echoing the scene on the opposite wall. The masked dancers come next, followed by two musicians sounding large wooden trumpets. At the very end of the procession is a person carrying sacred objects in a bundle.

For our purposes, the masked dancers are the most important figures in the procession, for they appear often in similar rituals depicted at other sites and on pottery vessels. Dressed in the frightening masks of the monstrous Otherworld beings they have become through trance dancing, they hold ears of com, bundles, and staffs in their arms, or wave huge crab-claw gloves about. One, wearing the head of a crocodile, sits on the floor next to another person dressed in the costume of the First Father as Hun-Nal-Ye, the Maize Lord9 who was resurrected from the Otherworld by the dance of the Hero Twins. He and the masked dancers around him wear waterlilies to represent their status as denizens of the watery Otherworld·.they are important because they bridge to another scene at the nearby city of Yaxchilan on the mighty Xokolha, the Usumacinta River.

In the dedication rituals of a place called the Three-Conquest-Ballcourt at Yaxchilan, the sculptors carved these same masked dancers in a series of scenes on the step of a monumental stairway set on the mountainside above the river. At Yaxchilan the masked performers are each bouncing a big ball from the side bench of the court. Since this Yaxchilan scene is also associated with the dedication of a building - in this case a ballcourt - we surmise that ballplaying was a general part of the cycle of dedication rituals. However, just because ballplaying was part of the complex of dedication rites doesn't mean that the play took place in a formal ballcourt. Although the ballgame depicted at Yaxchilan served as part of the dedication of a ballcourt, the action of the masked players took place not in a ballcourt, but on a hieroglyphic stairway composed of six steps. Called a Wak-Ebnal, "Six-Stair Place," "these kinds of structures were "false ballcourts," places where Maya lords delivered their enemies to the Otherworld.

The initial house dedication at Bonampak shown in Room 1 of this painted temple was followed by a battle on the next zenith passage of the sun, which happened to coincide with an inferior conjunction of Venus as Morningstar. Depicted in Room 2, the victorious lords of Bonampak and their allies take captives, who were subjected to torture and humiliation. The miserable captives who survived that event finally died in a sacrificial dance performed along the terraces of a pyramidal platform depicted in Room 3. Sacrifice linked to dance was an integral part of dedication ceremonies for the Classic Maya.

From: Maya Cosmos by David Freidel, Linda Schele, Joy Parker 1990

Pages: 327-331

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