What with the success of all the Horrible Histories books, the gruesome nature of our ancestors and the grim lives that they lived has become more fascinating than ever before. Rulership and Ritual: Maya Relief of Royal Blood Letting at the British Museum is the perfect example of this.
The idea of pulling a barbed rope through the piercing in your tongue to appease the gods and to prove yourself to your people seems bat shizz crazy to me, but to the people of Maya and Queen Xook it was part and parcel of life in Yaxchilán, one of many Maya kingdoms that stretched across what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and areas of Honduras and El Salvador.
This is the story that the British Museum will showcase from 13 May – 11 July 2010 at their free exhibition Rulership and Ritual: Maya Relief of Royal Blood Letting. It will feature a carved stone lintel of King Shield Jaguar III and Queen Xook in the midst of the self sacrifice.
Only rediscovered in the nineteenth century, the stone carving is one of the one hundred objects features on BBC Radio 4’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, airing on the 14th June 2010.
Image: Maya relief of royal blood-letting, from Mexico, early 8th century AD. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.
