Over the generations of use, the Mayans built over temples with newer structures; this led to the tunnel tours I wrote briefly about in the last post. This red temple is still red, but too fragile to allow visitors to view it, so they built a full-scale replica in the museum.
The vast amount of sculptures that have been discovered and recovered from the Copan site, and are not figuratively bolted down, have been moved to the museum. The entrance is like walking into a large gaping maw:
Then the tunnel leading to it resembles a tunnel from other Mayan sites:
This leads to the opening of the atrium and that replica.
We spent another pair of hours walking around here, and by the end, we were done. So, I've got some pictures of some cool things. The first, a larger scale zotz, the leaf nosed bat, the symbol of Copan:
Then there is a really cool water bird with fish, riding a river spirit:
Next we have the symbol/statue from the front of the scribe's quarters. The writers of the Mayan hieroglyphs were a certain breed of citizen, and they all quartered together. This is the scribe, with a pen in one hand and a well in the other:
This is the full-scale replica of a Scarlet Macaw sculpture, and the next is a detail of the smoking jaguar head in his midst. In the jaws of the jaguar, you'll see an arm and hand. This goes back to one of the creation stories of the Mayan, that one of two founding brothers lost an arm to a jaguar, before besting the beast. This scarlet macaw was originally above the ball court. Over the years the overseeing macaw changed and morphed, but remained a staple of their gaming court.
Here I am, in need of a nap. After dinner that night, the evening got a little interesting.
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