The Disembodied Eye in Maya Art and Ritual Practice

Abstract

The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented for the Maya and other Mesoamerican groups. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich corpus of art demonstrating that such exhibitions must have taken place. Extruded eyeballs, often with the optic nerve still attached, form part of the iconographic complex of death and the underworld, although rarely on a monumental scale during the Classic period. From the Terminal Classic on, however, images of human sacrifice and its aftermath become more prominent and public. In the northern Maya lowlands, pendant and detached eyeballs are among the motifs represented, as adornments for humans, non-humans and structures. Crania from the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá show evidence of eyeball extraction, suggesting that eyeballs were removed, presumably from sacrificial victims, and manipulated post-mortem. Did the Maya adorn themselves with the eyeballs of their enemies? Throughout Mesoamerica, vision was considered a source of power, which may explain the Classic-era practice of mutilating the face, and especially the eyes, of rulers represented in Maya sculpture and painting.