Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1996 - 141

Gallery

Copán' s new museum highlights
sophisticated
By Angela
new sculpture museum
at Copán, which opened
August 3, offers a stunThe
ning permanent exhibition
of some 3,000 fragments unearthed
at this important Maya site in western Honduras and a compelling introduction to Maya cosmology.
Visitors enter through the gaping
maw of the Maya earth monster.
From there a winding tunnel, simulating the entrance to the Maya underworld, leads to a spacious atrium,
whose centerpiece is a replica of
Rosalila, a 1,400-year-old temple
discovered in 1991 deep within the
multilayered Structure 16, the site's
principal pyramid. Adorned with
rich mountain, water, and maize imagery, the replica temple sits beneath an open skylight encircled
with painted constellations. Maya
cosmology is also reflected in use of
glyphs representing Venus, Mars,
the moon, the sun, and the sky in a
wrought-iron railing around a second-floor balcony. Even the placement of the ancient sculpture has
been dictated by its cosmological significance: carvings of heavenly beings are displayed on the balcony,
images of ancestors and underworld
figures on the ground floor.
"This was never intended to be
an art museum, but an extension of
the site itself," says William L. Fash,
who with his wife Barbara directs
Harvard's excavations at Copán,
one of several projects at the site.
The Fashes have been involved in
the museum's design and construction since its inception more than a
decade ago. "It all began when archaeologists, believing that there was
no way to preserve all the sculptural
fragments that had been excavated,

Situ

sculptural

treasures

and a

Maya cosmology .
M. H. Schuster

proposed burying them in a talus
heap in front of the Hieroglyphic
Stairway," says Fash. "If Copán is
known for anything, it is its sculpture, in particular its architectural
sculpture, the finest in the Maya
world. To bury such masterpieces
would have been a travesty."
Surrounding Rosalila are some of
Copán's most famous sculptures: Altar Q, depicting the site's 16 rulers;

1
ES
*
2
Aseventh-centuryA.D.carved head from
Temple22 on the Copán Acropolis represents a demon and waterbird.
the earth-monster maw and steps
from Structure 16; and stelae P, 2,
and A. Stela A is a portrait of
Copán's thirteenth ruler, 18 Rabbit,
in full regalia. Credited with Copán's architectural florescence, the
king was captured in battle and decapitated by the ruler of nearby
Quirigua on May 3, A.D. 738.
A ramp leads to the second-floor
balcony, where elements of 18 buildings are displayed. Seven complete
facades are exhibited, including
those of the Popol Nah, the Council

House where Copán's lords met;
Temple 22, adorned with images of
the Witz (mountain) monster; and
the Scribe's Palace from Las Sepulturas, a residential zone northeast of
the site. The friezes on these structures highlight important Maya
themes, including kingship, fertility,
literacy, and sacrifice. For reasons of
preservation and conservation, replicas have replaced many of the sculptures at the site.
"Making a replica of Rosalila the
interior focal point was Barbara
[Fash]'s idea," says architect Angela
Stassano, who designed the building
in collaboration with the Fashes and
Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle, Rosalila's primary excavator and executive director of the Copán Assothe
ciation, which administers
museum. Commissioned in A.D. 571
by Moon Jaguar, Copán's tenth
ruler, the original structure was built
atop the earlier temples of Hunal,
Yehnal, and Margarita. Copán's
richest tombs have been found within these earlier edifices, including
one thought to contain the bones of
the site's fifth-century
founder,
K'inich Yax K'uk Mo' (Sun-Faced
Blue-Green Quetzal Macaw).
Exposed to the elements by the
opening in the roof, the stucco on
the replica will weather and decay
as did that of the original. "We are
looking forward to the rains," says
Barbara Fash, "to see just how the
original building's gutter and drain
system, which we copied, worked."
The replica's stucco decoration was
faithfully re-created from archaeological drawings of the original temple. Its underpinnings, however, are
throughly modern. In addition,
drains have been buried in the

Archaeology

Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1996

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