The recipient shows a toad that carries a male personage on its back using a tumpline. The vessel is semi-globular, like the body shape of an upright amphibian, small in size (10 cm), with perforations on its front legs. Also, it has a small orifice at the top that possibly allowed some type of liquid or substance to be stored there at some time in the past. All these signs suggest that it could well have been a container to be hung around the neck and carried easily.
The reddish orange engobe of the recipient was widely used at the beginning of the Early Classic, and even in earlier times, but the piece is unique because not many objects like this that have been recovered, rather at that time the trend was to design composite-silhouette tripod vessels with lids bearing personages, always with baroque designs of winged beings incised in both the body and the lid. The handle of the lids sometimes took the form of a turtle, heron, or even a god, mostly elderly gods, such as Itzamnaaj, or the god L, among others[1].
None of this seems to match the piece analyzed here, however. The handle on the lid of one of the vessels mentioned here is a peccary which carries the God Itzamnaaj on its back, a sequence of a myth that would come to be represented several times during the Late Classic (600-900 AD). Therefore, the bearer-toad, although it does not conform to the pattern of a tripod vessel with lid, due to its color and subject matter, may well have been made at the very same time during the very Early Classic.
The roundness of the animal is closer to the appearance of a toad than a frog. Frogs had a close relationship with the arrival of the rains, which may make us think that the potter wanted to reproduce it here, but toads were also widely represented in mythological narratives of great complexity during the Late Classic (600-900 A.D.). Even whistles were made in the shapes of toads; they were carved in stone at Mayan cities like Copan (Honduras), or Uxmal (Yucatan); and Justin Kerr in his catalog of Mayan vessels includes more than 33 ceramics incorporating toads. The importance of these amphibians in Mayan culture is so prestigious that the sign for winal, one of the 20 day months of the 365 day calendar, is a frog.
In this piece, a big toad carries a personage on his back. It carries the personage as if transporting a noble of the time, on the back with a tumpline, as is seen in some Late Classic vessels (see vessel K5847). The personage is fastened around the waist and facing outward, arms raised and reclining on the back of the toad. The legs are drawn up so as not to be dragged. The lord's body is painted black, and the hands and face are differentiated by being colored with red. The hair is portrayed with large black strip as if they were locks. The hollow eyes of the personage may suggest that he is dead, but the position of arms and legs dismiss this idea.
In serving as a bearer, the toad has a somewhat human attitude, so that its forelimbs are humanized; the arms with which its hands firmly grip the rope of the tumpline that es under the neck. Typically the tumpline is worn on the forehead but the toad's skull is not tall enough, so it is fitted in the craw. The potter focused his attention on the erect and apparently smiling face of the toad. On this large semicircular mouth two large globular eyes look at the viewer, and this focuses attention on the amphibian's human hands.
The representation of people, especially the elderly, carried by animals was relatively common in the ancient Mayan culture. Among the bearer animals are the peccary, the opossum, and the deer. Toads are usually among the amphibians who play the role of ing the world, so that their bodies are the land surface or from their insides emerge mythical personages or ancestors. They are therefore beings that allow a connection with the underworld, or the world of the sacred.
Codex-style vessel K8608 shows a scene where they participate as wahyis (similar to Nahuals), the god Chaahk and other mythological animals. The master painters of the codex-style vessels reproduced a number of myths that involved a variety of familiar spirits or wahyis, among them toads, generally with the ability to generate great evil. However, in the Mayan culture, frogs in general, as well as amphibians and large reptiles, also symbolize the Earth, its surface and interior.
OBSERVATIONS: Fracture in the amphibian's mouth and in the front part of the base.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Kerr, Justin, http://research.famsi.org/kerrportfolio.html
Fields, Virginia and Reents-Budet, Dorie, 2005. Los mayas. Señores de la creación. Los orígenes de la realeza sagrada. CONACULTA- INAH. Editorial Nerea. China.
[1] Virginia Fields and Dorie Reents-Budet created the cata collaboration with other authors. Los mayas. Señores de la creación. The origins of the sacred royalty, where this type of piece can be seen.
