A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya
by David Freidel, Linda Schele
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Book Summary Information
Author: David Freidel, Linda ScheleEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1992-01-24
ISBN: 0688112048
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya
Book Review: A Fascinating Book Full of Translations of Maya Glyphs
Summary: 5 Stars
Note: It looks like I have offended some Mormons who don't want you to read this book. Nevertheless, science won't go away. Your "helpful" votes are appreciated
Schele and Freidel's book takes you into the mind of the ancient Maya, where bloodletting induced visions that opened doors into the world of pagan spirits and everyone had an animal "familiar."
The description of the "War of Conquest" of Tikal (tee-kal) against Uaactun (wa-shak-toon) is riviting. It is fascinating that we know the name of the general of Tikal, "Smoking-Frog." At other places, we now also know the names of the Maya leaders. "Ah Zacol...governed Lacanja for Knot-eye-Jaguar, the king of Bonampak." Other names are equally strange. I won't list the name of one king because Amazon's filter's would reject my review. Anyway, his name was "p-n-s of the jaguar."
I came to my interest in the Maya from my early encounters with Mormon authors who used specious scholarship to connect the Maya to the religious novel called the "Book of Mormon." Now that Maya writing has been deciphyered, all those false claims have been exposed. In many cases, the truth was known, but Mormon writers were engaging in the practice of lying for the Lord to promote their faith.
When the Spanish first saw Maya art, they misinterpreted it. They named one temple, for example, the "temple of the cross." The cross-like tree was seen as evidence that the Maya were Christians. Now we know that in the case of the temple of the "Foliated Cross" that the cross-bar of the cross is actually a maize plant with a "human head as an ear of maize." The maize plant is growing out of the "waterlily monster."
It was interesting to learn that the upright stone monuments, or stela, were known as "tree-stones" and the doorways into the temples were represented as the mouths of mountain monsters. The doorways are seen as caves into the mountain.
"Bloodletting, the focus ritual of Maya life, was the instrument" of the materialization of other-worldly beings.
The claims of Mormons and others that Stela B at Copan depicts elephant trunks was refuted even before the translation of the Maya glyphs. The trunks are actually the long beaks of macaws (you can see the colorful birds there today). The false claim is now doubly refuted because the writing on the stela refers to "macaw mountain," a nearby hill--not "elephant mountain."
Mormons are still claiming that there is a horse carved on the Temple of the Wall Panels at Chichen Itza. It is actually a damaged feathered-serpent (one feather hangs down to make the so-called horse's head). In reality, the Maya were so ignorant of horses that when Cortes left his lame horse among the Itza, they fed it meat.
The strange diet cause the horse to die and the Maya made a statue, calling it "Tzimin Chac," from the "Tzmin," meaning tapir (the animal most similar his general shape to a horse), and "Chac," the god of rain and thunder. When Father Urbita came to convert the Itza, he destroyed the idol at great risk to his life.
The Book of Mormon connection to ancient mesoamerica is without foundation. As you go back in time, the paganism only increases. There was no Hebrew civilization in mesoamerica.
This 500-page book belongs on the shelf on anyone interested in the mind of the ancient Maya.
Summary of A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya
The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion. In this book, two of the first central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Schele and David Freidel, make this history available in all its detail. A Forest of Kings is the story of Maya kingship, from the beginning of its institution and the first great pyramid builders two thousand years ago to the decline of Maya civilization and its destruction by the Spanish. Here the great historic rulers of pre-Columbian civilization come to life again with the decipherment of their writing. At its height, Maya civilization flourished under great kings like Shield-Jaguar, who ruled for more than sixty years, expanding his kingdom and building some of the most impressive works of architecture in the ancient world. Long placed on a mist-shrouded pedestal as austere, peaceful stargazers, the Maya elites are now known to have been the rulers of populous, aggressive city-states.
Hailed as "a Rosetta stone of Maya civilization" (Brian M. Fagan, author of People of the Earth), A Forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers," says Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.
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