DOWN BY THE GUATEMALAN BORDER,

…in a remote corner of the Mexican state of Chiapas, there’s a small Mayan ruin known as Bonampak.

The ancient, long abandoned city, really more of a large town, boasts an acropolis, topped  by a couple of smallish third rate pyramids, crowned, in their turn, by some tiny fourth rate temples:

They’ve resurrected an assortment of stelae, the large, elaborately carved standing stones created by Maya sculptors to commemorate important events and encounters. (Click images to expand them to full screen.)

Sign in Spanish, Mayan, and English describing Stela 1. At nearly 20 feet in height, this is one of the tallest in the Mayan world.

Ironically, with the passage of centuries, their positions have reversed.  Of the two Mayan cities, Bonampak is much better known to the world at large, and its importance to Maya scholars is immeasurable. Needless to say, all of that is in spite of, certainly not because of those raggedy third-rate pyramids.

The Maya were extraordinary artists, and they worked in a wide variety of mediums. They were stone carvers, jewelry makers, potters, weavers, and painters, famous for their colorful murals. The stone carving is pretty obvious–palaces, temples, intricate facades, bas reliefs, statues and figurines fashioned from limestone and stucco, from granite, from jade and other semi-precious stone. The buildings, the statues, the stelae that commemorate historical events–those things are everywhere in the former domain of the Maya, hundreds of sites, many of them yet to be excavated. Most of the jewelry that has survived has been found in royal burials, and graces the prized collections of museums all around the world. The pottery–same deal. Much of what is still intact was recovered from burials, and the elaborate scenes painted on many of these funerary offerings provide us with some of our best insights into the religion, the customs, and the culture of the ancient Maya. The skill, and the craftsmanship, is unsurpassed.

The textiles, tapestries, and feather-work, all that elaborate regalia depicted in their bas reliefs and their polychrome pottery, that stuff has not fared so well over the centuries, certainly not in the damp climate of Central America. There are modern examples in museum collections, textiles created by the descendents of the ancient Maya, using traditional patterns and techniques, but all the original examples have long since rotted away or crumbled to dust. As have the paintings, unfortunately, particularly the elaborate murals that graced the interior walls of many palaces and temples. Those were likewise ravaged by exposure to the tropical climate–faded, flaked off, and crumbled to dust, leaving nothing but the occasional faint trace, or outline, with but a few rare exceptions. Out of that handful of Mayan sites where mural paintings have survived,  there is one in particular that stands head and shoulders above the rest. One very special place. Down by the Guatemalan border, in a remote corner of the Mexican State of Chiapas: that small Mayan ruin known as Bonampak.

One of those fourth-rate temples that I mentioned is officially known as “Structure 1.” It’s a smallish building, fifty feet by twelve feet, divided into three small rooms. There are no windows, but each small room has its own door to the outside:

Temple of the Paintings

A corrugated sheet-metal roof was erected to protect the structure from the rain, and lockable doors were affixed, to protect the rooms from vandals after hours. On the inside, each of those rooms is a breathtaking window into history. The interior walls are covered from floor to ceiling with elaborate paintings that actually HAVE survived, larger, grander, and in better condition than any Mayan paintings found anywhere else, ever. The site was abandoned shortly after the murals were created, around 800 AD. The three rooms may have been sealed at that time, though it would have not been possible to seal them well enough to properly protect the murals. Something else happened, a quirk of fate, or providence. Over the course of centuries, rainwater seeped in through the limestone walls of the temple, moistening the paintings, and as that mineral-rich moisture evaporated, it left a sheen of calcite on the surface. That rock hard, translucent mineral coated the Amazing Mayan Murals of Bonampak with a protective layer that kept them safe, preserving them, in remarkably good condition, for more than a thousand years. The calcite obscured details in the paintings, and muddied the colors, so in the 1980’s, the Mexican Government funded a team of specialists who labored for three years, meticulously removing the calcite while cleaning and stabilizing the murals and the underlying plaster. The results of those efforts speak for themselves. The murals as you can see them today are better and brighter than ever.

Each of the three rooms is different, but taken together, they provide a brilliant picture of the pomp and grandeur, as well as the monstrous cruelty of the Maya in the classic era, when Bonampak was a thriving metropolis.

There are conflicting stories about the discovery of the site. Fact is, it was never really lost–the local Lacondon Maya were still using it for religious purposes, and had always done so, until one of them showed the ruins to a young American named Charles Frey, in 1946. Some say that the first outsider to visit was actually a photographer/explorer named Giles Healey, but regardless of which of those two was first to visit the site, it was Healey’s photographs that first introduced the murals of Bonampak to the rest of the world.

The murals have been extensively studied, and they provide a fascinating glimpse into the life of the court during the period when they were created. Each of the three rooms depicts a different scene, including celebrations and musicians, as well as battles, torture, and human sacrifice. Maya Lords wear severed human heads as necklace ornaments, captives are bound and mutilated, a group of noblewomen partake in a ritual that requires them to pierce their tongues with thorns, in a gruesome bloodletting ceremony. Before the discovery of these murals, it was popularly believed that the ancient Maya were peaceful mystics. The scenes depicted at Bonampak permanently debunked that notion.

Some sections of the murals are far better preserved than others, and there’s evidence of what appears to be vandalism: faces of some of the figures were deliberately obliterated at some point after the painting was completed.

Deliberately “de-faced” Mayan Lords in Room 3, Bonampak

The eyes were deliberately gouged in this detail from Room 1

There is other damage to the murals that was not intentional, but much more recent. Early visitors to Bonampak were in the habit of spraying kerosene on the murals, to brighten the colors for their photographs. This practice caused significant damage to many of the panels, but by the time anyone realized that, it was too late to reverse it.

They’ve used modern scientific techniques, infrared photography, and thermal imaging to bring out details in the murals that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Two projects, one sponsored by Yale University, the other by the National Geographic Society have done remarkable work with the murals, using computer assisted graphic techniques to recreate these amazing paintings with something that comes amazingly close to their original glory:

Original photograph from Bonampak. This panel was permanently damaged by early tourists spraying kerosene.

The same scene after restoration, as reported in National Geographic Magazine.

Room 1 is entered through the door on your left as you face the temple, and it is in this room that the remarkable story begins. The paintings travel around the room in four distinct segments, beginning with the panel nearest the floor. We see a procession of lesser nobles, including musicians, and men wearing elaborate god masks, lined up around the walls, against a bright blue background. Above them is a narrow band containing hieroglyphs on one side, and images of captives or menial workers on the other. Next is the widest, most impressive panel, in which we have Chaan Muan II, the Lord of Bonampak, presenting his new son and heir to the nobles of his court. These are clearly important personages, sumptuously dressed, each in a different costume, standing in a line before their ruler; each of the two longer walls features a seperate, but similar scene, against an orange background. Finally, the vaulted ceiling, which is filled with designs representing the Mayan version of heaven, and images of gods.

1.) Reproduction of Room 1, Latin American Studies.org   2.) Composite photo of lower wall

Room 2 is entered through the door in the center, and presents images that set a much different tone. These are battle scenes, in which the Lords of Bonampak vanquish seemingly helpless villagers for the purpose of taking captives. Captives were the fuel of Mayan society, the energy source that made it work. Slave labor built their monuments, raised their crops, transported their goods, and more. The pool had to be continuously refreshed, because the bloodthirsty Mayan religion required a constant supply of expendable humans to serve as sacrificial offerings to their gods. In one panel, Chaan Muan II, dressed in all his finery, grasps a terrified villager by the hair, as the man struggles desperately to free himself. In another, a row of bound captives sit weeping in pain, their fingertips dripping blood after their nails were ripped out.

Clearly, it wasn’t good to be on the wrong side of the Lords of Bonampak!

Reproduction of Room 2, Latin American Studies.org

Room 3, last, but certainly not least, is through the door on the right. This is where the prisoners captured during the battles in Room 2 are sacrificed. There are celebrations, with music and dancing and gigantic hats that look like a collaboration between Dr. Seuss and Hieronymus Bosch. One of the upper end panels depicts a particularly graphic scene in which a group of noble women pierce their tongues to draw blood, as an offering to the gods. The heir to Chaan Muan II, presented to the court by his father in Room 1, is seen here with his mother, preparing to participate in his first bloody sacrifice.

It’s almost unimaginable, but artwork such as this must have covered the walls of every important building in the Mayan world, documenting the lives and the fantasies of all their kings in graphic, colorful detail. The Mayan cities as they appear today, pyramids and temples built of weathered limestone, the only color coming from vegetation sprouting in the cracks between the blocks; those ruins bear no more than a passing resemblance to the original constructions that stood on those crumbling foundations. The Maya loved color. The evidence of that is abundantly clear, especially when we look at the Bonampak murals. These places would have truly  been something to see, back in their glory days. As long as you weren’t on the losing side of one of those one-sided battles.

IF YOU GO:

Getting to Bonampak requires some effort. There is no town of any significant size anywhere near the ruin. There are, however, bus tours that leave from Palenque. It’s a three hour ride in each direction, and with a couple of hours at the site, that makes for a very full day. Other tours require two full days and include a visit to Yaxchilan and an overnight stay at a jungle lodge. Those tours are a bit on the pricey side, as they include not only the bus, the tour guide, and your lodging, but also a fairly expensive boat ride to Yaxchilan. There are public buses that will take you to within a couple of miles of the ruins, or, best alternative, rent a car. No matter how you get to Bonampak, there’s one hard, fast rule: don’t travel that road at night. It gets incredibly dark, there are numerous hazards on the highway–everything from animals in the road to potholes larger than your car, plus, it’s a border area, remote, and somewhat lawless, and there are goings on after nightfall that you really don’t want any part of. For that reason, the tours leave Palenque early in the day, and return before dusk. Any tours that extend for an extra day will have you safely in your hotel long before sundown.

One other thing, no matter how you go, the last five miles will be in one of the small vans that ferry visitors from the parking lot to the ruins. This isn’t optional–no private vehicles are allowed on that last section of road, and it’s a bit too far to comfortably walk it. Once the van drops you off, you’ll still have to walk a short distance across an open area.

A sign, once again in Spanish, Mayan, and English, describing the layout of Bonampak’s Grand Plaza.

After you climb the steps to the Temple of the Paintings, you’ll be met by the caretakers of the site, all Mayan men from the nearby village, who guard the place as if it were their own. You show them your ticket, then you get in line to view the interiors. There’s a seperate line for each of the rooms, and no more than four people will be admitted to any of the rooms at the same time–there’s too much moisture in our breath, and it’s bad for the paintings. No bags or backpacks are allowed (not even camera bags), and, while you can take all the pictures you like, you can’t use a flash. Ever. Not even a little one. No tripods, either. When I traveled to Bonampak, in October of 2015, my friend and I were the only visitors during the time we were there, so all of that was reasonably casual, but I’m told that when the site is crowded, the rules are quite strictly enforced. On busy days, the maximum time allowed in each room is just twenty seconds per person, so if you want photos, you’ll have to work fast!

Provided it’s a sunny day outside, there is just enough light in those rooms to hand-hold your shots and still come away with usable images, but only if your equipment is up to the task. If photos are important to you, I’d recommend using a good digital camera, rather than your cell phone.  (Unless you have the very latest version of phone, something that you’re certain will work well in very low light situations). With a DSLR or Mirrorless camera, shoot with a fast wide angle zoom, set your camera to a high ISO, bracket your shots, and cross your fingers, because there’s luck involved. It’s important to remember that a visit to a place like Bonampak is not just another photo opportunity. Think about where you are, and what you’re seeing; then try to imagine a world where the scenes in those paintings were actually happening!

The Bonampak murals are like nothing else in the Mayan realm, and well worth seeing for yourself. No photo can do them justice. You have to view them in context, in order to really appreciate them for what they are: simply extraordinary.

Click any of the pictures in these slide shows to enlarge them all to full screen, with captions:

(Unless otherwise noted, all of these images are my original work, and are protected by copyright. They may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.)

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