Maize God Emerging from a Flower
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Venerated across the Maya region—a vast territory that includes the present-day countries of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras—the Maize God is often depicted as a metaphor for new growth and regeneration. He also symbolizes agricultural fertility and abundance.
As seen in this delicate ceramic object, the Maize God is identified by an elongated head, reminiscent of an ear of corn, and the idealized features of a beautiful young man. He wears a beaded necklace and ear spools, ornaments that were made of jade, a precious stone associated with the living maize plant. In Maya creation stories, the Maize God dies, descends into the underworld, and is reborn—a metaphor for the corn seed that emerges with new life from the ground.
Also according to the Maya worldview, ancestors and deities reside on Flower Mountain, a paradise full of music and beautiful, fragrant flowers. Made during the Late Classic Period, this work doubles as a whistle that was likely played during special ceremonies. It reflects the concepts of flowers as homes for divine beings and music as a means to bring these beings to life.
Object Label
This delicately modeled ceramic figurine depicts a bejeweled male figure emerging from a water lily. Hundreds of figurines in this style have been found on Jaina Island, just off Mexico’s Campeche coast. The island served as an elite Maya burial site.
The water lily is associated with the underworld in Maya cosmology. The figurine may symbolize the renewal of life after death, making it an especially appropriate burial offering.
Caption
Maya. Maize God Emerging from a Flower, 600–900. Ceramic, pigment, 8 1/4 x 2 1/8 x 1 11/16 in. (21 x 5.4 x 4.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 70.31. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 70.31_overall_PS11.jpg)
Tags
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Culture
Title
Maize God Emerging from a Flower
Date
600–900
Period
Late Classic Period
Geography
Place found: Campeche, Mexico
Medium
Ceramic, pigment
Classification
Dimensions
8 1/4 x 2 1/8 x 1 11/16 in. (21 x 5.4 x 4.3 cm)
Credit Line
Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Accession Number
70.31
Rights
Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Frequent Art Questions
What can you tell me about this art?
This figure comes from the Campeche coast of Mexico (along the Gulf!) and shows a male figure inside a water lily. It was likely found in a cemetery. It would have been made by hand and painted. Some of the colors are still present.If you look closely, there's a particularly special blue color that the artist used. It's a shade of Mayan blue, a type of blue pigment used by the Classic Mayan cultures that people only learned how to replicate recently. It was quite a mystery for scholars!Does the color represent anything?It does! Blue was associated with sacrifice in Mayan cultures at the time. It had connotations of healing and rebirth, as well.Any research on why water lilies are consistently funerary in many cultures?
I know that in ancient Egypt it was related to rebirth, taken from the visual of beautiful flowers growing out of the mud. In Mayan art the waterlily is also associated with the afterlife, and with living on in another realm, Xibalba, after death here on earth. In both cases the plant metaphor, relating to regrowth or rebirth, is the central reason why the symbol is used.
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