Head of a solar deity

This larger-than-life sculpture depicts the striking face of K’inich, the ancient Maya solar deity. His squared, close-set pupils echo the rounded corners of his oversized eyes, which for the ancient Maya suggested a powerful eyesight capable of seeing much more than human eyes. Below the deity’s prominent nose, a single filed tooth protrudes from between his lips, reflecting ancient Maya dental modification practices that involved filing teeth into various shapes and inlaying circles of precious stone into the dental surface; this tooth, which typically takes on a T-shape, has been gently rounded. Slightly furrowed brows bunch below the hieroglyphic sign for k’in (meaning sun or day), only half of which is visible beneath the deity’s hairline and headdress. K’inich’s partially damaged headdress still contains the skeletal jaw (marked with wavy lines and dots) and curved teeth of a centipede, which was visually associated with the sun’s shining rays. Although damage to the headdress complicates our view of other details of this piece, a few remain visible at the edges: the eyes and snout of the centipede on either side and the top of the headdress, round earflares, and possible panaches of feathers would have completed this elaborate headpiece.

The sculpture is carved from a greenish volcanic tuff, a kind of stone found in abundance at Copán. Copanec sculptors took advantage of the stone’s response to oxygen to create elaborate designs: volcanic tuff’s initial soft quality allowed them to carve in high relief, and with continued exposure to oxygen, it hardened and became more resistant. This allowed for the three-dimensional naturalism seen here. Like most Maya sculptures, it would also have been covered first with stucco and then red paint; this piece has undergone significant conservation to emphasize and maintain the original paint found on the layer of stucco.

The back of this sculpture ends in a stone tenon that would have facilitated its placement into a mosaic architectural façade. This representation of K'inich is comparable to a series of tenoned sculptures at Structure 8N-66C, a building located in the Las Sepulturas residential neighborhood of Copán. Six of these examples were reconstructed using archaeological evidence and feature the bust of K’inich within a rectangular solar cartouche (Fash 2011: 170). As in this depiction, the Sun God is similarly represented with a sharp tooth, close-set eyes, and a k'in hieroglyphic sign on his forehead. In these sculptural reconstructions, K'inich's visage is framed within a shield and a border resembling the shell of a turtle often associated with earth, perhaps alluding to the potency of the rising sun over the terrestrial realm.

Adorning the Structure 8N-66C façade, Head of a Solar Deity would have formed part of an iconographic program alluding to the sun’s movement. Anthropologists Harvey and Victoria Bricker have noted the structure's western orientation and the alignment of its doorway with the zenith passage of the sun, the moment when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky (Bricker and Bricker 1999: 438–439). This architectural alignment with the movement of the dawning sun is accentuated by a stone mosaic of stylized flint knives ornamenting the building's roof above the depictions of K'inich. These stone knife replicas metaphorically allude to the rays of the sun: flint is a naturally luminous stone, and when freshly sharpened, its edges would have produced a shimmering effect. Although only the head of this sculpture remains, its massive scale, the presence of a stone tenon at its end, and shared iconography with other examples suggests it formed part of a larger sculptural assemblage adorning this structure and acting as an animate representation of the solar cycle.

Brandon Agosto and
Catherine Nuckols, Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Fellow in the History of Art and Visual Culture, 2025

Further Reading:

Agurcia Fasquelle, Ricardo, and Payson Sheets. Protecting Sacred Space: Rosalila's Eccentric
Chert Cache at Copan and Eccentrics among the Classic Maya. San Francisco: Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, 2016.

Baudez, Claude F. Maya Sculpture of Copán: The Iconography. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

Bricker, Harvey M. and Victoria R. “Astronomical Orientation of the Skyband Bench at Copán.” Journal of Field Archaeology 26, no. 4 (1999): 435–442.

Fash, Barbara W. The Copan Sculpture Museum: Ancient Maya Artistry in Stucco and Stone.Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press & David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Tegucigalpa, Honduras: In association with the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, 2011.

Taube, Karl A. “The Classic Maya Temple: Centrality, Cosmology, and Sacred Geography in Ancient Mesoamerica.” In Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World, edited by Deena Ragavan, pp. 89–125. Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago, 2013.

Tiesler, Vera, Andrea Cucina, and Marco Ramírez-Salomón. "Permanent dental modifications among the ancient Maya." A world view of bioculturally modified teeth (2017): 270-284.

References:

Art: Official Catalog: Palace of Fine Arts, Golden Gate international exposition, San Francisco, 1940. San Francisco: Recorder Printing & Publishing Co., 1940, p. 155, no. 50.

Sotheby's, New York. Pre-Columbian Art. New York, November 24, 1997, p. 110, no. 178.

Doehne, Eric, Stefan Simon, Urs Mueller, and David Carson. "Characterization of Carved Rhyolite Tuff: The Hieroglyphic Stairway of Copan." Restoration of Buildings and Monuments: An International Journal 11, no. 4 (2005): 247–254.