Tripod Polychrome Plate Decorated with Stepped Key Frieze, Bird and Jaguars

Astronomy has always been central to Maya culture, which still uses the Haab, a pre-Columbian solar calendar of eighteen months. The mythological bird depicted on this funerary plate was associated with the month Muan, a time of heavy rainfall, and with the planet Mercury. The Maya believed this part-macaw, part-owl creature was a messenger to the gods of the underworld, a place where the sun descended each night in order to reemerge, reborn, at dawn. In Mayan astronomy, the Muan bird has its own constellation, which contains the stars otherwise known as Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini of the Western zodiac.