Incense burner

This beautiful incense burner is an excellent example of the skill and art of maya during the classic period.
The piece represents a maya ruler with a headdress large and elaborate, and a set of jewelry. The medallion in the centre, probably containing his name or some other glyph.
The incense, in the form of tree resins such as copal ( Protium copal ), was a key component of the ancient mayan rituals, as well as in the rituals contemporary maya. Practitioners rituals and the royal families made offerings of incense to communicate with the ancestors and deities in the supernatural realm.

Maya artists represented smoke of incense in sculptures and paintings, monumental; The clouds of smoke were vehicles for the ancestors communicate with the living. This burner of incense, and other similar can represent the ancestors of the rulers, who have burned incense on their cameras, or may have been used to venerate a ruler after the death, with the sacred smoke as a means of communication.

Images of the @metmuseum