Not much time had elapsed before Natalie heard the buzz of various conversations disappear and everyone turned to face the front of the room. A man she presumed was the guest presenter idled near the door, while an older man walked past the blank projector screen and stopped at the narrow lectern.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank you all for coming to the ROM for tonight's presentation in The Alyce Hunter Memorial Lecture Series. For fifteen years this series has been able to host numerous distinguished presenters in all fields of natural and human history. Tonight, we have a presenter who works in the field I know was close and very dear to Dr Hunter herself. Please welcome Dr Ioan Trent who will speak on the excavations and findings at the recently discovered ancient Maya site in Belize."
Natalie clapped, along with everyone else in the audience, as the man walked away. The room quieted down and she watched as the other man, Dr Trent, headed to the front. Soon, the projector screen lit up with the first image, the title slide in white with black text which read: Excavation of the Ancient Maya City of Luumtun Ka'anmul: Restoration, Relics, and Rituals. Soon, the room was quiet again.
"I would like to begin my talk by again thanking everyone for coming out tonight and for being able to present in this lecture series. We have been working on this Maya site for a few years and it is a joint venture and with funding from the Royal Ontario Museum Governors, the Government of Belize, and the Maya Research Program in Belize. This is, of course, not the first Maya excavation by the ROM. Dr Hunter herself was involved in the excavation at the Altun Kinal site, which I believe had a very unique connection with Luumtun Ka'anmul. So let's begin with the location and initial survey of the area, along with some of the restoration and conservation already underway."
Natalie tried very hard to not appear bored looking at slides showing maps, then sketches of unearthed buildings, layouts of temple rooms, rebuilding practices that were being employed, and individual pictures of artifacts being discovered and cleaned. She knew from some quick glances at Nick that he was very interested in the presentation. Natalie guessed that he was comparing current archeological techniques to what he had personally used. She returned to forcing herself to focus again on the slides, which now showed various stone statues and carved figurines. Then one image caught her full attention – it was a photograph and a sketch she identified as Nick's Maya cup.
"This artifact, a cup carved from dark green jade, was found by Dr Alyce Hunter's team and was here to be part of the display of the excavation. This particular cup was, unfortunately, stolen soon after its arrival and never recovered. An identical cup from an earlier excavation at Altun Kinal was loaned to the ROM from a private collection and held here for years, recently being replaced with a replica. Now, I remember when I was younger hearing about and eventually seeing the Maya Exhibit here at the ROM. It inspired me to study the ancient Maya culture. So you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I found references to this jade cup."
The slide advanced and Natalie saw a sketch of a broken stone with a multitude of partially worn-down Mayan glyphs and a figure standing sideways. She could barely make out the image, but it appeared to be an individual with outstretched arms holding a cup in each hand. In her peripheral vision she saw Nick move and turned her head to look at him. He seemed introspective, and having observed that look many times, Natalie knew he was recalling some moment from his past, probably the moment he had first learned about this ritual cure. She focused again on the speaker.
"This is a nineteenth-century sketch that first identified the existence of the jade cups and the glyphs were translated. At the time, and with their understanding of how to translate, they said the text referred to a ritual found and practiced in one geographical area of the Maya civilization. Later, that area would be identified as the site called Altun Kinal. As I said, two excavations occurred there, one hundred years apart, and one ritual cup was found during each dig. So the original translation and interpretation done by European Mayanists and occultists was that a victim was sacrificed and their blood poured between these cups and then drunk. This was meant to treat or cure … something, possibly death or a state of death, and return the individual back to life. Since my subspecialty is ancient medical and healing practices, this ritual was fascinating to me. Of course, we have to be careful in how Mayan text is read and remember we cannot always apply our definitions or concepts of words where they might have had a different one. So this treatment, I believe, was not to actually bring the dead back to life, but a medical treatment clouded in mysticism.
"The Mayas believed the soul was composed of four parts: the breath, bone, blood, and shadow souls. When those portions were disturbed, an individual would become sick directly correlated to the level of disruption. The severity of illness could be so extreme that, it was believed, one or more parts of the soul would leave the body and begin to enter Xibalba, the Underworld, in which case the person was considered dead or in a state of death. However, with herbs, medicines, and other treatments from the shaman, the sick individual could recover. The shaman could have even put some of their own blood into the remedy, which might have been thought to help open the link to the spirit world and make it easier for the soul to come back, and that would explain the use of blood referenced in the text. Once the patient recovered, one could say that the individual, after being deathly ill, had been brought back to life. So, as I had mentioned, I was surprised when I uncovered another artifact with this same image and glyphs at Luumtun Ka'anmul."
Natalie leaned slightly forward in interest; the possibility that a medical treatment for vampirism had been known would be very useful for her own treatments on Nick. The speaker advanced to the next slide, which showed an opened document with the same image as the older sketch, only much clearer as the fine details had not been worn off or faded.
"This is a small torn piece of bark cloth and upon it you can see the exact same glyphs and individual holding the two cups. There were some other unrelated documents found in this small room, but nothing else that might be associated with this process: no cups, or bowls, or the other part of this document. So this item seemed very out of place, but I had a feeling we were close. For the Maya, Xibalba physically existed. Geographically, it was the river and cave system near Luumtun Ka'anmul, which was considered the actual entrance to the Underworld. Since this treatment seemed to involve individuals who were so ill their souls were entering Xibalba, I took a small group over to the cave entrance to see if there was something there that could be linked with this practice. It took a while, but we discovered a small structure. As such things usually go, it was found by accident when a member of my group was walking and got her foot stuck in a hole, which turned out to be the broken roof slabs of the buried building. Getting in and clearing out the debris, we found them."
A series of images went by on the projector screen which confused Natalie. Most of the photographs were of various angles of a green cup on a table and another cup in pieces on the floor. However, the design carved on the intact cup wasn't like Nick's cup, it was very different. She wondered what these cups had to do with the ones from Altun Kinal.
"There were two cups, also carved from green jade, found in a small subterranean room of the structure. One, as you can see, had fallen to the ground and broke, while the other remained on the table surface. The design carved on these cups are different than what is on the other set, however, that would soon be explained. When the back wall was cleared, we found a familiar scene. As you can see in this photograph, this wall has the same glyphs and individual as before, holding the cups. However, this design is more expansive, with additional text and this second individual seemingly to be receiving one of the cups from the original individual's most outstretched hand. There is also a single glyph above each cup, identifying them as non-identical. My theory is that different medicinal herbs and other material might have been prepared in the different cups, then by pouring the solutions back and forth between them, they would mix and allow time for the shaman to intone ritualistic phrases to evoke the assistance of various deities.
"Now, the glyph identifying each cup have been determined and do correspond to a small glyph carved on the cups themselves. It would thus appear the cups found at Altun Kinal were the representation of the Sun god Kinich Ahau, also known as the 'Face of the Sun,' while the complementary cups at Luumtun Ka'anmul were of the Jaguar God of the Underworld, called the 'Night Sun,' which was the form Kinich Ahau took when in Xibalba."
Natalie quickly turned to look at Nick, who was sitting tensely in his chair. If what she heard was correct, then that meant …. She leaned over and whispered, "Nick?"
"It was wrong." Nick turned to Natalie, who looked like she was in as much shock as he was. "I hadn't really done the ritual. That's why it didn't work."