Reading All About It: Rethinking Orality in Classic Maya Scribal Imagery

Abstract This paper examines the understudied role of reading and oral performance in Maya “scribal” imagery from the Late Classic period ( a.d. 600–900). Although many studies consider the ways in which Maya artists represented the production of text and image, few systematically examine how textual reception was rendered in Maya art. With this in mind, the present essay considers one specific motif that recurs on painted drinking vessels: the image of a seated figure in front of a codex book. A systematic review of this imagery reveals the limits of conceptualizing these figures as “scribes,” a term which implicitly privileges the acts of painting and writing ( tz’ihb ). The majority of the figures who appear with books do not hold writing implements. Instead, they make a variety of gestures to texts that likely encode distinct forms of oral performance. Writers and readers can also be tied to separate deities and regalia, which suggests that this division is an emic distinction with implications for the hierarchy of Maya courts. The emphasis on speech and textual interpretation in scribal imagery demonstrates the value of embracing a more flexible, orality-based notion of aesthetics in studies of Maya imagery and non-Western material culture more broadly.