Customer Reviews

Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship

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Few museum exhibitions have garnered as much conversation and genuine interest in history as the current LACMA sensitively curated exploration LORDS OF CREATION: The Origins of Sacred Mayan Kinship. This book is termed a catalogue, but in fact it not only enhances the magnificence of this exhibition and the importance of this aspect of Mesoamerican history, it also provides wholly readable essays by a gifted staff of writers that assures this volume will become a part of every school library.

The concept of kings divinely sanctioned is not unique to the Mayans: such lineage was also found in Egypt, Asia, Europe and Africa. But here the authors (Virginia M. Fields and Dorie Reents-Budet) follow the sacred kings on the Gulf Coast of Mexico from 900 BC through the gradual dispersion of those influences on the flowering of the Mayan civilization in southern Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala - that extraordinary and rich civilization that is even today not fully appreciated.

The extant religious ceremonies of the Mayan descendents are reviewed and their connection to the ancient rites is discussed through examples of archeological findings of art and mysterious fragments and evidences of a 'kingdom' ruled by those able to directly intercede between man and gods. The result is a lavishly beautiful collection of images and an immensely readable text. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, October 05

The Lords of Creation is a marvelous book filled with full color photos of Mayan art objects and sites. It has some objects not seen before in other books. The Metro Art Museum in L. A. has put this book out and is following up with a traveling tour this year. Fist stop is in Dallas (June -Sept) and then goes to New York. I am making plans to go. This is going to be very spectacular, as the book is. I highly recommend this book for all serious Mayan and Mesoamerican buffs whatever your studies or intrest range happens to be.

I won't go into a very lengthy description or recommendation. Let me just say that this book contains many quality photos of some of the more spectacular finds from the Mayan culture. If you have a lot of this type subject material lying around, this book has some photos I have not seen anywhere else. The book has excellent paper and binding and should give a long shelf life as a reference piece in your collection. My grand-kids love the large pages.