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A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya Paperback – January 24, 1992

by David Freidel (Author), Linda Schele (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 153 ratings
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The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion. In this book, two of the first central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Schele and David Freidel, make this history available in all its detail. A Forest of Kings is the story of Maya kingship, from the beginning of its institution and the first great pyramid builders two thousand years ago to the decline of Maya civilization and its destruction by the Spanish. Here the great historic rulers of pre-Columbian civilization come to life again with the decipherment of their writing. At its height, Maya civilization flourished under great kings like Shield-Jaguar, who ruled for more than sixty years, expanding his kingdom and building some of the most impressive works of architecture in the ancient world. Long placed on a mist-shrouded pedestal as austere, peaceful stargazers, the Maya elites are now known to have been the rulers of populous, aggressive city-states.

Hailed as "a Rosetta stone of Maya civilization" (Brian M. Fagan, author of People of the Earth), A Forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers," says Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

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  1. Print length
    552 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    William Morrow Paperbacks
  4. Publication date
    January 24, 1992
  5. Dimensions
    7 x 1.38 x 10 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0688112048
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0688112042
  8. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
153 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book wonderful, well-written, and excellent. They also describe the content as scholarly, well-researched, and documented. Readers appreciate the wonderful pictures and illustrations.

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ReadabilityScholarly contentVisual quality
19 customers mention "Readability"19 positive0 negative

Customers find the book wonderful, interesting, and well-written. They also say it's excellent and has no unlegible content.

"Really great book I've just started reading it and I've already learned a lot...." Read more

"...It is a big, long book as well, a great read with lots of information and a wide scope. It gives the reader a great perspective on Maya culture." Read more

"...I found this book to be a wonderful read and and a fascinating journey. However, this not light reading...." Read more

"...It's a very academic read and not meant to be read as a novel. Great research and details for those who want the details of the culture and history." Read more

15 customers mention "Scholarly content"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very informative, engaging, and well-researched. They say it provides a good overview of the culture and helps explain the purpose, meaning, and role of the baroque imagery. Readers also mention the history is well done and gives them a great perspective on Mayan culture.

"...The Mayan civilization is incredibly fascinating because it is so foreign to our own and yet it is a part of the heritage of the American..." Read more

"...It helps explain the purpose, meaning and role of the baroque imagery the Mayans used in their bas relief sculptures in their temples, tieing it in..." Read more

"...you have any interest in human history and its records, this will delight and enlighten you." Read more

"Interesting, but a tough read." Read more

4 customers mention "Visual quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the pictures and illustrations in the book wonderful, exquisite, and vivid. They also say it's not just a text but a work of art in itself.

"...This book isn't just a text, it is a work of art in itself. You will have a hard time putting it down." Read more

"...reviews say it's a bit wordy and while that is true it also has exquisite detail with very vivid pictures. Overall I'm very happy with this book." Read more

"...The book is choke-full of very well done drawings of Mayan graphics that survived, but these drawings are barely annotated..." Read more

"Excellent, detailed presentation with lots of illustrations and photos..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

C. Potterwang
5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely book
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2024
Verified Purchase
I loved reading this book and I went far beyond to read all the footnotes in the back and appendices. I studied all of the scholars/people in this book at some length. I hated a few of them and I loved a majority of them. I walked through many of the Mayan ruins and current villages eating Mayan foods in my imagination. I saw the burning library in Dresden. I was terrified that I was a captured king and my head would roll down the stone stairs. I felt the rock floor and read the hieroglyphs. I also discovered the way to read the Mayan writing. I bathed in the waters at Palenque and studied the stars in the observatory. Yes this book captured me.
One person found this helpful
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Craig Matteson
5.0 out of 5 stars Superlative book on Mayan culture - fascinating read
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2003
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It is so sad that we have lost Linda Schele. But we can rejoice that we still have her wonderful books. This book is among her best. It is almost magical in the way she and David Freidel create the atmosphere of the Mayan culture. There are wonderful pictures and illustrations. She unfolds the stories of the archaeological discoveries and then helps us understand the real lives revealed in the evidence.

The book also shows how the Mayan glyphs and counting systems work. There are nowadays very good texts on the writing system itself, but this book shows us how the glyphs are woven into the culture and religion of these people. We learn how the lineage worked and how the monuments were used as what we would call propaganda to support one line over other possibilities. We learn about the role of magic and visions and the way the leaders were the empowered by those visions.

There is just so much here that any reader will be richly rewarded. The Mayan civilization is incredibly fascinating because it is so foreign to our own and yet it is a part of the heritage of the American continents.

This book isn't just a text, it is a work of art in itself. You will have a hard time putting it down.
101 people found this helpful
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Branden Koster
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2024
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Really great book I've just started reading it and I've already learned a lot. Some of the other reviews say it's a bit wordy and while that is true it also has exquisite detail with very vivid pictures. Overall I'm very happy with this book.
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Cimarron
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2010
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This book is now a little old, but I think still very useful. It helps give an idea of the daily life of the elites and ordinary citizens during the preclassic and classic periods of the Mayan temple building era. It helps explain the purpose, meaning and role of the baroque imagery the Mayans used in their bas relief sculptures in their temples, tieing it in with the religious imagery expressed in the key book available to us the Popul Vuh. It is a great tool for someone who wishes to begin to understand the otherwise overwhelmingly complex Mayan spiritual life and style of artistic expression. The two are inextricably linked. They examine specific sites where the authors have worked, and help understand the concepts the builders had in constructing these sites. This is immensely helpful. Sometimes I feel a little nervous as they authors fill in gaps in the historical narrative on what appears to be shaky evidentiary ground. This is shortcoming that Nassim Taleb refers to as the narrative fallacy. It is an important problem and a mistake that we all commit. It will lead us astray. However, if you mentally mark those segments and discard their validity as unsubstantiated by the authors, the rest more than compensates.
6 people found this helpful
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Roger Carrier
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Book Full of Translations of Maya Glyphs
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2008
Verified Purchase
Note: It looks like I have offended some Mormons who don't want you to read this book. Nevertheless, science won't go away. Your "helpful" votes are appreciated

Schele and Freidel's book takes you into the mind of the ancient Maya, where bloodletting induced visions that opened doors into the world of pagan spirits and everyone had an animal "familiar."

The description of the "War of Conquest" of Tikal (tee-kal) against Uaactun (wa-shak-toon) is riviting. It is fascinating that we know the name of the general of Tikal, "Smoking-Frog." At other places, we now also know the names of the Maya leaders. "Ah Zacol...governed Lacanja for Knot-eye-Jaguar, the king of Bonampak." Other names are equally strange. I won't list the name of one king because Amazon's filter's would reject my review. Anyway, his name was "p-n-s of the jaguar."

I came to my interest in the Maya from my early encounters with Mormon authors who used specious scholarship to connect the Maya to the religious novel called the "Book of Mormon." Now that Maya writing has been deciphyered, all those false claims have been exposed. In many cases, the truth was known, but Mormon writers were engaging in the practice of lying for the Lord to promote their faith.

When the Spanish first saw Maya art, they misinterpreted it. They named one temple, for example, the "temple of the cross." The cross-like tree was seen as evidence that the Maya were Christians. Now we know that in the case of the temple of the "Foliated Cross" that the cross-bar of the cross is actually a maize plant with a "human head as an ear of maize." The maize plant is growing out of the "waterlily monster."

It was interesting to learn that the upright stone monuments, or stela, were known as "tree-stones" and the doorways into the temples were represented as the mouths of mountain monsters. The doorways are seen as caves into the mountain.

"Bloodletting, the focus ritual of Maya life, was the instrument" of the materialization of other-worldly beings.

The claims of Mormons and others that Stela B at Copan depicts elephant trunks was refuted even before the translation of the Maya glyphs. The trunks are actually the long beaks of macaws (you can see the colorful birds there today). The false claim is now doubly refuted because the writing on the stela refers to "macaw mountain," a nearby hill--not "elephant mountain."

Mormons are still claiming that there is a horse carved on the Temple of the Wall Panels at Chichen Itza. It is actually a damaged feathered-serpent (one feather hangs down to make the so-called horse's head). In reality, the Maya were so ignorant of horses that when Cortes left his lame horse among the Itza, they fed it meat.

The strange diet cause the horse to die and the Maya made a statue, calling it "Tzimin Chac," from the "Tzmin," meaning tapir (the animal most similar his general shape to a horse), and "Chac," the god of rain and thunder. When Father Urbita came to convert the Itza, he destroyed the idol at great risk to his life.

The Book of Mormon connection to ancient mesoamerica is without foundation. As you go back in time, the paganism only increases. There was no Hebrew civilization in mesoamerica.

This 500-page book belongs on the shelf on anyone interested in the mind of the ancient Maya.
34 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Comprador
5.0 out of 5 stars Contenido
Reviewed in Mexico on March 13, 2024
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Obsequio
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Tony Rowlands
5.0 out of 5 stars New revelations about the Maya
Reviewed in Australia on October 23, 2020
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This is wonderful . The understanding of Maya cultural and religious practice has advanced so much and there is much revealed in this wonderful book .
I enjoyed every minute of my reading , couldn't put it down .
I do hope it's followed up in a few years with new discoveries about this extraordinary civilization .
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D. Njoku
5.0 out of 5 stars Some surprising revelations
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2015
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Rather interesting history that added to my knowledge.
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Steve Hammond
3.0 out of 5 stars Dated and biased but still interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2019
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This book was published in 1993, as you might imagine some key arguments in this book are now very dated. If you are totally new to the Maya then this book will be quite a misleading read and you'd be better off reading "The Maya" by Stephen Houston and Micheal Coe even though it is a lot more dry to read.

Positives and Negatives:

The problem is, there is still lots to learn from this book, especially on the theme of Maya religion and the role of the Divine kings. The book follows the monuments left by select Ahauob (kings) of Maya city states including Palenque, Tikal and Copan. The descriptions of the monuments are extremely detailed which for the most part is very interesting though it can border on the pedantic at times. Now and then there are narratives written as though from a Maya person's perspective which are fun and interesting reads though felt highly speculative at times.

That is the main problem with this book, its age and also the bias of its authors, its hard to know what is still relevant and what is now discounted and biased. Traditionally "Mayanists" have been very against the idea of foreign entities invading or even influencing Maya Civilisation but today we know that they were heavily influenced.

The classic Maya were invaded and influenced by the Mexican city known as Teotihuacan with its generals usurping native Maya dynasties (like at Tikal). Friedel and Schele gall at the idea of the Maya actually being impressed by central Mexicans when this was clearly the case with Teotihuacan though they at least acknowledge that the Maya learned "Venus star wars" from them.

They also go out of their way to deny any Toltec involvement at Chichen Itza, even going so far as to suggest that the Maya inspired the Toltec art and architecture in central Mexico when it is very clear that the Maya of the Post classic Yucatan were invaded by a Branch of Toltec who introduced Mexican gods, art and concepts to the late Maya world. Not to mention the Puuc Maya who were heavily influenced by central mexico and the Itza who they wrongly identify as the Toltec invaders despite the Itza coming after Toltec Chichen Itza failed (where it then became known AS Chichen Itza; Well of the Itza)

As mentioned there are some really interesting concepts explained that seem to still be relevant as well as the exploits of Maya Kings, there are just too many times where the authors are simply wrong which is not something you want from a history book.
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Robin Johnson
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 15, 2014
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Great
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