This vessel depicting the court of Xibalba was, until recently, sitting right in my own proverbial backyard: The Royal Ontario Museum! Belonging to the Maya culture, the vessel is ceramic, and was crafted sometime between 600 and 900 AD.
Xibalba, roughly translated as “place of fear” is the name of the Maya underworld which is ruled by a court of death Gods and maintained by a contingent of helpers. Several real-world cave systems in Guatemala have been said to be the entrances to Xibalba, and in Maya culture the Milky Way itself is sometimes called “the Road to Xibalba.” Mainly conceptualized to be a large city, Xibalba had districts which included a council palace of the Twelve Lords of Xibalba, a ballcourt, houses full of hungry jaguars and bats, and a practically unending slough of tests, trials, and traps for everyone who entered the city. Even the roads were filled with obstacles such as scorpion rives, blood rivers, and pus-filled rivers. When a visitor finally made it to the council palace, all of the Gods had dozens of hyper-realistic mannequins resembling themselves seated nearby to confuse people and humiliate them if they greeted the dummy figure, instead of the real God.
The Xibalban Gods were outwitted in the end, however, as a pair of Hero Twins tricked the Gods into accepting counterfeit human sacrifices, and eventually lesser tributes overall.
