Copan: Day 3, Part 2

Hello again!

As I mentioned in my last post, we went through the temple tunnels today. The first few tunnels we went through actually didn't have electricity, so we relied on flash lights. Definitely felt like Indiana Jones! I have some pretty interesting photos showing preserved inscriptions, offering chambers, and tombs, but I thought I'd show this photo instead:

That's Lucy walking ahead of me. I think it gives you a pretty good idea of what the tunnels look like. Some passages had steep stairways, some were a little shorter than this, and there were a lot of forks that made the tunnels pretty mazy. Oh, and there was a whole mess of this white, goopy fungus that scared us all quite thoroughly. It was an experience.

One of the tunnels led us to the burial of the founder, K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo. This picture shows the beautiful marker outside of the tomb:

It may be a little fuzzy as no flash photography is allowed. The marker still has remnants of the original pigment which they hope to preserve. But remember how his name meant Blue-green Quetzal Macaw? Well this marker has a very intricate, literal, visual representation of his name. The sculpture shows a Quetzal (left, in green) and a Macaw (right, in red) intertwined. In each beak is the face of the sun god, which is a reference to his title K'inich. Pretty cool!

After the tunnels, we went to the Sculpture Museum (brainchild of Bill's amazing wife Barbara). In the middle of the museum, really the centerpiece of the building, is an actual-size representation of the Rosalila structure. The Rosalila structure is one of the many layers of Structure 26. You can actually view the real version from the tunnels, with stucco and pigment still very-well preserved.

This recreation really gives us a unique opportunity to see what some of these buildings actually looked like in their day. Forget boring, unpainted stone. The buildings at Copan were painted in brilliant reds, greens, and yellows, just like this structure. What a vibrant place it must have been.

And finally, my favorite exhibit at the museum. As Barbara Fash called it, the "Flasher Bat." Can you see why?

This image may be a little small, so it may be hard to tell, but there is nothing "private" about this bat. Hehehe! The bat was actually important figure in Copan, considering a leaf-nosed bat appears on its emblem glyph.

Well, that's it for tonight! Wishing you all well.