Quiche Mayan burial urn iconography.

Archaeologist and art historian Dr Nicholas Hellmuth initiated a long range program to study the iconography of Quiche Maya urns over a decade ago.

This project had been encouraged by the Board of Directors of the Museo Popol Vuh, Universidad Francisco Marroquin.

Dr Hellmuth has been a Visiting Professor at this university for several years in the recent past. . He taught digital photography, panorama photography, and rollout photography.

In the past volunteers from Germany assisted in this project. However no short-term volunteers are realistic; need to stay long enough to make a meaningful contribution. FLAAR personnel speak español, English, and some Deutsch. FLAAR is fully tri-lingual.

Several years ago our staff kept growing, so with 20+ people there are not many universities nowadays with enough space. So we returned to being independent about four years ago and have our own facilities about 2 km from the university.

Museo Popol Vuh has excellent collection of Quiche burial urns

The Museo Popol Vuh is next to the Museo Ixchel. Both are on the beautiful and peaceful campus of the private Universidad Francisco Marroquin, 6a calle final zona 10 Guatemala 01010.

City buses do not go to the university itself; you need to walk a few blocks. Returning back to your hotel realize that it is a really steep hike up the hill to get back near the city bus stations. A cab might be a good investment at least on the way back.

National Museum of Archaeology also exhibits Quiche Burial urns.

The national archaeology and ethnography museum also offers exhibits of Quiche burial urns. The Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología de Guatemala (MUNAE) is next to the government art museum and across the parking lot from the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural. All are within a short distance of the city zoo. All of this is within about five minutes of the Guatemala City airport, La Aurora.

Images of Quiche burial urns in the museum of glass and archaeology: Hotel Casa Santo Domingo

Since these urns are fragile, and large, we prefer not to take them out of their exhibit cases, so we do the best we can to photograph them in-situ. We have prepared a separate PDF on Quiche urns and a new web page on the Quiche urns in these other museums.

Images of Quiche burial urns in the Museo de Arqueologia; Hotel Casa Santo Domingo

To do an inventory of all the standard themes on the Highland Quiche burial urns would require a new thesis or dissertation. But a quick generalization of the most common types: you get

• frontal deity faces or masks,
• full-figure felines (usually playful parody),
• or skulls.

These are often flanked with the conical spines of ceiba and related sacred trees.

Here is a wide-angle view of the display in the Museo Popol Vuh, UFM (taken many years ago). Since there is a glass façade between me and the Quiche urns I can’t provide adequate lighting to bring out the iconographic details.

Tanja Rathjen, a volunteer from Germany who worked for FLAAR about one year, doing a rollout of a Quiche urn, in the Popol Vuh Museum Popol Vuh, Guatemala.

Nicholas Hellmuth and an assistant, appreciating the print in wide format size of a rollout of a Quiche burial urn.

Most recently updated April 2011.
Page original posted about ten years ago.