Uk’ib (drinking cup) depicting Wahy figures,

ca. 755

This vessel presents a bizarre cast of supernatural coessences (way in Maya) of kings from a number of major polities in northwest Guatemala. Throughout Mesoamerica, it was believed that each person had a companion spirit, or alter ego, which often took the form of an animal. The way presented here, however, are fantastic amalgamations of humans and animals, identified in the adjacent inscriptions. Some have descriptive names, such as "scaffold ocelot" (ch'aktel hixnal), while others have more poetic names--the bird with a serpent encircling its neck, for example, is named "death on the path" (tan bihil kimi). The inscription along the rim presents both explanatory information about the vessel and historical documentation. Several vessels are known to have been produced by the same artist, although the location of his workshop remains unknown. This vase was produced for the king of Motul de San José.

This vessel presents a fantastic cast of characters, each representing a malady or the supernatural entity thought to be responsible for such conditions. The hieroglyphic captions provide the names of these entities as well as their origins or genealogy. Such biographical details about malevolent forces were used in colonial-era Maya curing incantations, revealing that esoteric knowledge about illness-causing forces was considered both a form of protection against them and of curing. The text along the rim records that the drinking-cup’s royal owner conducted a rite in a cave, presumably where the protective knowledge depicted below was revealed to him.