I first learned about the Mayan Rabbit Scribe in 2000 when my husband and I traveled to Guatemala to explore the ruins of Tikal. I had been to several places in the past, including Chichen-Itza, Tulum and Coba because I have been fascinated by the Mayan culture since I was a child. Perhaps I even manifested these trips to the Mayan temples as a teenager while coloring the pictures in a Mayan-Inca-Aztec coloring book I bought at a thrift store.
The amount of information you can find about the Mayan culture online or in your local library is nothing compared to the facts and lore you hear from tour guides on the spot.
While visiting Tikal, I learned that the Mayans had kept journals of their history and culture, called “codices,” most of which were destroyed by order of a Spanish father, Father Diego de Landa, in a huge bonfire in a town in central Yucatan called Mani. . The father believed that the books were the work of the devil and were preventing the Mayans from becoming truly civilized. By his order, anyone caught with a codex was summarily tortured or killed. Only four codices (some of them partial) have survived.
For generations, as the stelae and other stone carvings of the Maya disintegrated, no one could understand what the carvings meant, and an entire culture was about to be submerged by the tides of history until a few archaeologists uncovered the mysteries. of the glyphs.
I met a couple of archaeologists who had come to Tikal to photograph artifacts and carvings. They had dedicated their lives to understanding the Mayan way of life. One, by the name of Eleanor “Bunny” Coates, had been visiting Mayan sites for many years. He told me about the Scribe Rabbit.
I approached that entity directly, since I am a writer myself and I know what it is to be the family documentary maker. I know how important the writer is, albeit unacknowledged, in any movie or video production you see. Without the writer, nothing gets written! Without the writer, the memory of an event or series of events loses detail and soon fades into obscurity.
The scribe rabbit first appears as part of a scene on a painted Classic Maya vase (circa AD 300-900), which may have been used to serve a chocolate drink. The scribes carried out the important task of recording important events for royalty using a phonetically based hieroglyphic script. These scribe rabbits appeared on murals and vases, usually writing in a fan-shaped folding book, or “codex,” that was covered with jaguar skin. Writing was very important to the Mayans and they recorded important events on everything: walls, stairs, sculptures, pottery, plates, and stone.
Fortunately, Father Diego de Landa’s plan to completely destroy the written history of Classic Maya culture has been thwarted by diligent archaeologists who, over the last few decades, have been able to decipher many of the Maya glyphs. Dr. David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin has been a leading force in shedding light on the meaning and impact of Mayan culture, and he continues to advance his fascinating work.