Stela 1 from the Maya Site of Temblor, Petén, Guatemala

Abstract

Ian Graham recorded and sketched two sawn-off fragments of a bas-relief carved with glyphic texts in an art gallery in New York City in 1971. Later, in 1974, he visited the site of El Temblor in Petén, Guatemala, where he discovered the remains of a damaged stela and could verify that the two fragments he had seen in the New York Gallery were from this looted monument, now known as the Temblor Stela 1. Both fragments were sold to private collections in the United States. The right-hand part of the stela had been given to a public museum in Durham, North Carolina, while the left-hand part was later found, and identified, in a public museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. We can now present the general and more recent history of this stela and its epigraphy thanks to present-day photographs and new line drawings. The aim of this contribution is to make this major Early Classic limestone sculpture available for further epigraphical and art historical studies.