Tikal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Tikal - Essay Example The temple pyramids were made of limestone blocks and lorded over other surrounding structures. Lattice of stone were also added in Maya roof comb to make it as a grand-looking edifice. Architects considered the Maya site in Tikal of Guatemala as the most extraordinary construction of buildings as a work of art. The site is imposed with temples of the Giant Jaguar (ca. A.D. 700), Masks (ca. A.D. 699), and the North Acropolis (Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2010a). It was believed that at the core of the Giant Jaguar temple is a high priest’s tomb with hundreds of vases and jade as offerings. A quiet sanctuary was also built intended for worshipper at the top of the nine-tiered pyramid (Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2010a; Totten, 1926). The rooms in these temples are accordingly narrow and design for ritual or ceremonial activities only. Some perceived that the design and alignment of these rooms are significant and imply a certain value to the inhabitants. Other eye-catching structures in the city are palaces in single-storey platforms with several rooms and with interior courtyards (Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2010b). The nunnery in Uxmal also looked like a palace (Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2010b). Rulers, elites and the noble families are presumed by archaeologists to have occupied these structures and those cell-like rooms in some structures were probably rooms of religious leaders in their communities e.g. priests, monks, and nuns (Ching, Jarzombek, & Prakash, 2011). They also had this structure known as Temple of the Sun at the Palenque and some sturdy edifice of a Great Gate at Labna (Ching, Jarzombek, & Prakash, 2011). This form of Architecture is considered quite expressive of sophisticated decoration of arts, carvings, and wall paintings of ancient symbols (Ching, Jarzombek, & Prakash, 2011). Those building are interconnected by roads made of stones, also known as causeways. Although experts criticized that Maya city was