Hombre de Tikal, Petén, Guatemala
The Hombre de Tikal sculpture is a masterpiece housed today in the so-called Lithics Museum at the Tikal visitors’ center. It was first published by Federico Fahsen in 1988 in George Stuart’s Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing.
The material is very hard, granite-like, and pink with a polished surface; extremely rare in Maya stone sculpture.
In March, 2025, I photographed it, taking shots of the whole piece as well as closeups of the glyphs, which show exquisite detail. The carver (or carvers) dug deep into the rock and left wide rough bottoms on many lines. Were these spaces once filled with pigment, now lost? Or was the rough-hewn deep surface meant to represent black such as with crosshatching in Maya drawings?
The illustrators for Fahsen’s article carefully and accurately represented the deep and rough-carved lines with black ink, as shown in this thumbnail, clearly seen in the number 6 but also in the wide margins of the day sign cartouche.
Preparing these photos and comparing them with the drawing in Fahsen’s article, I can attest to the drawing’s accuracy and vouch for its correctness. New drawings do not need to be made. Congratulations to Rene Ozaeta, Rafael Pinedo, and Rolando Caal for the glyph drawings.
The only place I would quibble would be with Fahsen’s column I on the back of Hombre’s right shoulder. Knowing the Maya penchant for symmetry, I’m pretty sure that glyph columns G and H are counterparts to A and B on the back of his left shoulder, and the glyph fragment under Fahsen’s column I would be the lower right glyph in a collocation under H; thus I have labeled it so in my photographs.
Enjoy this early classic masterpiece!
-Bruce Love
Fahsen, Federico
1988. A New Early Classic Text from Tikal. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 17. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C.
Hombre de Tikal
(Photos by Bruce Love; Drawing by Rene Ozaeta, Rafael Pinedo, and Rolando Caal)
click on the image then the (i) in the lower right to view full image
Approximate measurements
Front to back: 48 cm
Width at the shoulders: 58 cm
Height: 56 cm
Drawing of the Hieroglyphic Text
Fahsen 1988 (Figure 4)
Hombre de Tikal, A1-B2
Hombre de Tikal, C1-D2
Hombre de Tikal, C3-D4
Hombre de Tikal, C5-D6
Hombre de Tikal, C7-D8
Hombre de Tikal, E1-F2
Hombre de Tikal, E3-F4
Hombre de Tikal, E5-F6
Hombre de Tikal, E7-F8
Hombre de Tikal, G1-H2
Hombre de Tikal, b (left shoulder) and c (right shoulder)
Suggested Citation: Love, Bruce. “Corpus Volume 18: Hombre de Tikal, Petén, Guatemala.” Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies, March 20, 2026. https://brucelove.com/corpus/corpus-volume-018.
Downloadable PDF: CtMS_Corpus_V018_Hombre_de_Tikal_Peten_Guatemala
The corpus photographs and drawings may be freely used and distributed in non-commercial use and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies 