Aguas Calientes Stela 1

Author: Donna Yates

Last Modified: 10 Apr 2025

Black and white line drawing of a Maya stela showing a male figure in elaborate regalia

A Maya sculpture, stolen in the 1960s, that is currently missing

Aguas Calientes is a Classic Maya site located in the Petén Department of Guatemala. The site was first recorded by archaeologist Sylvanus Moreley who visited it in April and May of 1914. At that time Morley located the site’s first (and, so far, only) known Stela 1, which was referred to locally as “El Rey” (Morley 2023: 82). Herbert Joseph Spinden made a drawing of the stela on 4 April 1914, while Morley documented the glyphs on the piece and mapped its precise location (Morley 2023: 82). 

Morley recorded that the stela was found broken into two pieces. The smaller piece containing the upper portion included the figure’s face. This smaller piece had “fallen down” sometime between 4 April and 25 May 1914, but according to Morley it was not damaged in the fall (Morley 2023: 123). Morley related in a 3 May 1914 letter that Spinden believed that the stela was “one of the finest in the Maya area” (Morley 2023: 107). Morley published a drawing of the stela in 1937 (Morley 1937: plate 99).

When Merle Greene Robertson visited Aguas Calientes in April 1968 to make a rubbing of the stela, “the upper left portion which includes the figure’s head was missing” (Robertson, 1972: 147). By the time she returned to the site in March 1969, the rest of the stela had been stolen.  She observed that “the paraphernalia used in its removal was still at the site” (Robertson, 1972: 147).

The current location of Aguas Calientes Stela 1 is unknown.

[Image: Line drawing of Aguas Calienties Stela 1 via the Maya Hieroglyphic Text and Image Archive, University of Bonn, https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/maya/content/titleinfo/9619893]

Works Cited

Morley, Sylvanus Griswold (1937) The Inscriptions of the Peten, Vol. 5. Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Publication 437.

Morley, Sylvanus Griswold (2021) The Archaeological Field Diaries of Sylvanus Griswold Morley, edited by Prudence M. Rice and Christopher Ward. Mesoweb: www.mesoweb.com/publications/Morley/Morley_Diaries_1914-1916.pdf Accessed 6 August 2023.

Roberson, Merle Greene (1972) Monument Thievery in Mesoamerica. American Antiquity. 37(2): 147–155.