A queen pulls a thorn-studded rope through her tongue. A king who ruled more than 60 years appears in a handsome bust. Ball players wear heavy padding for protection from an eight-pound solid rubber ball - a loss can bring death.

These are some of the 1,500-year-old sculptures in the biggest show put together in this country of Mayan art from Mexico and Central America, which opens Sunday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya, the first exhibition ever devoted to this subject in the United States, will demonstrate the visual magnificence of ancient Maya art with over 130 masterworks drawn from the some 30 public and private lenders in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Chile, the United States, Switzerland, England, and Australia. The exhibition will present stone sculptures, ceramics, masks, and other precious works commissioned by ancient Maya kings and queens. In a period of just 200 years from AD 600-800, Maya kings and nobles, while living in the tropical rain forests of southern Mexico and adjacent Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize, transformed Maya art, achieving a peak of dramatic expression and naturalism unmatched in the ancient New World. Using examples from the ancient Maya cities of Palenque, Tonina, Yaxchilan, and Bonampak, among others, Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya will examine political and religious power in the royal court, which served as the central force in the life of each city.

Lady Xok, the queen, is on her knees performing an ancient Mayan ritual. The year is A.D. 709. Blood flows from her mouth to her cheeks and drops on bits of paper in a basket. Her husband, King Shield Jaguar, holds a burning spear to light the ceremony.

In the figures, carved in profile above the door in the queen's palace, the bloody paper is burned as a sacrifice to the gods. Lady Xok is rewarded for her sacrifice with a vision.

Her name is pronounced "shoke" in the old Mayan language. The tongue spoken by 6 million Maya who still live in the area and an estimated million who have moved to the United States still contains some of the same words.

Over the past 50 years, great strides have been made in reading the script of the Maya, who have turned out to be inventive storytellers as well as effective mathematicians and astronomers.

The Maya ball game became a religious ritual, symbolizing a struggle between life and death. The ball could cause serious injury, and members of the losing team sometimes were beheaded.

The Maya believed that even the young and handsome Maize God, patron of their staple food, was beheaded every year in a ball game at harvest time. He came back to life when the corn sprouted again.

Rules of the game are not clear, but it resembled soccer. Players, who could not use their hands, operated in pairs, protected by what seems to have been thick cotton quilting.

"They can easily be arranged to be in eternal play, the ball suspended in the observer's mind for all time," says the catalog of the show.

Other figurines represent servants, dwarves, a trumpeter, a priest in ornamental feathered costume, a messenger or possibly an ambassador in a bright blue cloak and enormous hat.

Among the less ferocious figures are a grandmotherly Chak Chel, goddess of weaving and childbirth, as nursemaid to a child who may be the young Maize God.

There also are huge cups for chocolate, one almost a foot high. A guide to the show for children gives a recipe: unsweetened baking chocolate, water, ground chili peppers and honey, if wanted.

King Pakal the Great reigned over Palenque. The ruins are an important tourist attraction in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, near the Guatemala border.

Pakal and his sons built Palenque into an impressive city, one of at least 50 city-states, each with its own king.

"Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya" will be on show in the gallery's East Building through July 25 and from there will go to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Sept. 4 to Jan. 2.

In a double tribute to Mexico, the National Gallery also is opening on Sunday a show devoted to one of the country's best known 20th century painters. "The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place" also will be seen until July 25. From there it travels to the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City to go on show from Sept. 19 through Jan. 16. - Washington Post - Contributions by ArtsyStuff Magazine