Deciphering Maya Monuments and the Symbolism of Self-Inflicted Pain

The history of the world as told through objects. This week Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, is exploring power and intrigue in the great royal courts of the world around 800 AD. Today's object offers a story of authority, pain and belief from the world of the ancient Maya. It is a limestone carving showing a king and his wife engaged in an agonising scene of ritual bloodletting. Neil describes a great city in the jungle of modern day Mexico and the culture that produced it. Virginia Fields, the expert on Maya iconography, and the psychotherapist Susie Orbach help explain an object that has the power to unsettle the modern viewer.

Producer: Anthony Denselow