Originally, I was going to finish out my series on Chichen Itza by showing some examples of late Classic Mayan architecture, such as the Chenes style, and the Puuc style. Instead, I’m going to show a masterpiece of Mayan art and architecture that has only recently come to light. The White House of Reading is a large wall of sculpture high atop a pyramid built by the Mayas in approximately 770 A.D. The pyramid is 102 feet tall. The sculpture was done in stucco. It looks extremely fresh, like it was done yesterday, because when King Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’, who commissioned it died, it was buried and more was built on top of it. The sculptured wall was never painted, so it is now as it was then, plus about 1070 years. Pristine, all the same. The White House of Reading is in an ancient city called Ek' Balam, which means Black Jaguar in the Mayan language. Ek' Balam is a very old city, but it only attained prominence during the reign of the aforementioned King. Photographing this sculpture wall was a real challenge. For one thing, you are about 8 feet from the sculpture when you finally get to the pyramid top. There is a wood fence behind you so you won't fall off. You can't go back to get distance between yourself and the sculpture. Additionally, to protect the sculpture, there is a roof supported by telephone-pole sized uprights that make it even more impossible to get the whole wall in a single shot. Most photographs I've seen of this amazing work of art focus on details. There is one stitched image in a book I have, called "Royal Cities of the Ancient Maya." The photographer, Barry Brukoff, describes the difficulty of making a picture very well. His picture is very good, but edits out some important details. My approach was to collage the different perspectives into a single picture. Very few details are left out, but the result is more like a cubist structure, or a piecing together of satellite photographs, and as such, I have focused on creating the feeling of seeing this wonderful work. It is overwhelming. The central idea of this work is to use the doorway as the mouth of the Flower Mountain mask. The Flower Mountain Mask, to the Mayas, was the source off all sustenance. Thus, the flower. To the Mayas, the cave, often found in the mountains, was the entrance to the underworld—thus the mountain. In the larger scope of things, the huge teeth ringing the doorway, signifies that we are the food of the Flower Mountain—this is the price we pay for sustenance. To Western eyes, it is often very difficult to see what is going on in Mayan art. There are scrolls and volutes everywhere, and faces that appear out of nothing. All these images were read by the Maya elite, and if you view it long enough, you also can see what this great art is about. To see the 3-D, use red/cyan glasses. To read the QR code in the picture, use your smart phone and a scanner app. To find out more about QR codes, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item, and select the Seals option. To find out how I make these 3-D conversions, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item and choose the Chromobinocular Method option.