纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 051玛雅宫廷放血仪式浮雕（1）

（单词翻译）

051：EPISODE 51 - Maya relief of Royal Blood-letting 玛雅皇室浮雕

Maya relief of royal blood-letting (made early eighth century AD). Stone; from Mexico

It's tough at the top - at least, that's what those at the top like us to think - the long hours, the public exposure, the responsibility. In return though, most of us would argue, they get the status and the pay - and most people it seems are willing to settle for that particular trade-off.

But, we'd all think twice, I suspect, about envying anyone, however privileged, whose regular duty was to go through an ordeal¹ that sounds like this cry of pain . . . in this case that of a man in the Philippines, seeking and enduring excruciating physical pain, in order to achieve a transformed spiritual state. These days most of us take quite a lot of trouble to avoid pain. And wilful² "self-harm" suggests to most people an unstable³ psychological condition. Sado-masochism gets, on the whole, a bad press, but around the world there are, as there always have been, believers who see self-inflicted pain as a route to transcendental experience. To the average 21st-century citizen, and certainly to me, this willed suffering has about it something deeply shocking. And so I find it hard even to look at the image that I'm going to be discussing in this programme.

"What I find startling about this horrific image is how visible the woman's pain is." (Susie Orbach)

"You can tell from her clothing, her jewellery and her elaborate head ornament⁴ that this is a woman of great status and wealth." (Virginia Field)