Athena Review Image Archive ™
Puerto Rico: Relief sculpture of Zemi
Relief carving of zemi from Puerto Rico (photo: Athena Review).
Zemis
were local deities or ancestral cult figures, worshipped in the form of
sculptures or relief carvings by Caribbean peoples of the Taino
culture. The Zemi cult was active at the end of the 15th century AD
when the Spanish arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba, and other islands of the
Antilles. They are first described historically by Peter Martyr, the
Spanish court historian, in De Orbe Novo
(1511), and by Fray Pane, who compiled an ethography of the Taino
culture during the second voyage of Columbus, but whose writings are
lost, and preserved only in an Italian summary.
Many images of
zemis are preserved in Puerto Rico and other regions of the Antilles,
both as figurines and as relief carvings. They were often carved in
ballcourt settings in PreColumbian Puerto Rico sites including Caguana
and Tibes, where they may be seen today in situ.
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