mirrors were thought to have magicaop and were used to divine the future. those vases, and the painted cups used to serve a chili-laden chocolate drink enjoyed by the maya elite, offer glimpses of life at the maya court. rulers, bedecked in jewels, receive tribute in the form of folded bolts of cloth or sacks of cacao beans. they ruled from thrones covered with jaguar pelts. mayainorrated the guar into their imagery as a symbol of their power. at palenque, residences for the nobility were built east of the palace stretching downstream across the otolum river. they included places of ritual cleansing, ancestral shrines, and courtyards for community gatherings. the ranks of the nobility supplied the scribes-- a reflection of the importance of literacy to the maya. scribes were necessarily artists because of the pictorial quality of mayan hieroglyphs. now scribes d a very important social function. they weren't just the storytellers. they were people who recorded tribute and deliveries of goods and the whole workings of societies. and for that reason, writing