by David Stuart
In Part I of this series on Maya regional names, I suggested the reading of a certain hieroglyph in Classic sources as MAAY-HA’, meaning something like “Fawn Waters.” I also posited that this corresponds to the historical name “Maya” (or Maaya’) which referred to the large region roughly corresponding to the Yucatán Peninsula, or the northern part of it. The supposed Maayha’ glyph is also non-local in scope, appearing in three widely dispersed places (Yaxchilan, Tayasal and Río Azul) and in visual settings where it relates to the earth, hills, and caves – the landscape itself. Here I expand on that initial proposal, investigating visual contexts where the glyph for Maayha’ occurs, and examining how the “iconography of place” also emphasized the character we sometimes refer to as Cosmic Caiman, a widespread symbol of the earth’s surface. I believe these settings bolster the proposed Maayha’ reading, and open other avenues of investigation into regional place names and related terms. One of these can be considered the name of the caiman itself, K’inich Ahiin, meaning “The Solar Caiman.” While not exactly a toponym, K’inich Ahiin was, I think, a proper name for the animate being that represented the earth, with close thematic overlaps to Maayha’, peten, and other ancient geographical terms.
As touched on in the first essay, several of these geographical references come together in the paintings of Río Azul, Tomb 1 (Figure 1). The possible Maayha’ glyph appears within a complex visual program that is fully toponymic in nature, marking the tomb as a cosmological place and conforming to a pattern we see in many of the other painted tombs of the site (Acuña 2015). For example, another painted crypt, Tomb 12, emphasizes the world directions and the cosmic eagles associated with those places; Tombs 6 and 25 display directional mountains and the canonical Year Bearers associated with them (4 Caban, 4 Ik’, etc.) (Acuña 2015:178, Stuart 2004). In Tomb 1, the imagery emphasizes water as well as maize, the latter perhaps indicated by the stacked and animated “beads” on each wall, a key diagnostic element in the iconography of the tonsured maize god Jun Ixi’m (Figure 2). This is the deity who of course “entered the water” and later came to be resurrected as primordial maize.
Whatever the case, it seems that the décor of Tomb 1 presented a symbolic environment for resurrection and rebirth (Acuña 2015). The central text panel records a “birth” on September 29, 417 CE that may be the apotheosis of the deceased occupant, referring to his emergence out of the waters of the earth, as the reborn sun. This of course echoing some familiar themes we know from Pakal’s sarcophagus at Palenque. To the left of the birth text we find the animate signs WITZ and CH’EN stacked one atop the other, and above of these in turn we see the small MAAY-HA’ glyph. I believe this detail, like a glyph in a royal headdress, serves to name the “hills and caves,” the landscape which is the environment of birth and earth-emergence. An accompanying glyph that shows a skull may be another place reference. To the right we have another vertical grouping of K’IN atop AHIIN-na, referring to a caiman or crocodilian (ahiin) (Figure 3).
The name K’inich Ahin, or “Solar Caiman,” appears elsewhere in texts and iconography. I mentioned on of these on an inscribed vase from Tayasal, where the IK’-a place name and MAAY-HA’ glyph are also featured (see Figure 4, top). Another example is on Yaxchilan, Lintel 31, where it appears as part of the proper name of a building, Structure 10 (Figure 4, bottom). There we see the name introduced by the same sequence, in a more conventional glyphic arrangement: K’INICH-AHIN-na. This is followed by a second block, where the initial element is hard to make out (note the rodent’s head in its lower portion), followed by PET-ne, spelling the word peten. The full name of Structure 10 was therefore K’inich Ahiin ? Peten, “the Solar Caiman ? Region(?).” Here the presence of peten in connection with the caiman is of particular significance. It is a very familiar word today, of course, usually in reference to the “Department of Petén” in northern Guatemala. Originally the word had two related senses, which we see in colonial Yucatec sources, as well as in reflections of modern usage. Peten is “island (isla)” and also “region, province (comarca, región ó provincia).” What connects them in the sense of an area that is demarcated and therefore “circled” [Note 1]. The root pet is “round, circular,” and peten essentially refers to the idealized shape of space, whether an island such as Flores (named Peten, “the Island,” among the modern Itzaj), or as a larger unit of territory (u petenil Yucatan means “la provincia de Yucatán”). Structure 10 of Yaxchilan, dedicated on a Period Ending 9.16.13.0.0, was apparently some type of peten as well, at least, of a specific named variety associated with the Solar Caiman. It seems to have been a symbol of a region or place, at least metaphorically.
Step III of Yaxchilan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway 3 displays what I take to be the same place name, but now in a hybrid iconographic form (Figure 5). This complex design (redrawn here) appears at the bottom of the sculpture, as a “toponymic register” below an image of a kneeling prisoner and a lengthy text recording his capture, leading up to the accession of Shield Jaguar IV (or perhaps Kokaj Bahlam IV) (Stuart and Houston 1994: 62). The place name function of the design is clearly indicated by the Pa’chan glyph in the form of the crested CHAN bird with a cleft (PA’) at its top. Its –na suffix lends a further glyphic flavor to the composition. Above this we see a disc with a portrait of the sun god K’inich Ajaw, which forms the body of the caiman or crocodile. In this instance it is the familiar “Cosmic Monster” of Maya art, with its distinctive attributes, including the net-like headband, and the so-called “quadripartite badge” at the base of its tail (a representation of an animate offering bowl or lak, a place of birth and emergence) (Justeson [cited in Frediel and Scale 1988:75], Robertson 1974, Stuart 2005). At the lower left of the composition, we see a cartouche framing a mouse or rodent, connected to the head of the crocodilian by a tendril like element. This confirms a connection the toponym design on Yaxchilan’s Stela 7, mentioned in Part I, with its caiman, solar disc, rodent, and MAAY-HA’ glyph. The ornate composition on Step III’s toponymic register also incorporates many of the elements we have in the proper name of Structure 10 – the K’INICH being the disc with the sun god, the AHIIN being the caiman, and the enclosed rodent element is present as well. No little deer with a HA’ glyph is easily visible on Step III, but inspection of the photograph suggests it may be just to the right of the rodent, slightly smaller in size.
The connection to the Lintel 31 name is confirmed by a closer inspection of the circular frame that forms the body of the caiman, surrounding K’inich Ahau. This looks to be a disc, simple and unadorned. However, to its right we also see a distinctive curved element, with a lower detail that reveals it to be tail, the hieroglyphic sign ne (Figure 6). This combination can only be understood as the hieroglyphic combination PET-ne, where the PET logogram works doubly as the solar disc for K’inich Ajaw. Now we have more of the components of the proper name cited on Lintel 31: K’inich Ahiin ? Peten. This reveals that the toponymic register of Step 3, while citing Pa’chan (Yaxchilan) is also displaying something broader as its geographical setting — the name of the caiman and of region. The point here is to show the earthly caiman’s body as a peten, as a “region.”[Note 2]
In the design from Step III we also see the small rodent within a floral cartouche, linked by a tendril-like line to the head of the caiman (see lower left of Figure 5). This relates again to the toponymic register on Yaxchilan Stela 7, where a similar rodent is in one of the two cartouche that emerges from a solar caiman’s eye. The opposite cartouche on Stela 7 is the MAAY?-HA’ glyph previously discussed, suggesting that the Step III design, with its emphasis on peten and the caiman, may refer to expansive named regions, with K’inich Ahiin as their overall setting.
Step VIII of Yaxchilan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 offers another depiction of the same cosmological elements, this time incorporated into ballgame regalia (Figure 7). This is a portrait of Yaxun Bahlam III, who is identified in the accompanying text as an embodiment of the sun god, K’inich Ajaw. Curiously, we see the ruler with his back toward us, displaying his elaborate “back-rack” regalia in the form of a cosmic caiman or crocodile, its tail rearing upward, transformed into a cluster of quetzal feathers. The center of the caiman’s body is once more a solar cartouche (the telltale centipede heads emanate from the cartouche, only visible in photos). Within the disc we see what looks to be another small, rodent-like animal. I take this to be a representation of the “Solar Caiman,” K’inich Ahiin, which is included as part of the sun god’s ceremonial regalia.
Yet another image that I take to be K’inich Ahiin occurs in the stuccoes of the Subterraneos (subterranean passages) within the Palace of Palenque (Figure 8). Here we see a solar cartouche in the very center of the caiman’s body, suggesting that it is the sun coursing within the earth before its reemergence. This also relates to the iconography on the cosmological throne or bench placed nearby in the Subterraneos, carved in the form of the caiman’s body (Figure 9). This is clearly one of the “caiman thrones” or scaffolds used in Period Ending ceremonies (Stuart 2005:98, Taube 1989[2019]). The inscription that forms the body of the caiman includes a sequence of glyphs states the elaborate name of the building in which the throne once stood: numul ta kab, numul ta chan ahiin(?)nal yotoot, “passing through the earth, passing through the sky, the ‘Caiman Place,’ is the house of…” (Stuart 2003). Although I did not address this point in my 2003 study, I see this extended phrase as an architectural reference, perhaps even the proper name given to the Subterraneos themselves, an underground “house.” The image of the sun in the body of the caiman in the stucco decoration may be a visual correlate to this complex name [Note 3].
The stucco image of the caiman is part of a series of decorations above the interior stairwells in Palenque’s Subterraneos, the best-preserved of which shows the Maize God in swirling water bands – again emphasizing a theme related to the earth’s interior (Robertson 1985:32-25). These iconographic details help to indicate how the dark passageways beneath Palenque’s palace formed a figurative underworld that was directly incorporated into the throne room of K’inich Janabpakal, shown on the nearby Oval Palace Tablet as an embodiment of the reborn sun, K’inich Ahau, and as the Maize God, Jun Ixi’m. This agrees with the possibility that these labyrinthine passageways of the Palace were explicitly conceived as a replication of the underworld – a series of built-in passages symbolizing descent and re-emergence, associated with K’inich Janabpakal, the initial embodiment of the sun god in Palenque’s dynasty. This remarkable recreation of mythic space within the Palace will be explored in a future essay.
Cosmic Crocodiles of Earth and Sky
The use of crocodilians as earth symbols has a long and deep history in Mesoamerican cosmology and art. Well-known is the mythic reptile known as Cipactli, the Nahuatl term for the animate earth that takes the form of a supernatural caiman, often represented in the Postclassic pictorial books, and even in sculpture from time to time (Figure 10). It is the name of the first day of the Nahuatl day list-corresponding the Maya Imix or Imox, a cosmic serpent associated with water and sustenance (although not a caiman in origin) (see Stuart 2024). In Maya art caimans of different types can serve as representations of the animate earth, perhaps best exemplified by the image carved onto the top of Copan’s Altar T (Figure 11). Here its aquatic aspect is emphasized, surrounded by numerous mythological figures and a hieroglyphic text along its back [Note 4].
For the Postclassic Maya of Yucatán, the crocodilian symbol of earth was named Itzam Cab Ain, perhaps translatable as the “Magic Earth Caiman,” and discussed in detail by Taube (1989[2018]) (Taube specifically cited the image in Figure 5 as a Classic period depiction of the same entity). It may also be described mentioned in the following passage from the Relacion de la Ciudad de Merida, written around 1580:
Tuvieron noticia de la creación del mundo y un creador de cielo y tierra, y decían, que éste que los creó no podía ningun hombre pintarle como era. También tuvieron noticia de la caida de Lucifer y del Diluvio, y que el mundo se había de acabar por fuego, y en signficación de esto hacían una ceremonia y pintaban un lagarto que signficaba el Diluvio y la tierra, y sobre este lagarto hacían un gran monton de leña y ponian fuego y, después de hechos brasas, allanábanlo y pasaba el principal sacerdote descalzo por encima de las brasas sin quemarse, y después iban pasando todos los que querían. entendiendo por esto que el fuego los havia de acabar a todos.
They heard about the creation of the world and a creator of heaven and earth, and they said that no man could paint the one who created them. They also learned of the fall of Lucifer and the Flood, and that the world would end by fire. To signify this, they performed a ceremony and painted a crocodile, which represented the Flood and the earth. On top of this crocodile, they made a large pile of wood and set it alight. After it turned to embers, they leveled it, and the high priest walked barefoot over the embers without being burned. Afterward, all who wished to could cross over. By this, they understood that the fire would destroy them all.
Erik Velásquez Garcia (2004, 2006) has closely studied these myths and discusses their reflections in the Books of Chilam Balam. There, the name Itzam Can Ain comes up again in relation to a primordial flood, after which the earth is brought about through his sacrifice and destruction.
[In the reign of 13 Ahau and 1 Ahau were the days and nights that fell without order and pain was felt throughout the land. Because of this] Oxlahun ti Ku [and] Bolon ti Kuh [the Nine Gods] created the world and life; and there was also born Itzam Cab Ain [Iguana Earth Crocodile]. [Ah Mesencab] turned the sky and the Petén upside down, and Bolon ti Ku raised up Itzam Cab Ain; there was a great cataclysm, and the ages ended with a flood. The 18 Bak Katun was being counted and in its seventeenth part, Bolon ti Kuh refused to permit Itzam Cab Ain to take Peten and to destroy the things of the word, so he cut the throat of Itzam Cab Ain and with his body formed the surface of the Peten. (Craine and Reindorp 1979:117-119; quoted in Velásquez Garca 2006:6).i
The description of how its “body formed the surface of the Peten” (the “province”) offers a striking parallel to what we see depicted in the toponymic design from Yaxchilan’s HS 3, with the PET-ne hieroglyph fused with the caiman’s body (see Figure 5).
So we can easily see how the name K’inich Ahiin closely relates with certain “Cosmic Monsters,” including the crocodilian being who displays a skeletal head on its tail or rear-end, ritual offering bowl (lak) decorated with the sun glyph and holding sacrificial instruments (Figure 11). This isn’t always an earthly beast, however, adding some confusion to its interpretation. Other key iterations are celestial, as the “Celestial Monster,” or “Starry Deer Crocodile,” or sometimes as a less-specific serpent [Note 5] (Freidel and Schele 1988:74-76, Martin 2015, Stuart 1988, 2005). The latter is the croc has stars attached to its body and deer hoofs for its appendages — but not always. Its body may also be formed by “stone” (tuun) or otherwise by celestial bands. Cosmic crocodiles therefore occupy both the earth and sky, as Martin (2015) rightly emphasizes in his excellent discussion of these iconographic characters as “sky-earth crocodilians.” On the inner doorway sculpture of Temple 22 of Copan, the Starry Deer Crocodile has a body made of S-shaped clouds, perhaps a figurative image of the Milky Way arcing across the nocturnal sky. In a previous study (Stuart 2005: 71-74, 166-168) I suggested that many of the elongated crocodilians in Maya art were symbols of the solar pathways, both celestial and terrestrial. In its earthly aspect, the caiman gives birth to the sun from the k’in-marked bowl at its rear end. As an aspect of the animate earth, the crocodile is where the sun is both consumed and reborn. Thus the name under discussion here, K’inich Ahiin, would seem to refer to this role. As a celestial being, the crocodile reflects the same pathway, sometimes as a nocturnal track. The description on the Palenque throne mentioned earlier makes this explicit, noting the path of the sun as “passing through the earth, passing through the sky” — an apt description. The caiman is perhaps one means of depicting the pathway in animate form.
Martin (2015) also notes how the Maya images of crocodile resonate strongly with myths from central Mexico, which describe a primordial cosmic monster named Tlalteotl (literally “Earth Deity”) who was slain and severed in two, one part representing the sky, the other the earth. The best Classic Maya precedent we have for these late myths, all centered on the sacrifice and cutting of a caiman to form the earth and the sky, comes from Temple XIX at Palenque (Stuart 2005:68-77, Velásquez García 2002, 2006). There, in the extraordinary mythic accounts leading up to the birth of the Palenque Triad gods, we read of the sacrifice of a starry caiman who has two specific aspects. One is names the WAY-PAAT-AHIIN? “Hole-Backed Starry Caiman” and the other the tz’i-ba-la-PAAT-AHIIN? “Inscribed-Backed Starry Caiman.” These esoteric descriptions refer to the body of the earth-caiman as having the “hole” or void from which the sun emerges. The “inscribed” caiman is an odd description, but it is surely related to Late Postclassic images of the earth-caiman that show a sequence of day signs along its body. These appear in both late Maya and central Mexican iconography (Taube 1989[2018]). I suspect that day sequences are conceptually related to the k’in signs we see as the bodies of the caimans at Yaxchilan, Palenque and elsewhere. That is, the individual days, like the sun, pass through the caiman’s body. This is perhaps another basis for the simple descriptive name K’inich Ahiin, the Solar Caiman [Note 6].
Conclusion
We have departed a bit from the possible MAAY-HA’ glyph and reading mentioned at the outset, but the complex story of the Cosmic Caiman is part of the larger discussion of regional names and geographical concepts. Given the glyphic and iconographic cases mentioned here, I take K’inich Ahiin to be a proper name as well (perhaps one of many) given to the Cosmic Caiman, the consumer of the sun before its daily rebirth. This would be the Classic Maya correlate to Itzam Cab Ain of ancient Yucatan, and to Cipactli in central Mexico. The appearance of the glyph for peten as part of K’inich Ahiin’s extended name phrase, even visually integrated into his image at Yaxchilan, indicates its important as a regional name of a sort, wide-ranging in scope, an expanse of land. I think this also is true of the glyphic combination of witz–ch’en presented with K’inch Ahiin in the Rio Azul tomb, which resembles a pairing of nouns (a Mayan “difracismo”) that could also describe the local, karstic landscape in broad terms. That the supposed MAAY-HA’ glyph accompanies several mentions of K’inich Ahiin is significant, for its strengthens the case that Maayha’ could have been an ancient region or “province” set upon the animate, crocodilian earth.
Notes
Note 1. The many senses and scales of peten reflects how important circular ideas of space were for the Maya, encompassing totality. We see this in indigenous maps of the colonial era, in k’atun wheels, and in many other fundamental categories. Pet kah refers to an “aldea,” a peten tun is a large round stone used as a grindstone, etc.
Note 2. It is very possible that that these two Yaxchilan mentions of peten in connection to the earth-caiman are referring to the distinctive loop the Rio Usumacinta takes where Yaxchilan is situated. That is, a formation of land that is both circumscribed and circular.
Note 3. The Palenque throne text employs a “caiman” head sign that is slightly different from the standard AHIIN logogram. Here it displays the features of the Starry Deer Crocodile (see Note 5 below), with a star element on its eye and ear, corresponding to the head on the left end of the throne’s front edge. Do we reading this as AHIIN as well? It is difficult to say, but it seems best for now to consider them separate. This is the portrait of the starry crocodilian, the animate form of the sign for “star,” as opposed to the more generic AHIIN we see in the K’INICH AHIIN-na spellings discussed here, for instance (see Stuart 2005:fig. 44).
Note 4. The front face of Altar T shows a playful representation of two calendar dates, one the accession day of the ruler Yaxpasaj Chanyopat, and the other its one k’atun anniversary. The day signs for Caban are animated as full human figures. I have to wonder if their prominence in the design has something to do with the meaning of the day Caban as “earth,” given the dominant image of the earth-caiman on top. In other words, the caiman and the earth iconography of the altar may hinge on the underlying meaning of date being celebrated.
Note 5. This is a term I coined a couple of decades ago, also referring to it erroneously at times as the “Starry Deer Alligator.” As I’ve been reminded by several colleagues, true alligators are not native to Central America. Crocodiles and caimans were both called ahin or ayin in Mayan languages (from port0-Mayan *ahiin).
Note 6. The Palenque Temple XIX passage offers a tantalizing connection between the Classic period to the later mythic narratives of the Books of Chilam Balam and of Cipactli, in central Mexico (Stuart 2005:68-70, Velásquez García 2002, 2006). The “chopping” of the caiman on 12.10.12.14.18 1 Etznab 6 Yaxkin was clearly an act of world creation (note the verb i patlaj, “then it is made”), establishing the two complimentary aspects of the caiman. The Temple XIX text also emphasizes how this primordial act established the ritual significance of two fundamental “elements” of Maya ceremonial life – flowing blood (u ch’ich’el) and the drilling of ritual fire (joch’ u k’ahk’). Each would constantly need to be replicated in sacrificial ceremonies of world-renewal, even up to the rites described in the Relacion de la Ciudad de Mérida, quoted earlier.
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