Author: David Stuart

Identifying Regional Place Names, Part I: Maayha’

David Stuart

by David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

Today the word “Maya” stands as a broad cultural and archaeological label, but this wasn’t always the case. Before the late nineteenth century it referred only to the region, language and people of northern Yucatán, and even then it had already had a complex history and unwieldy range of meanings. In early sixteenth century sources, Maya was first and foremost a regional place name, corresponding more or less to  the Yucatán peninsula; it was from this use that other meanings and senses derived.

In my upcoming book, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya (Princeton University Press, 2026), I tentatively posit that there is an ancient hieroglyph which may correspond to the place name Maya. I had no space in the book to present any in-depth discussion of this idea, so here I would like to give an overview of my reasoning, along with some related observations about ancient Maya names of the earth, and its animated conception as a caiman or crocodile. This is the first part of several anticipated posts that examine Classic Maya place names on a regional scale, looking beyond just individual communities and polities.

Maya as a Place

Early writers were clear in their opinion that Maya originated as a geographical term. The linguist and philologist Carl Hermann Berendt wrote in 1878 that “the Maya language proper (mayathan) is spoken through the whole peninsula of Yucatan, the ancient name of which was Maya” (quoted in Tozzer 1921:5). Similarly, Daniel G. Brinton (1882:11) stated that Maya was “the proper name of the northern portion of the peninsula.” Earlier, the sixteenth-century Calepino Maya de Motul included the entry “Maya. nombre proprio desta tierra” which not be more direct (Ciuded Ruiz 2004:384). Landa’s first mention of the word comes in his account of the wreck of the ill-fated Valdivia expedition of 1511: …llegaron a la costa de Yucatan a una provincia que llamavan de la Maya, de la qual la lengua de Yucatan se llama Mayathan, que quiere dezir lengua de Maya (“they arrived at a province which was called Maya, from which the language of Yucatan takes its name, maya than, which means ‘the language of maya”) (Tozzer 1941:7). Tozzer also noted that an earlier appearance of the word is in a manuscript written by Bartholeme Colón in 1505 or 1506, where he noted that the trading canoe encountered by his brother in 1502 “came from a certain province called Maiam or Yucatam.”

Figure 1. Entry for “maya” in the Calepino Maya de Motul, sixteenth century manuscript. From photographic facsimile in author’s collection.

Other early vocabularies also emphasize Maya as a designation for “la tierra,” the general region. The colonial Diccionario de San Francisco (Michelson 1976) lists several examples where this comes into play:

maya ci, vino de esta tierra
maya kuch, hilo de la tierra
maya than, lengua vulgar o comun de esta tierra (Yucatán)
maya ulum, gallina de esta tierra

And again in the Motul (Ciudad Real 2001:384) we find:

maya vinic, hombre de Yucatan, indio
maya xiblal, varón de Yucatan
maya chhuplal, muger de Yucatan

Notice still how the emphasis always is on maya as a place and region. The Motul entry ah mayaa, “hombre o muger desta tierra de Yucatan,” echoes this point, as it conforms to a standard title of place-origin using the prefix ah– before a place name, as in ah campech, “person from Campeche” (Ciudad Real 2002:48). In the early colonial period, Maya was never really used as a collective term of affiliation or ethnic self-identity among indigenous communities (Restall 2004), but this soon changed, probably though usages such as maya uinicob, “Maya people.” And Maya as a regional name was quickly supplanted by “Yucatán,” preferred by the Spanish and again imposed from outside. By the end of the nineteenth century, the inherent bias in both archaeology and ethnohistory toward Yucatecan sources — all better published and more accessible — paved the way for Maya to converted yet again, into the wide cultural label we are familiar with today, even applied to speakers of non-Yucatecan languages.

Brinton (1895:10) may have been the first scholar to consider “Mayan” as a broad term for the various related languages, writing “I employ the adjective ‘Mayan’ when speaking of the whole stock, and confine ‘Maya,’ in an adjectival sense, to that branch of the stock resident in Yucatan.” At the same time, in an archaeological context, we can trace a similar extended usage to John T. Goodman, who in 1897 wrote in the opening “Explanatory Note” of his The Archaic Maya Inscriptions:

The adjectival term Maya, instead of Mayan at times, is employed throughout this book. The nice distinction, which it is sought bring into vogue, of applying the former only to matters pertaining to Yucatan and using the latter only with regard to affairs relating to the race in general, appears to me ill-advised and liable to result in confusion. I think it would be better to distinguish the separate developments by the terms Yucatec, Tzendal, Chiapec, Cakchiquel, and so on, as far as they can be thus intelligibly designated, retaining the adjective Maya alone as the simpler form, and employing it solely in a generic sense. Hence, not knowing what designation to give the authors of the inscriptions, I have simply applied the broad racial appellation to them, and used the single term Maya adjectively throughout (Goodman 1897).

Today “Maya” remains an unwieldy collective term for many diverse groups who speak one of the thirty or more Mayan languages. By the turn of the 20th century, it also came to be used by archaeologists to refer to the ancient culture more broadly, filling a need to describe the ruins, art and hieroglyphs in some unified way. By 1899 we read of “Maya art” and “Maya civilization” in the pages of A Glimpse at Guatemala, penned by Anne Cary Maudslay, wife of Alfred Maudslay (who, incidentally, had collaborated closely with Goodman, so it may reflect the latter’s influence). In this way, what had once been a linguistic label used to describe part of the “Maya language” or the “Maya-Quiche stock,” quickly came to be applied to the wide swath of archaeological remains, as those came into better focus and systematic study. Within a few years the modern senses of “Maya,” referring to people both ancient and modern, was well established, at least among linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists.

Brinton (1882:11) also wrote that: “No single province bore [the name Maya] at the date of the Conquest, and probably it had been handed down as a generic term from the period, about a century before, when this whole district was united under one government.” Here Brinton alludes to the appearance of Maya in the specific locational name of Mayapan, and indeed the two are related. Restall (2004) suggests Mayapan was the actual origin of the label Maya. His assertion is part of a broader and very nuanced treatment of shifting labels of ethnicity in Yucatan, from the Conquest up to the present day. In the complexities and misunderstandings of the long colonial era, this was quickly overextended by the authorities as an ethnic and a linguistic label, and it continued to be extended in new ways through the early twentieth century, as mentioned earlier. In this way, as Restall rightly points out,, the word Maya came to be invented as an ethnic identity, a designation for a broad cetagory people in the early colonial world.  This being said, it does seem that Maya a place name at the time of the Spanish invasion, referring to the area (or a part) that would also come to be called Yucatan, encompassing those territories and kuchkabaloob that were eventually under the confederacy at Mayapan.

Bishop Diego de Landa makes clear that Mayapan was a Yucatec-Nahua hybrid term, in stating that it means “el pendón de la Maya.”  This comes from the locative suffix –pan (“place” or “surface”) being analyzed as the Nahuatl noun pantli, “banner.” It is also homophonous with the noun pantli meaning “wall” or “enclosure” (as in tzompantli, a “wall of skulls”). In fact, in Nahuatl writing  the –pan locative suffix on place names can be represented with the glyph representing a masonry wall, based on the near identical sound. Given the unique fortification surrounding Mayapan, it is tempting to think that the place name is indeed hybrid, meaning “the Wall of Maya.” We should also keep in mind that Mayapan could more simply be a Nahuatl place name that incorporates the Maya one: Maya-pan, “place of Maya,” as a name of the region’s central capital. Either way, the specific name would allude to the region, given the city’s historical founding as a confederacy of several ruling lineages throughout Yucatán. In an alternative scenario noted above, it is also plausible that word Maya somehow grew out of the place name Mayapan and its old political oder (Restall 2004, Restall and Gabbert 2017), raising a complex chicken-and-egg question about which came first.

Just how far back can we trace “Maya” as a geographical or cultural term? Historically, notions of self-identity tended to hinge on localized towns, communities and lineages, at least as far back as the Classic period. The broken and balkanized political landscape of the Late Classic can be seen as the clearest evidence of this. The Classic Mayan word kabch’een (“earth-cave”) referred to basic organizing concept of a territory, or what we have long called a “city state” or “polity.” Even so, there are strong indications that the Maya of the Classic period also saw themselves as part of a larger cultural whole, holding a remarkable degree of cultural unity despite a long history of geopolitical fragmentation and reshuffling. Elites of the Classic period were aware of their common language (or related languages) in relation to other Mesoamerican peoples with whom they were at time strongly attached as well. And they also had a strong sense of mutual history, with cross-referenced records of dynastic events and royal lives. In this light, did the ancient Maya define themselves or their region more broadly in any way, using recognizable terms or place names?

 A “Maya” Hieroglyph?

The Classic inscriptions are full of place names, always in reference either to political centers or communities, ritual or cosmological centers, or even to particular buildings (Stuart and Houston 1996, Tokovinine 2013, Stuart 1998). There are also occasional references to numbered “divisions” (tzuk) and groups of allied centers that seem to be fairly large in their geographical scope (Beliaev 2000; Martin 2020). And here I would include also the wide-ranging directional title kaloomte’, associated with important rulers located in the four cardinal points (xaman kaloomte’. “the north kaloomte’). However we interpret it, the pattern reveals more than anything else how the Classic Maya understood their larger region as a whole, even if politically divided and balkanized at any given time. This term reiterates how the political organization of the Maya lowlands was seen as existing in a cosmological framework or scheme — an idea that has a long history in Maya studies (Marcus 1973, 1976, Martin 2020). What we have lacked in the ancient texts are any larger geographical terms, encompassing such wider regions or areas.

Figure 2. The basal toponymic register from Yaxchilan, Stela 7. Note the earth-caiman with the floral eye emanations. Drawing by Ian Graham.

As part of our identification of Classic place names, Houston and I discussed the importance of what we called “toponymic registers” in iconography, usually shown under the feet of a standing figure or captive, marking a location using an emblematic form of Maya writing (Stuart and Houston 1994:57-68). One such example appears on Yaxchilan, Stela 7’s base, as a complex, multilayered placename (Figure 2). The central element of the design is the head of a caiman or crocodile (ahiin), identifiable by its distinctive cross-banded eye and its upturned snout. In its forehead is the sign HA’, “water,” showing a cleft at its top. Above this, just visible, is the profile view of a solar cartouche, for K’IN. The components here suggest a hieroglyphic combination shown in a highly elaborated form, an example of emblematic writing, approaches and even merging with iconographic design. The cleft atop the head of the caiman and the water sign may suggest some subtle reference to the broader name pa’chan, “cleft-sky,” the name of the city and the polity (Martin 2004) (clearer examples of the Pa’chan glyph are found on the basal registers of Stela 4 and Step 3 of HS 3). Out of the eye of the caiman emerge two floral elements or tendrils, symmetrically placed to either side. These resemble  leaves or flowers, each forming a cartouche in which we see other designs incorporating animal-like forms, facing outward from the center. The animal on the left looks to be a rodent of some sort, with other specific components that are missing or damaged. The cartouche to the right is more complete. Details visible on the Maler photograph reveal it is a full-figure deer with a HA’ sign below, clearly glyphic (see Figure 6c, below). The deer is shown in a hunched, somewhat awkward pose, almost as if seated, with its front leg extended outward. It is difficult to know what to make of this glyph that is incorporated into the larger toponymic register, but the HA’ sign certainly points to it being a place name.

Figure 3. Toponymic paintings on east wall of Río Azul, Tomb 1. Drawing by Mary Jane Acuña.

In the Early Classic paintings of Río Azul, Tomb 1, we see another grouping of some of these same K’IN and AHIIN elements, bridging iconography and script (Figure 3) (Acuña 2015). Opposite this, to the left of the central text, is an elaborate WITZ (“hill”) head, placed above another head that is the animate sign for CH’EEN (“cave”). All of these elements are hieroglyphs, not iconography, with K’IN and AHIIN-na providing an interesting connection to Stela 7. We will explore this combination in more detail in Part II of this study, but suffice it to say for now that it is probably spelling the name K’inich Ahiin, “Solar Caiman,” which I take to be the proper name of the Maya earth-caiman, cited in several other artworks and inscriptions. The juxtaposition here of the name K’inich Ahiin with witz and ch’een strongly suggests a toponymic design emphasizing a broad conception of place. Their purpose here is maybe to provide the setting for the birth event recording in the central text, probably in reference to the resurrection of the deceased tomb occupant as the reborn sun (much like the theme conveyed in the iconography of Palenque’s famous sarcophagus of K’inich Janab Pakal).

Also part of the glyphic composition in Tomb 1 is our glyph representing a small deer in combination with HA’, identical to the distinctive combination of signs inserted into the composition on Stela 7 at Yaxchilan (see Figure 3, upper left). Why would it be here too? We should probably understand it to be another place name, especially considering the HA’ sign, meaning “water,” but also because of the stacked WITZ and CH’EEN signs on which it is perched (there is another hieroglyph shown here as well, showing a skull-like head, which is probably toponymic as well, given the context). The appearance of the deer-HA’ here at Río Azul and at distant Yaxchilan is curious, for it can hardly be a localized reference. Its proximity to the Solar Caiman in both places suggests that it  may even be cosmological in some sense.

Figure 4. Painted vase from Tayasal, Petén, Guatemala. Note “deer-HA'” hieroglyph (placed here in final position). Photo and drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.

The deer-HA’ combination occurs also on a ceramic vase with four painted glyphs, reportedly from the site of Tayasal, Peten (Figure 4). Gronemeyer (2010) first published this vessel, and in his report he also analyzed the deer-HA’ glyph as a place name, likewise citing its appearance in the Río Azul tomb. The other glyphs on the Tayasal vase include  IK’-a’, for the place name Ik’a’ (Gronemeyer 2010; Marc Zender, personal communication, 2025). This is probably a place reference to the site of Tayasal, or to the great lake itself, as “Windy Waters” (Tokovinine and Zender 2012). The two glyphs that follow are the heads for K’IN and AHIIN, which I take to be another instance the name of the Solar Caiman, K’inich Ajaw, and therefore identical to the name presented in Tomb 1. The deer and the HA‘ are very clear in the next glyph, emphasizing again the animal’s hunched pose and oversized head (by now it seems likely that this cannot be an alternate form of CHIJ, “deer,” given its distinctive form). The glyphic composition on the vase is playful, with the deer shown “emerging” from the HA’ sign and presenting its foreleg. This is the position of a fawn when born, emerging from the birth canal (Dr. Ann Stuart DVM, personal communication, 2023). The somewhat awkward poses we see in all of the examples might therefore be seen as artistic allusions to a young or newborn deer (see Figure 6, below).

What does all of this have to do with the word Maya? It strikes me that the combination of the “young deer” and the HA’ sign, clearly toponymic, might well be read as MAAY?-HA’. As background, I should note that MAAY or MAY is already a well-known logogram in the script, a sign that represents a deer’s leg and hoof (a reading first suggested by Linda Schele) (Figure 5).  This is because maay is the word for “hoof” used today in Yucatán, usually in reference to a horse’s hoof, but also to the foot of a deer. In the glyphs, the hoof sign is used most commonly to spelling the word maayij, “sacrifice, offering” in spellings such as MAAY-ji or MAAY-yi-ji (Bíró 2012; Stuart 2005a:154). In another role, the deer leg can spell the nearly homophonous noun may, “tobacco” (MAAY-ya or MAY-ya) (Loughmiller-Cardinal and Zagorevskii 2016, Stuart 2005b), although there was once probably a phonetic distinction between these words, with “hoof” having a long vowel (maay), as we will see. The word is perhaps also reflected in one Ch’ol term for “deer,” chijmay, combined with the older and far more widespread term, chij (Becerra 1937, Schumann 1973).

Figure 5. The logogram MAAY or MAY, representing a deer’s hoof. (a) example from Palenque, Temple 18 jamb panel, (b) in spelling MAAY-yi-ji, for mayij, “sacrifice,” (c) in spelling MAAY-ya, for may, “tobacco snuff.” Photo by D. Stuart, drawings by L. Schele (a) and D. Stuart (b).

Importantly, in Yucatec, maay is not only “hoof,” but also “ciervo joven” (young deer) or “venadillo pequeño criado in casa” (small deer raised in household) (Barrera Vásquez 1980). Another entry notes that it is a “nombre ritual de venado.” As Marc Zender points out (personal communication, 2025), the Motul entry for Maya is careful to note “acento en el primero” indicating that the first syllable must have had a long vowel, as in maay or màay,  This agrees with the word for “hoof” or “young deer,” also màay. And it seems likely that “hoof” was extended here to mean “young deer,” due to the newborn’s oversized legs and feet.  Considering this, I tentatively propose that the glyphic representations of the young fawn with its prominent foreleg might be a more elaborate MAY or MAAY, with this meaning (see Figure 6). The glyph would then read as MAAY?-HA’, “Young-Deer Water,” as a place name, corresponding nicely with the historic name màaya’, and revealing its actual etymology.

Figure 6. Three examples of the possible MAAY?-HA’ glyph. (a) Río Azul, Tomb 1, (b) Tayasal vase, (c) Yaxchilan, Stela 7. Drawings by Mary Jane Acuña (a) and David Stuart (b, c)

Perhaps for this reason, the Classic glyph Maayha’ appears at Yaxchilan and Río Azul embedded in icons and glyphs that refer to the earth and regional spaces, and on a scale wider than we are accustomed. At Río Azul it serves to “label” the landscape represented by the glyphs witz and ch’en, the “hills and caves.” On the Tayasal vase, it is tempting to see the same name Maayha’ with a string of other place glyphs, including that noted by Gronemeyer (2010) (Figure 7). These run from specific to regional: Ik’a / K’inich An / Maayha’, “Ik’a, (of the) Solar Caiman (Earth), (of the) Maya (region).” This may label the vessel itself in a playful way as a watery “place” – a water container that was a figurative, hand-held “Ik’a'” within a wider landscape.

Figure 7. A possible expanded toponym on the Tayasal vase. Drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.

Conclusion

Here we have examined a rare toponym that appears at different sites and at a considerable distance from each other, across the entirety of the present-day Petén region. At Yaxchilan and Rio Azul its  appears within complex glyphic designs that are locational and cosmological, occurring in direct association with the name of the animate earth, K’inich Ahiin. While the glyph is rare, and the proposal remains highly tentative, I suggest that the toponymic glyph in question might read MAAY?-HA’, raising the intriguing possibility that during the Classic period Maayha’ or Maaya’ was an ancient name for a large expanse within the peninsula or region.  I will present further perspectives and evidence on this in Part II, focusing on the possible name of the animate earth-caiman, K’inich Ahiin, and its relations. If it is indeed the glyph that corresponds to the historical place name Maaya’, we are left wondering what its scope could have been in ancient times: was it the proper name beyond just the northern lowlands of the peninsula? What was its extent? It is impossible to know, but it would seem a wide-ranging reference nonetheless.

Finally, returning to the basal register on Stela 7 at Yaxchilan (Figure 2), we see how the possible MAAY?-HA’ glyph appears opposite a corresponding icon at left, also in a floral cartouche, showing what looks to be a full-figure rodent. This animal appears in other contexts at Yaxchilan, which we will examine in more detail in Part II of this study. Here I will only mention that this is a mouse or rat, or ch’oh in Classic Mayan (the head of the animal basis of the syllable ch’o and the logogram CH’OH, “mouse, rat.”). Given that it also is likely to be a hieroglyphic form, I have to wonder if the rodent may open the door to reconstructing another broad, regional place name of Classic times, and perhaps one that survived historically as another well-known linguistic label in use today. There is much more to say on this and other related points. For now I would only posit that the MAAY?-HA’ hieroglyph was indeed the Classic-period counterpart to the regional place name Maaya’ known from Late Postclassic and contact-period Yucatán, where it was “el nombre propio desta tierra.”

Note: “Mayab” is sometimes thought to be an alternate variant of the place name Maya, or maybe even its original form. This seems doubtful, however, and it is more likely to be a recent word, or even a Spanish corruption, perhaps like Columbus’s “Maiam” (see Briton 1882:13).

Acknowledgements. I thank Tom Garrison, Stephen Houston, Danny Law, Katherine Schumann, and Marc Zender for their valuable feedback as these old ideas have churned-up again in recent weeks. Their encouragement has prompted this revisit of what was a working idea, now with a bit more evidence. The MAAY?-HA’ reading goes back nearly a k’atun, to a time when I remained hesitant to propose the idea without a deeper investigation of its contexts. I also thank Stephen Houston for sharing images of a cast of the deer glyph on Yaxchilan, Stela 7, which clarified several details.

SOURCES CITED

Acuña, Mary Jane. 2015. Royal Death, Tombs, and Cosmic Landscapes: Early Classic Tomb Murals from Rio Azul, Guatemala. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by C. Golden, S. Houston, and J. Skidmore, pp. 168–185. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo. 1980. Diccionario Cordemex, Maya-Español, Español-Maya. Ediciones Cordemex, Mérida.

Becerra, Marcos E. 1937. Vocabulario de Lengua Chol (México). Un vocabulario de Marcos E. Becerra anotado por Heinrich Berlin. Recopilado y transcrito por Sebastian Matteo. Brussels.

Beliaev, Dmitri. 2000. Wuk Tsuk and Oxlahun Tsuk: Naranjo and Tikal in the Late Classic. In The Sacred and the Profane: Architecture and Identity in the Maya Lowlands, edited by P. R. Colas, K. Delvendahl, M. Kuhnert, and A. Schubart, pp. 63–82. Acta Mesoamericana 10. Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben.

Bíró, Péter. 2012. The Non-Existent May Cycle: Methods, Colonial Texts, and Epigraphy. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 98(2):33-57.

Brinton, Daniel G. 1882. The Maya Chronicles. Brinton’s Library of Aboriginal American Literature, No. 1. Privately printed, Philadelphia.

____________. 1895. A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in Philology, Literature and Archaeology, vol. III, no. 2. Philadelphia.

Ciudad Real, Andres de. 2001. Calepino Maya de Motul: Edicion critica y anotada por René Acuña. Plaza y Valdés, Mexico.

Gronemeyer, Sven. 2010. A Painted Ceramic Vessel from Tayasal, El Peten, Guatemala: Museo Arqueologico Santa Barbara, Flores. Mexicon 32(6):145-147.

Loughmiller-Cardinal, Jennifer, and Dmitri Zagorevskii. 2016. Maya Flasks: The Home of Tobacco and Godly Substances. Ancient Mesoamerica 27(1):1-11.

Marcus, Joyce. 1973. Territorial Organization of the Lowland Classic Maya. Science 180(4089):911-916.

__________. 1976. Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Martin, Simon. 2004. A Broken Sky: The Ancient Name of Yaxchilan as Pa’chan. The PARI Journal 5(1):1-7.

_____________. 2020. Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period, 150-900 CE. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Maudslay, Anne Caray. 1899. A Glimpse at Guatemala, and Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America. J. Murray, London.

Michelson, Oscar (ed.). 1976. Diccionario de San Francisco. Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Restall, Matthew. 2004. Maya Ethnogenesis. The Journal of Latin American Anthropology  9(1):64-89

Restall, Matthew and Wolfgang Gabbert. 2017. Maya Ethnogenesis and Group Identity in Yucatan, 1500-1900. In “The Only True People: Linking Maya Identities Past and Present, edited by B. J. Beyyette and L. J. LeCount, pp. 91-130. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

Schumann, Otto. 1973. La Lengua Chol, de Tila (Chiapas). Cuaderno 8, UNAM. Mexico.

Stuart, David. 1998. “The Fire Enters His House”: Architecture and Ritual in Classic Maya Texts. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by S. D. Houston, pp. 373-425. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

_________. 2005a. The Inscriptions of Temple XIX at Palenque. Precolumbia Mesoweb Publications, San Francisco.

_________ 2005b. Glyphs on Pots: Decoding Maya Ceramics. In Sourcebook for the 29th Maya Meetings. The Mesoamerica Center, University of Texas at Austin., Austin.

Stuart, David, and Stephen Houston. 1994. Classic Maya Place Names. Studies in Precolumbian Art and Archaeology no. 33. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Tokovinine, Alexandre. 2013. Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives. Studies in Precolumbian Art and Archaeology, no. 37. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Tokovinine, Alexandre, and Marc Zender. 2012. Lords of Windy Water: The Royal Court of Motul de San José in Classic Maya Inscriptions. In Motul de San José: Politics, History, and Economy in a Maya Polity, edited by A. E. Foias and K. F. Emery, pp. 30-66. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Tozzer, Alfred M. 1921. A Maya Grammar. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 9. Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Day Sign Notes: Ben / Aj

David Stuart

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

In this essay we take a close look at the thirteenth Maya day, called Ben (or Been) in Yucatan, or Aj in several highland Guatemalan calendars. Throughout Mesoamerica, the corresponding day is almost universally understood as “Reed” (one of the meanings of aj) but the visuals of the Maya sign point to a different origin and meaning. And as with the other days we’ve examined, a deeper examination of the sign’s graphic history allows us to understand more about out its conceptual origin, specifically as a deity. Long ago, Eric Thompson (1950) linked Ben to concepts of young maize. He was generally right in this assessment, as we will see, even if he wasn’t aware of all the evidence for the idea, nor of the nature of the day sign as a specific deified form. As I hope to show, the sign’s visual history reveals the day’s close connections to the Middle Formative maize god, and to associated imagery of maize cobs or elotes. It was from this connection that “reed” and “green maize” later developed both graphically and semantically.

The name Ben or Be’en was the name of the day in Yucatec Tzeltal, Chuj, and Q’anjobal, and a possible cognate form was Bin, in Ch’ol (Campbell 1988:375). These similar forms have no obvious etymology or meaning. In modern Chuj, Be’e’n is reported as the name of a deity, a “dios de los pícaros” (Diego and Juan 1998). The semantics of the highland day name Aj, on the other hand, are much clearer, and it is universally translated as “reed” (caña). This corresponds to day names we find elsewhere in Mesoamerica, as in Nahuatl is Acatl, “Reed,’ referring to a variety of tall aquatic grass or bamboo species, and to the stiff reeds used to make arrows, which late examples of the Nahua day glyph emphasize [Note 1].  It is important to note that aj has a wider range of meanings in K’iche’ and other highland Mayan languages, as elote, “corn cob.” For example, in his colonial vocabulary Ximenez (1993:59) glosses ah both as “la caña” and also as “la mazorca tierna” (young ear of corn), as well as “la coronilla de la cabeza” (crown of the head). Similarly, in Kekchi’ Mayan, aj is both “elote” and “palo de carrizo.” These may have originated as two completely distinct Mayan words, from Proto-Mayan *ajn, “elote,” and Common Mayan *aaj, “reed,” respectively.

Figure 1. Variants of the Maya day Ben (a-f) over time, and related signs in Epi-Olmec writing (g-h). Compare especially the trefoils of a, g, and h. Drawings by D. Stuart, I. Graham (e), and P. Drucke (f).
Figure 2. Head variant of Ben from Panel 3 at Piedras Negras (Drawing by D. Stuart).

The Maya glyph for the thirteenth day was uniform during the Classic period, showing a simple geometric design with a horizontal line, two or more vertical lines in its lower half, and two small loops above (Figure 1a-f). The standard Ben of the Late Classic is a slight abstraction of an earlier type that assumed the shape of trefoil, almost flower-like in its outline. We see this in a very important early example on Stela 114 of Calakmul, roughly contemporaneous painted examples from Uaxactun and Rio Azul (Figure 1a). By the end of the Late Classic, the lobed trefoil or floral shape was replaced by a more abstracted form, which is the common Ben with which we are most familiar. One head variant (Figure 2), unique to my knowledge, displays what may be a Maize God, vaguely resembling animate forms of the day Kan (a maize tamale in its origin). This face displays the “IL” marking on its cheek, often a diagnostic feature of the young Maize God.

The Early Ben Sign

The  early examples in Figure 1 (a-c, g and h) provide an important clue to the day’s deeper iconographic connections. First, the trefoil of Ben is clearly the same sign that we see in the sign for the thirteenth day shown on the Chiapa de Corzo fragment, an Isthmian or Epi-Olmec text bearing a partial Long Count date (possibly 36 BCE) (Figure 1g). Here the three “leaves” of the trefoil are more prominent, emerging from a lower base that is obscured. It is also identical to the day sign we see at Cerro de las Mesas, Veracruz, which Kaufman and Justeson (2001:30) identify this day as “Reed,” the same as Ben (Figure 1h). The visual resemblance to the Maya day is clear, for they are all one sign, having a common origin.

Figure 3. Middle Formative maize motifs, showing cob and flanking leaves, usually atop Maize God’s head.

The Maya Trefoil

Extending the array of connections further, these early examples of Ben or “Reed” are likely derived from a motif we see in Middle Formative iconography, showing the trefoil usually with a square or circular base (Figure 3a-d). Peter David Joraleman (1971:13, 59) first identified this as an abstracted symbol of maize, showing a leafy cob, and this became an essential diagnostic of many maize gods throughout Mesoamerican art (Taube [1996]2022). Virginia Fields (1991:171) later noted that the trefoil design in Maya art and writing “clearly arose from an Olmec iconographic complex, identified here with maize vegetation.”  In all of the instances illustrated above, we see the elote and the corn leaves emerging from the top of the head of the snarling Maize God, or placed above his face in some manner. Sometimes this can also assume the form of a forehead element attached to a headband, as found in Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec art. In Early Zapotec writing and iconography, where both the maize cob and the more abstracted trefoil can also be seen (Figure 4) [Note 2].

Figure 4. The maize trefoil motif on Zapotec headbands. Note the headband hieroglyphs show the side-views of the trefoil (Drawings by D. Stuart and J. Urcid)

Virginia Fields (1991) also established that the trefoil atop the Olmec Maize God was the basis of the later Maya “Jester God,” or at least one version of it (Figures 5 and 6). This often adorns the headbands of Maya rulers, as we see in a well-known example on the Dumbarton Oaks celt (see Figure 6d). The greenstone head from Burial 96 at Tikal, dating to the very Early Classic period, is another example, without the face below (Figure 5b). Later in the Early Classic, both the animated and reduced forms (showing the trefoil alone) appear as a common headband element, and this can be traced to a few Late Classic examples as well (Figure 6f). These simplified and animated trefoils are the iconographic correlates of the Ben day sign, which is to say that the day sign started as the trefoil representation of a maize cob (see Figure 1a), and of the Maize God itself (Figure 6c being the earliest Maya example I know). It is his portrait that we see in the sole head variant of the day (compare Figures 2 and 6f).

Figure 5. Maya trefoil motifs as adornments for Maize God headbands. (a) San Bartolo murals, (b) greenstone head, Tikal, Burial 85, (c) Cival painting (Drawings by D. Stuart).

 

Figure 6. Animated trefoil elements. (c-f) Maya examples; (b) and (d-f) as headband adornments (Drawings by K. Taube [a-d] and D. Stuart [e-f]).

The much later “Reed” or Acatl day sign of Postclassic Nahuatl writing holds vestiges of the old trefoil maize design (Figure 7). This appears to have been visually derived from the trefoil form in Classic Zapotec and Nuiñe writing, which in turn evolved from the Formative trefoil we have described (Figure 8). Nahua scribes appear to have modified the basic trefoil to be an upright “reed” image, going so far as to sometimes show it as an arrow made from a reed. The Acatl sign contains vestiges of its actual maize sign, nonetheless, and establishes how the signs for Ben and Acatl, so vastly different in form by 1500 CE, derived from a common prototype that was in use in southern Mesoamerica at least two millennia earlier (Figure 9).

Figure 7. The day sign Acatl, “Reed” in Nahuatl (Aztec) writing. Note the trefoil form within (Drawing by D. Stuart).
Figure 8. Zapotec and Ñuiñe “Reed” signs (Drawings by D. Stuart).
Figure 9. The evolution of the thirteenth day, from Maize to Acatl and Ben.

In conclusion, if the imagery of the thirteenth day is anything to go on, the sign began as a representation of the personified elote, reduced to a maize cob with two flanking husks. Here, the attested highland day name Aj, meaning “elote,” becomes a perfect match for the image of the hieroglyph. As we have noted, in K’iche’an languages, aj was also applied to other tall, grass-like plants, including reeds of various kinds (“caña de los maizales, cuando verde”). Did “Reed” in other Mesoamerican calendars come about as an imperfect borrowing from Mayan aj, giving preference to one possible translation over another? This would raise yet more issues that still need to be pondered, and the spread and diffusion of the Mesoamerican days (both the names and the glyphs) still presents many unanswered questions. However this semantic disconnect came about, it nevertheless suggests that “Reed” was not the original meaning of the thirteenth day among the early Maya. Rather, the Ben sign was first conceived as the animated elote which came to be visually simplified over time, so much so that by the Classic period most if not all scribes had again already lost sight of its true visual origin (Figure 9). Although the word Ben remains obscure, its glyph seems best understood as a distant reference to an archaic maize deity that can be traced back to the Middle Formative era of Mesoamerica, bolstering Thompson’s old interpretation. 

Notes

Note 1.  The aquatic nature of acatl is indicated by its parsing as (a-ca)-tl, referring to an “entity associated with water (atl).” See Andrews (2003:284).

Note 2. In some examples the Zapotec headband maize element bears a striking resemblance to the “trapeze and ray” design or “year sign” found in Teotihuacan visual culture. I suspect that the latter was a highly abstracted form derived also from the maize trefoil from Formative Mesoamerica. In early central Mexico, this design came to be used in the representations of headbands and crowns, as an essential symbol of rulership (Nielsen and Helmke 2019). The maize trefoil is also the headband jewel we see in worn on the forehead of the deified portrait of Moteczomah Xocoyotzin on the Aztec Piedra del Sol.

References Cited

Andrews, J. Richard. 2003. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl (Revised Edition). University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Campbell, Lyle A. 1988. The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas. Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, no. 50. NWAF, Brigham Young University, Provo.

Diego, Mateo Felipe, and Juan Gaspar Juan. 1998. Diccionario de idioma chuj. Chuj-español. PLFM, Antigua Guatemala.

Fields, Virginia. 1991. The Iconographic Heritage of the Maya Jester God. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields.  The University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Joralemon, Peter David. 1971. A Study of Olmec Iconography. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2001. Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing and Texts. Notebook for the 2001 Texas Maya Meetings, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin.

Nielsen, Jesper, and Christophe Helmke. 2019. Crowning Rulers and Years: Interpreting the Year Sign Headdress at Teotihuacan. Ancient Mesoamerica 31(2):1-16.

Taube, Karl A. [1996]2022. The Olmec Maize God: The Face of Corn in Formative Mesoamerica. In Studies in Ancient Mesoamerican Art and Architecture: Selected Works by Karl Andreas Taube, vol. 2, pp. 99–132. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Thompson, J. Eric S., 1950. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington. D.C.

Ximenez, Francisco. 1993. Arte de las tres lenguas, kaqchikel, k’iche’ y tz’utujil. Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, Guatemala.

Day Sign Notes: Imix / Imox

David Stuart

David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

In a few recent studies I have examined how Maya day glyphs visually transformed over the centuries, becoming reduced or abstracted to the point that their original animate forms were obscured, even for the scribes who routinely wrote them. So far, I have looked at the days Manik’, Men and Caban, showing how they originated as specific deities we can identify in Maya iconography. All of the days began this way, as images of recognizable gods. A larger study now in preparation will aim to explore these deeper origins of the Maya days, and how they relate to the day glyphs in other Mesoamerican script traditions. In assessing these developments over the last year or so, I have become increasingly comfortable with the notion that the 260-day Mesoamerican day-count was perhaps even lowland Maya in origin, invented in the Middle Preclassic, and that the day glyphs and names we find elsewhere in Oaxaca or Central Mexico were borrowed from those prototypes, becoming transformed and abstracted even further (this is how Men, once the Principal Bird Deity, became distilled down to a generic “Eagle”).

Here we look at Imix, the first of the twenty named days of the tzolk’in, and the imagery associated with it (Figure 1). In some respects, Imix seems well-understood – at least better than many other Maya days –  having established connections to water and to aquatic snakes of mythology. But its graphic history, etymology and deeper meanings deserve further reflection.

Figure 1. Standard variants of Imix over time (400 – 1200 CE)
Figure 2. NAAH-KAN, or Naahkan, “First Snake,” a common designation of the Water Serpent.

The day name was Imix in ancient Yucatán, and Imox or Imux still is used among day-keepers in the highlands of Guatemala. In Ch’ol the name may have been Nachan (Campbell 1988, Fox and Justeson, n.d., Kaufman 2020), probably analyzable as naah-chan, “first snake” or “primordial snake.” This word surely corresponds to the hieroglyph that we read as NAAH-KAN which is an integral part of the old name of the so-called Water Serpent. The connection is interesting, for, as we will see, for the Water Serpent was the true visual basis of the Imix sign (Figure 2). It is difficult to know if Imix or Naahchan (or Naahkan) was the name used in the Classic period lowlands, as either seems possible. Cipactli, usually translated as “cayman” or “crocodile,” is the corresponding day name in the Nahuatl system.

The meaning of Imix remains obscure. Its only known appearance outside the day name is in the Books of Chilam Balam, in the names of a set of directional world trees called either imix che’ or imix yaxche’ (Bolles n.d.; Knowlton and Vail 2010, Liljefors Persson 2011; Martin 2006; Roys 1933). In this context, many have translated imix as “abundance” (“abundancia” in Barrera Vasquez 1980). These directional trees, described as “pillars of the sky” (yocmal caan), were each designated by their appropriate color: chak imix che’, “red abundance tree” in the east, zac imix che’, “white abundance tree” (north), ek’ imix che’, black abundance tree (west) and k’an imix che’, “yellow abundance tree” (south). In the world-center (tu chumuk peten) was the yax imix che’, or “green abundance tree.” Roys (1933) noted that this probably refers to the ceiba (yaxche’), which was a symbol of fertility and sustenance. The Diccionario Maya Cordemex (Barrera Vásquez 1980:268) describes the world tree(s) designated by imix as the “origen de la vida.”

Delving into the etymology of the word, I believe that imix and imox may be derivations based on the proto-Mayan root *iihm, “breast.” In Yucatec, im is “breast.” Kaufman (2003) notes the fuller form iimi’iixh as the Mam word for “breast.” The day named Imx is explicitly linked to the word for “breast” in the Mam vocabulary of the Academia de Lenguas Maya de Guatemala (ALMG 2003:47):

Imx. Glándulas mamarias (calendario maya). Imx tb’i jun q’ij toj kyajlab’il qchman. Imx es día sagrado dentro del calendario maya-mam.

A connection to breasts, nursing and sustenance may seem odd at first, but it brings us back to the idea of an “abundance tree” just mentioned. In fact, in Aztec lore, an important cosmological tree was the chichihuacuahuitl, or “breast-tree”, located in the paradise of Tlalocan (the tree name is embedded in the place name Chichihuacuauhco). If imix is indeed derived from “breast,” this would offer a striking parallel to the term imix che’ or imix yax che’.

Figure 3. Flowers of Nymphaea ampla at Cenote Xbatun, Yucatán, and a Classic Maya depiction with Imix element. Photograph by D. Stuart.

The forms of the standard Imix day sign (see Figure 1) show a small inner circle in its upper portion, usually darkened and surrounded by dots, with a series of parallel lines placed below. This has long been recognized as the representation of a waterlily blossom (Nymphaea ampla) as shown in Maya iconography, as first proposed by Thompson (1950:72) (Figure 3). This was discussed at length by Rands (1953) and later by Hellmuth (1987a, 1987b) and Houston and Taube (2011).  In all Imix signs this blossom is oriented downward, with the dark spot representing the flower’s ovaries at the center and the lower parallel lines representing the pedals, pistils and stamen the emerge from it. The outer sepals are never shown in the glyph, but they are apparent in many iconographic representations.

Figure 4. Animate variants of the day Imix (a-c), with (d) showing the Water Serpent merged with the imix element (HA’).

There is also an animated form of Imix, which assumes the form of a serpent’s head with an elongated snout (Figure 4d, Figure 5). In Late Classic examples, the blossom that is the standard Imix sign is the upper part of this serpent’s head. This is so-called Water Serpent (or Waterlily Serpent), as first observed by Eric Thompson (1950:145) (Figure 1e-g). Thompson first referred to this being as the “Imix Monster,” which later came to be called the “Lilypad Headdress Monster” (Hellmuth 1987. :160), the “Waterlily Monster” (Schele and Miller 1986:46), the Waterlily Serpent” (Taube 1992:59) or, as I prefer here, simply the “Water Serpent.”

Figure 5. The Water Serpent, the mythic basis of Imix. Note the waterlily blossom on its headband, and the nibbling fish (Drawing by D. Stuart).

The Water Serpent shows several distinct features, among them a waterlily pad at the forehead, a blossom tied to its front, and a fish biting or sucking at the flower. Often the same fish is shown biting or sucking at the tail of the serpent. Its fishy dorsal “fin” evolved over time to be shown as elongated long quetzal feathers (that is, it came to be a “feathered snake” of the water,  probably also a conceptual relation or antecedent to K’uk’ulkan). Its body can simply be the undulating water band. This important iconography  has been most recently by Coltman (2015), who examined its many connections in Mesoamerica, well beyond the Classic Maya world. In ancient Maya mythology this being was the primordial snake (naahkan) that was the essence of water, and who oversaw the creation and raising of the earth, supported by the four old men, the chantun itzam, at its corners. This role, although not yet well defined in the scholarly literature, is perhaps why he was the first day of the tzolk’in, the source of the world’s first sustenance [Note 1].

Figure 6. The Water Serpent in non-calendrical settings, as HA’ “water,” WITZ’, “splash,” the number thirteen, and (as a variant) HA’B, “year.”

The same Water Serpent head we find as Imix was also used to write HA’ “water” (Figure 6b) and also WITZ’, “sprinkle, splash.” (Stuart 2007, Coltman 2015) (Figure 6c). A similar Water Serpent could also appear as the head for the number “thirteen” (Figure 6d) (Robertson 1990). A certain variant of the Water Serpent showing a dotted volute or spiral on the head was used to write HA’B, “year,” in Long Count dates and Distance Numbers (Figure 6e, f). This latter form never appears as Imix, which always emphasizes the waterlily blossom. These visual differences among various Water Serpent glyphs are subtle but real, and deserve further study, for it is clear that Imix (HA’, etc.) and HA’B took a slightly different developmental tracks (ha’b, “year,” is from ha’, “water, rain, rainy season,” so both the animate signs and the words are related).

One early representation of the Water Serpent at San Bartolo suggests a connection to the imix che’ of the Books of Chilam Balam. On the West Wall, we see a serpent’s body as an undulating water band. From its head emerges a tree that supports the Principal Bird Deity (Taube, et al. 2005) (Figure 7). Given that this portion of the murals is dedicated to directional world trees and year bearers, I suggest this is perhaps a precursor to the imix che’ or “abundance tree” mentioned above.

Figure 7. Depiction of Water Serpent as cosmic tree (imix che’?) from San Bartolo Murals, West Wall. Watercolor painting by Heather Hurst, Proyecto Arqueológico Regional San Bartolo-Xultun.

Thompson reasoned that his “Imix Monster” was a symbol of the earth. In this he was influenced by the ideas surrounding the corresponding central Mexican day named Cipactli, usually translated as “crocodile” or “alligator,” and long considered an earth symbol (Caso 1968:8-9). The Nahuatl word can be applied to a variety of aquatic beasts, including the caiman and the gar. It is important to note that the Maya “Imix Monster” or Water Serpent is never shown as a crocodilian (ayin), only as a watery snake. I suspect that the toothy Cipactli being represents a mythic character with somewhat different associations, and overlaps. As Martin (2009) has noted, crocodiles are important in the Maya iconography of certain world trees of abundance, especially cacao. This takes us back to the imix che’ concept mentioned above. A text from jade vessel excavated in Burial 116 at Tikal refers to the sprouting of a primordial cacao tree on the day 9 Imix, which is probably a symbolic connection to the same idea of earthly abundance and sustenance. The point here is that the Water Serpent was primarily a watery creature, not so much a being of the earth. It nevertheless had strong earth associations revolving around creation narratives and concepts revolving around abundance and growth.

Perhaps implicit in Thompson’s old discussion of the “Imix Monster” was an assumption that it is a visual or conceptual elaboration on the simpler, more common form of the day, the waterlily. Schele noted this relationship more explicitly, in designating the serpent-like head under the Imix and in other examples as the “personification head,” an element used to personify a unit of Maya writing, to give them sacred power (Schele and Miller 1986:44). In this way, the Water Serpent is often considered to be an artistic extension on the “standard” Imix or waterlily, basically its complex head variant. However, I suggest that the relationship is not one of increased elaboration and animation, from simple Imix to complex serpent, but the reverse, from serpent to the waterlily blossom. This involves process that is by now familiar, of visual reduction and simplification, using a part for the whole. The Water Serpent came first as the true essence of Imix, and through scribal practice it came to be simplified and even a bit distorted. Again, this may not be terribly surprising to those who have a deep knowledge of Maya script, but the specific nature of this formal reduction is important to stress, as it pertains directly to how we interpret the nature of the day itself.

Figure 8. Tracking the visual relationship between the Water Serpent and the standard Imix sign, its pars pro toto abbreviation.

As we see in Figures 5 and 8, a diagnostic feature of the Water Serpent is its waterlily pad headband, and large blossom, which is tied to it, protruding outward. usually with a fish nibbling away. Looking at the forms of the Imix day sign, we see the same waterlily blossom is above the serpent’s face. This surely arose form artist-scribes who routinely depicted the serpent with its waterlily. The blossom came to be the “short hand” form of the extremely ornate Water Serpent, which was the true visual origin of Imix.  The reduction of the head to the forehead blossom — a headband flower — is the same visual relationship we see in Ahau, where the forehead floral ornament of Jun Ajaw’s (Hunahpu’s) headband becomes the pars pro toto of the full head. (We will eventually take a separate look at the visual history of Ahau, which is sometimes misunderstood, and which also has some surprising turns).

In researching Imix, I took a quick glance at Wikipedia’s entry on the Maya tzolk’in calendar, noting the two basic meanings it gives for the day: “waterlily” and “crocodile.” Neither is accurate. The basic Maya sign represents the waterlily flower, although we should understand this to be only a visual abbreviation, not the meaning. “Crocodile” is never emphasized in Maya names or imagery, but comes from the Nahuatl system (probably a late borrowing from southern Mesoamerica). As we have seen with other Maya days, a meaning is best approached through a systematic look at the deep visual history of the glyphs and iconography. The imagery  reveals that the true essence of the Maya day is another important deity — the Water Serpent, with its aquatic flower and distinctive attributes. The snake was a principal actor in Maya creation narratives before 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, embodying the substance of water that sustained life. It had a more formal name as a type of naahkan, “first snake,” but the word Imix or Imox, based on the word form “breast,” also gets to its core function as a source of life, sustenance and abundance. The fishes are always depicted “suckling” upon the serpent’s body and on the waterlily blossom, probably allude to this basic meaning.

Note 1. It is interesting to note that in modern Achi Mayan, the day name Imox is described as “nagual del agua” (ALMG 2001), although this may be a modern understanding based on the HA’ sign. The Water Serpent is named as overseer of this creation episode on Lacanja-Tzeltal Panel 1. described as the “first stone-holding” or “first stone -raising” on 13 Ahau 13 Cumku, perhaps the “first” k’atun station of all (pre-era) on 12.9.0.0.0. This connection to a Period Ending on 13 Ahau probably accounts for the use of the Water Serpent as the head of 13.

References Cited

ALMG (Academia Linguistica Maya de Guatemala). 2001. U cholaj Ch’a’teem, Vocabulario Achi. ALMG, Guatemala.

ALMG (Academia Linguistica Maya de Guatemala). 2003. Pujb’il Yol Mam. Vocabulario Mam. ALMG, Guatemala.

Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo (ed.). 1980. Diccionario Cordemex, Maya-Español, Español-Maya. Cordemex, Mérida.

Bolles, David. n.d. Ti Can Titzel Caan, Ti Can Titzil Luum: A Collection of Papers about the Relationships between the World Directions, the Calendar, Prognostications, and the Mayan Deities. http://davidsbooks.org/www/Maya/WorldDirections.pdf

Caso, Alfonso. 1968. Los calendarios prehispanicos. UNAM, Mexico.

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas, Mexico. New World Archeological Foundation, Brigham Young University, Provo.

Coltman, Jeremy D. 2015. In the Realm of the Witz’: Animate Rivers and Rulership among the Classic Maya. The PARI Journal 15(3):15-30

Fox, John, and John S. Justeson. 1982ms. A Ch’olan Calendar in the Gates Collection.

Hellmuth, Nicholas A.. 1987a. The Surface of the Underwaterworld: Iconography of the Gods of Early Classic Maya Art in Peten, Guatemala. 2 vols. Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research, Culver City, CA.

Hellmuth, Nicholas A. 1987b Monster und Menschen in der Maya-Kunst: Eine Ikonographie der alten Religionen Mexikos und Guatemalas. Academische Druk- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Houston, Stephen D., and Karl A. Taube. 2011. The Fiery Pool: Fluid Concepts of Water and Sea among the Classic Maya. In Ecology, Power and Religion in Maya Landscapes, edited by C. Isendahl and B. Liljefors Persson, pp. 11-37. Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben.

Kaufman, Terrance. 2020. The Day Names of the Meso-American Calendar: A Linguistic Perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341194005

Knowlton, Timothy, and Gabriel Vail. 2010. Hybrid Cosmologies in Mesoamerica: A Reevaluation of the Yax Cheel Cab, a Maya World Tree. Ethnohistory 57(4):709-739.

Liljefors Persson, Bodil. 2011. “Ualhi yax imix che tu chumuk”: Cosmology, Ritual and the Power of Place in Yucatec Maya (Con-)Texts. In Ecology, Power and Religion in Maya Landscapes, edited by C. Isendahl and B. Liljefors Persson, pp. 139-152. Verlag Anton Saurwein.

Martin, Simon. 2006. Cacao in Ancient Maya Religion: First Fruit from the Maize Tree and other Tales from the Underworld. In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, edited by Cameron McNeil. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Rands, Robert. 1953, The Water Lily in Maya Art: A Complex of Alleged Asiatic Origin. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 151: 75-153. BAE, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Robertson, Merle Greene. 1990. Celestial God of the Number 13. Triptych (Sept/Oct 1990),
pp. 26-31. The Museum Society, San Francisco.

Roys, Ralph. 1933. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC.

Schele, Linda, and Mary Ellen Miller. 1986. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

Stuart, David. 2007. Reading the Water Serpent as WITZ’. Maya Decipherment April 13, 2007. 

Taube, Karl A. 1992. The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 32. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Taube, Karl A., William Saturno, David Stuart and Heather Hurst. The Murals of San Bartolo, El Peten, Guatemala. Part 2: The West Wall. Ancient America 10. Boundary End Archaeology Research Center, Barnardville, NC.

Thompson, J. Eric S. 1950. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC.

 

 

Day Sign Notes: Manik

David Stuart

David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

This is the third in an anticipated series of essays on the visual histories and iconographic associations of the Maya day signs, presented in no particular order (previous studies have treated the days Men and Caban).

Figure 1. The standard hand form of the day Manik. (a) UAX: B-XIII murals, (b) NAR: St 43, (c) PAL: 96 Glyphs, (d) COM: Pendant 8A, (e) EKB: Mural of 96 Glyphs, (f) Dresden Codex. Drawings by D. Stuart (a, e, f), A. Tokovinine (b), and M. Zender (d).

In his commentaries on the meanings and forms of the days of the tzolk’in, Eric Thompson (1950:76) expressed a special puzzlement surrounding Manik, the seventh day (Figure 1). In other Mesoamerican writing systems and languages, the corresponding signs and names for the day universally represented a deer (Figure 2). But the Yukatek name Manik, Thompson wrote, shows “no connection with deer; neither does the glyph, which is a hand, shown sideways with thumb and one figure touching or extended with back to the observer.” What Thompson didn’t know at the time is that Maya scribes also occasionally employed a deer’s head to represent Manik, following widespread Mesoamerican practice (Figure 3). As it turns out, the hand and the deer head are interchangeable as Manik, which makes the common use of the hand as the day sign even more vexing. Where does it come from? Here I would like to explore how the Manik hand might have originated early on as an alternate form of “deer,” which came to be used throughout the Maya script, and beyond the context of the day sign. 

Figure 2. Deer day signs in non-Maya writing systems. (a) Isthmian script (La Mojarra), (b) Zapotec script, (c) Cacaxtla writing, (d, e) Nahua script (Borgia Codex), (f) Nahua script (Piedra del Sol). Drawings by D. Stuart (a, d, e, f), J. Urcid (b), and C. Helmke (c).
Figure 3. Deer head variants of Manik in Maya script. (a) San Bartolo, Xbalanque structure, (b) La Corona, Element 4, (c) Palenque region, stucco glyph, (d) Yaxchilan region, door lintel.

The Yukatek name Manik’ is of obscure origin. Campbell (1988) and Kaufman (2020) reported a probable corresponding form in Ch’olan as Manich’, preserved in baptismal records of Chiapas (day names often were used as personal names, as we see in Nahuatl). Kaufman suggested these may be loans into lowland Mayan from proto-Sapotekan *mmani7, “mammal, large bird,” but I am not sure that this is a secure connection (as Kaufman noted, the attested Sapotekan name for the day is China, “Deer”). In Tzeltlan languages, the day name was Moxik, which is also of unknown origin. I agree with Kaufman’s (2020) suggestion these obscure lowland Mayan names may have had a religious association as the designation of a “deer god,” or as a deified patron of hunting (see Looper 2019:119-152). In highland Mayan languages, the form is consistently keej or a close cognate, corresponding to the generic word for “deer.” This geographical and linguistic pattern is interesting, for the names we see used in the Maya lowlands and Ch’olan-Tzeltalan sources were not the words for “deer” that we see elsewhere. It raises the possibility that the Classic Mayan day name was not “Deer” (Chij or Kej), but a more specific reference.

Figure 3. Late Preclassic Deer variant of Manik day sign from Xbalanque structure, San Bartolo, ca. 300 BCE. Note cartouche border behind the ears and antler. Drawing by D. Stuart.

The deer head was used as the Maya day sign from a very early date. In a recent paper, my colleagues and I discussed the discovery of the earliest known Maya date glyph, a Late Preclassic record of the day 7 Manik from San Bartolo, dating to approximately 300 BCE (Stuart et al. 2022). The form of the day sign is striking and important, for it shows us the head of a deer, much like we know from other Mesoamerican scripts. Its head is turned and faces left, with its neck gracefully bent, perhaps to show the common pose of a deer turned and nibbling at its side. Given its early date, the deer’s head at San Bartolo may represent an early stage in Maya script development before the closed hand emerged as the standard form for the day.

Today we widely recognize the Manik hand sign in non-calendrical settings as the syllable chi, a reading that had been considered off-and-on in the earliest years of Maya epigraphic research. Cyrus Thomas (1892) was the first to do so, noting with great insight that the hand element served as a purely phonetic element, “sometimes to be read chi, as in the symbol for chik’in, ‘west’.” Thompson later rejected this possibility, in keeping with his dismissal of phoneticism in Maya script overall. Ultimately it was Knorosov, six decades later, who resurrected Thomas’s chi value, and applied it to several spellings in the codices. One common variant of the chi syllable in the Classic script is a deer’s head, which can alternate with the hand in several contexts (Figure 4). It is particularly common in the sequence yi-chi in the dedicatory formula of vessels from the El Zotz region. So here we have the same pattern as in the day sign, a free substitution of the two allographs (Note 1).

Figure 4. Alternation of the hand and deer head as the chi syllable (yi-chi) from two vessels from the El Zotz region. (a) Kerr 4357, (b) vessel lid published by Coe (1973:86).

Incidentally, David Kelley (1976) suggested ke as an alternative syllabic reading of the hand, noting that it could stand alone in the codices at times for “deer” (Yukatek keeh), outside the context of the Manik’ day sign. While today ke is not seen as a viable reading for the hand, Kelley was right to note the fluid functionality of the hand sign, and the deer head can be syllabic ke in at least one case I am aware of (Note 2). One case is in the glyphic name of the deer shown coupled with Wuk Sip, the god of hunting, in the Dresden Codex (Figure 5a). This is the same deer we find depicted in some Classic period vases, with the very same name, chan chij winik (4-CHIJ-WINIK) (Looper 2019:138). Zender (2017) has investigated this particular being in the context of a mythic cycle involving the moon goddess, the maize god Juun Ixi’m, and the patron of hunting Wuk Sip. The numeral four on the name suggests a cosmological deer being with aspects in the world quarters. In Classic times the hand could also serve as a logogram for “deer,” as we see in the name caption of a wahy being, an eyeless deer coiled in a snake (Figure 6). These overall patterns demonstrate that the deer head and the Manik hand shared dual functions, both as the logogram CHIJ and as the syllable chi.

Figure 5. A deer god in the Dresden Codex and in Classic period iconography. Note the name glyph with the alternation of the hand and the deer head CHIJ. (a) Dresden Codex, 13c, (b) K8927.
Figure 6. The hand as the logogram for “deer,” in the name of a wahy being. Kerr 8733. Drawing by D. Stuart.

 

On the face of it, the syllabic chi value of the Manik hand seems a straightforward explanation for its use in the day sign, a phonetic allusion to the word chij, “deer.” But there are problems with this, in my view. It raises yet another conundrum, having to account for the near-constant use of a supposed CV syllable as a partial spelling of the word used for the day’s name. No other day sign is ever a syllable cueing a fuller word. Furthermore, all day signs are by nature logograms, so chi as the day seems a strange outlier of a long-standing pattern. What’s more, as we have noted, the day name in the lowlands was perhaps not even Chij, for only Manik’, Manich’ and Moxik are historically attested. In essence, we are still left with Thompson’s old puzzle, as well as the broader question: just how did the hand come to be used for chi, for Manik, and for “deer”? The three functions must be related, but what’s their true connection?

Figure 7. Graphic abbreviations of the Deer day sign at Cacaxtla (a, b) and in the Codex Féjerváry- Mayer (c, d). Drawings (a, b) by C. Helmke.

To begin to answer this, let’s first return to the wider Mesoamerican forms of the “Deer” day glyph. As we know, a deer’s head or body is attested in Maya writing, as well as throughout the rest of Mesoamerica (Figures 2 and 3). Occasionally, we see simplified forms that originated as parts of deer, as pars pro toto replacements. For example, in Nahuatl writing the day Mazatl can be shown as a deer’s hoof or, more commonly, as the antler of a deer (Figure 7c,d). Earlier, at Cacaxtla, we also see an antler used as a simplified way of writing the day “Deer,” in direct alternation with the deer’s head (Helmke and Neilsen 2011:4) (Figure 7a, b). This follows the familiar practice of day signs having simpler and even more familiar forms that originated as parts of these heads, as pars pro toto replacements. We have reviewed some examples of this in our earlier considerations of Men and Caban. Early on in the history of the Maya script, scribes established many of these reduced forms as standard ways to write the days, all of which I believe were first conceived as highly complex iconographic representations of specific deities and supernatural beings (Imix as the Water Serpent, for example, Men as the Principal Bird Deity, and so on).

This practice of visual reduction brings up what I see as an intriguing possibility for explaining the Manik or chi hand. Could this “hand” have originally been a representation of a deer’s antler, just as we see elsewhere, that came to be reanalyzed visually, and misunderstood? If we look at various representations of antlers in Maya art and writing, it seems not too far-fetched to see the odd positioning of the fingers and thumb in Manik as reflecting the visual structure of an antler, at least as the Maya represented it (Figure 8). Some early chi or Manik hands look almost identical, as we see in the spelling of the honorific title K’IN-chi for k’inich, on an altar recently recovered at Tonina (Figure 8e). If this is the case, the antler (later the “hand”) developed out of a standard pars pro toto reduction of the deer’s head, as a variant of what amounts to the same sign.

Figure 8. Antlers in Maya art and Writing. (a-d) Representations of deer antlers in iconography, (3) an antler-like chi in the spelling of chi-K’IN, from Tonina, (f-i) the sign XUKUB for “antler” and its possible head variant (i). Note the general resemblance to the shape of the Manik or chi hand. Drawings by D. Stuart.

One attractive aspect of this proposal is that it would explain cases where the hand serves as a logogram for “deer,” whether in the context of the day sign or elsewhere. It also agrees with the use of the deer’s head as a syllable for chi. That is, both signs work the same way because they are, in origin, the same thing. The syllable derived from the logographic form, I suggest, just as we see in many other signs. The sign for fish (KAY) gave rise to the syllable ka, which could also be written in reduced form as the tail fins (or a dorsal fin) of a fish (that is, Landa’s “ka comb” was originally a fin, but scribes had no sense of its origin even in the Classic period).

As an aside, it is interesting that deer antlers have been noted for their visual resemblance to human hands. The antler of a mature male white-tailed deer (the most common species in the Maya world) often has five points or “tines,” resembling a hand. Antlers can also be “palmated” or flattened in their centers, a term derived from the resemblance to the palm of a hand. Humans, in imitating deer in play or ritual, often place two hands with contorted fingers against the forehead to mimic the form of antlers (Note 3). Stephen Houston has suggested (personal communication, 2023) that a similar hand gesture may have been used as a signal among Maya deer hunters.

A resemblance also exists between the general shape of the chi hand and the logogram for “antler,” read as XUKUB, “antler, horn” (Lopes and Davletshin 2004) (Figure 8, f-i). The head variant of XUKUB seems the image of the hunting deity Wuk Sip (i) (see Grunbe 2012). One wonders if the hand developed as an intentional visual divergence, helping scribes to distinguish the graphic reduction of CHIJ from XUKUB. In any event, by the Classic period, CHIJ “deer” had its deer head and “hand” form, and XUKUB kept its representational appearance.

Conclusion

Here I suggest that the single Maya logogram for “deer” — certainly an old sign in the script — once had two related forms or allographs: a standard deer head, and a common abbreviation in the form of a deer antler. Both were used for the seventh day of the tzolk’in, Manik. However, over time, and before the Classic period, calligraphic practice led to the antler being perceived (misinterpreted) as a human hand with its distinct shape. Their functions never changed despite their graphic separation. The deer head was the logogram CHIJ and the syllable chi, as was its shorthand form (pun intended). Still, it must be said that there is no known archaic form of the day Manik that displays an antler; what I describe here is only a speculative extrapolation, an exercise in “visual etymology” working backward from later forms.

Notes

Note 1. The other common head variant of chi, not discussed here, represents an animate agave plant, based on CHIH, “agave, agave drink.” It too freely substitutes for the hand and deer in yi-chi and other contexts.

Note 2.  In one ceramic text I know, a deer head (not the hand) is syllabic ke in the spelling of ke(le)-ma, keleem, “youth.” This spelling can only be be specific to Yukatek, and a local innovation of a syllabic sign.

Note 3. The following is the description of the sign for “deer” in American Sign Language (ASL): “To sign “Deer” in American Sign Language (ASL), extend and spread out your fingers on both hands, resembling a pair of antlers. Move your hands by the sides of your head, ensuring that each thumb touches each side of your head. Each hand should form one antler.”

References Cited

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas, Mexico. New World Archaeological Foundation, Brigham Young University, Provo.

Coe, Michae D. 1973. The Maya Scribe and His World. Grolier Club, New York.

Grube, Nikolai. 2012. A Logogoram for SIP, “Lord of the Dear.” Mexicon XXXIV:138-141.

Kaufman, Terrence. 2020. The Day Names of the Meso-American Calendar: A Linguistic Perspective. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341194005

Looper, Matthew. 2019. The Beast Between: Deer in Maya Art and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Lopes, Luis, and Albert Devletshin. 2004. The Glyph for Antler in the Mayan Script. Wayeb Notes 11.

Stuart, David, Heather Hurst, Boris Beltran and William Satunro. 2022. An Early Maya Calendar Record from San Bartolo, Guatemala. Science Advances, DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abl9290

Thompson, J. Eric. S. 1950. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.

Zender, Marc. 2017. The Maize God & the Deer Lord’s Wife. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual European Maya Conference, Malmö University, Sweden, on December 16th, 2017.

Day Sign Notes: Caban

David Stuart

David Stuart (University of Texas at Austin)

This is the second in a series of occasional essays on the visual histories and iconographic associations of the Maya day signs. It follows up on previous studies that have explored some aspects of these wider connections (Mex Alboronoz 2021, Stone and Zender 2011, Thompson 1950). My emphasis here is on what might be called the iconographic “roots” of various days, exploring how their forms underwent significant transformations over the centuries, obscuring aspects of their visual origins and iconographic identifications. Each case study will work to help establish the wider point (more a working hypothesis)  that all of the Maya day signs originated in the Preclassic era as representations of deities or mythic animals, and that through constant copying and repetition, these were reduced and abstracted, often losing their original forms in the process. A few of these evolutions and “devolutions” are known to epigraphers (i.e., that the Ahau “face” was never a face to begin with). Still, they are more common than many realize, and laying out the developmental histories helps us to understand the broader history of the 260-day calendar in Mesoamerica.

Figure 1. Variants of the day sign Caban (Kaban) in chronological order (standard and animated versions). (a) UAX: Str. B-XIII murals, (b) TIK: St.31, (c) NAR: Alt 1, (d) PAL: T.XVII tablet, (e) XUN: Pan. 3, (f) PAL: T. XIX platform, (g) EKB, Mural 96 glyphs, (h) Dresden Codex, (i) RAZ, Tomb 12, east wall, (j) QRG: St. D, (k) COP: Corte Altar. Drawings by D. Stuart.

As with many of the Maya day signs, the visual origin of Caban, the seventeenth day of the sequence, has long been unclear (Figure 1a-h). Its form is identical to the common logogram KAB, “earth, ground,” and its name of course reflects a basic connection to that word (see Stone and Zender 2011:136-137). The visual histories of the day sign for Caban and of the KAB logogram show the same developmental trajectory, so we will them here as basically a single sign operating in different contexts. The sign normally shows a so-called “caban curl” element in the upper left and a semicircular form at the lower right. An internal border that runs along the top and down the left side is standard, although this is omitted in some cases. What does the sign represent? Agreeing with an interpretation first proposed by Eduard Seler, Thompson (1950:86) was adamant that it was “a lock of hair worn by Goddess I of the Maya codices.” While there is some resemblance to the hairlock we see on the late moon goddess, this supposed connection quickly dissolves once we realize that it is only in Postclassic representations of the goddess that we see any resemblance. Thompson only considered very late examples when making his comparisons. We need to look elsewhere for an explanation.

Figure 2. Maudslay’s 1889 presentation of the full figure 8 Caban from Quirigua, Stela D. Note the iconographic association made between the face and the standard Caban day. Drawing by Annie Hunter.

One important clue comes from an elaborate animated form of Caban on Stela D of Quirigua (Figure 1j). It shows a bejeweled man with bound hair and a distinctive curl behind the eye, similar to the inner detail we see in Caban. Perhaps with Goodman’s input, Maudslay (1889) made this connection early on in the published illustration of Stela D, showing a slightly reconstructed face of the day sign beside a standard Caban (Figure 2b). Other animated Caban day signs are rare. The only other examples known to me are a 4 Caban Year bearer day painted in Tomb * from Rio Azul (Figure 1i), and a damaged 7 Caban that appears on Dos Pilas, Hieroglyphic Stairway 2. A full-figure Caban appears on the so-called ”Corte Altar” from Copan (Figure 1k), again showing a young male with curl markings on his body. These examples provide a good overview of examples of what is essentially the same character, with distinctive iconographic attributes. So, while rare, this animated Caban must have existed in the background of Classic Maya scribal culture, within a standardized repertoire of imagery that was only occasionally called upon.

Figure 3. The head variant of KAB. (a) TIK: Marcador, (b) YAX: L. 22, (c) PAL: T.I.m., (d) CRN: E. 56, (e) ANL: Pan. 1, (f) four examples of U-KAB-ji-ya from NAR: St. 46. Drawings a-e by D. Stuart, f by A. Tokovinine.

We see many examples of this same head as the standard animation of the KAB logogram, used with far more regularity in the script (Figure 3a-e). Previously I have taken this head to be a somewhat informal elaboration on the basic KAB, where the scribe has chosen to make use of a generic-looking head as a way to lend it some animate quality. However, there is good reason to see this head for KAB and Caban day sign as more than simple personifications. This is perhaps indicated by its sheer frequency and its consistency of form in both early Classic and Late Classic examples. The curl appears behind the eye, or in some early examples, around it, like a descending vertical stripe. On Naranjo Stela 46, the head variant appears five (possibly six) times in spellings of U-KAB-ji-ya (u kab-[i]j-iiy) suggesting that the scribe saw it as a standard sign type (Figure 3f).

Figure 4. The animate number 11. (a) YAX: L. 47, (b) PNG: Pan. 2, (c) COP: Temple 26 inscription, (d) PAL: T. XVI stucco. Drawings by I. Graham (a), D. Stuart (b, c), and M. van Stone (d).
Figure 5. Patrons of the Month Tzec, including head forms of the KAB sign. (a) PNG: Pan. 12, (b) COL: Bonampak area, “Po Panel,” (c) PAL: TC. Drawings by D. Stuart (a), A. Safranov,(b), and Linda Schele (c).

Tellingly, this animated KAB appears in two other settings where it stands alone as a singular representation of a Maya deity. First, we see it as the deity that serves as the number 11 (Figure 4). One example (c) from Palenque’s Temple XVII takes a “celt” element as a prefix, a feature we see on several deity names in both the Classic and Postclassic, and replicating a deified term for the earth that we find on Copan, Stela A. The patron of the moth Tzec is the same thing (Figure 5a, b). Its earliest forms show it to be the deity we have already discussed, and the example from Piedras Negras Panel 12 is particularly complex. Here we see the marking “dripping” over the eye and more of a thickened, dark band with a zigzag. As with the day sign, the simpler KAB works also the month patron (Figure 5c). In this context, the deity head and the standard KAB are once again equivalent signs.

We can easily connect these portrait heads, in turn, to a god who is depicted in the postclassic codices (Figure 6). This is “God R,” so designated from the revisions made to Schellhas’s original list (Taube 1992:112). His portrait name glyph is preceded by the number 11, so there is little doubt it is the same as the deity shown in Figure 4. Note that the he has precisely the same Caban curls over or behind the eye, identical to the animate KAB sign.

Figure 6. “God R” in the Dresden Codex (pages 5b and 6a).

Animate Origins

Did the deity glyphs in Figure 3-5 arise out of the simpler KAB sign, as a personification, or was the reverse true: did the familiar KAB develop as an abstraction from the head? It is a chicken-and-egg conundrum, perhaps, but I do believe there is enough evidence to support the second of these options, that the profile of the deity is the original. As other case studies show, Maya day signs mostly originated as visually complex portraits of deities or animals, which were simplified out of scribal preference. The parallel contexts we have touched on here (day sign, logogram, Tzec patron, and the number 11) all would seem to indicate that their “root image” was the personified form, the deity. I posit that through the familiar process of graphic reduction, and via repeated calligraphic practice, the deity’s profile head was abstracted and reduced to its essentials and diagnostics – his painted eye. His nose, mouth, and eye were “lost” early on, producing a short-hand version, such that all that was left was the distinctive dark patch and curl, along with the border that had originally run along the top of the head. Beginning deep in time, the day sign we recognize as Caban was born out of a long process of visual transformation, ultimately taking on a life of its own. Still, some scribes and iconographers retained this mythological identity to the day, particularly within the restricted contexts of the Tzec month patron and in the animated number. I wonder if small vestiges of the profile face can be seen from time to time even in some later, standard Caban signs, as we see in Figure 1e, where just the lower lip of the face was preserved as a small, vestigial detail.

Figure 7. Fully animate Caban day signs (6 Caban and 4 Caban) from Copan, Altar T. Drawings by D. Stuart.

An allusion to this deeper historical connection comes through two playful and wonderfully odd examples of the day Caban used by later Maya scribes (Figure 7). Altar T of Copan displays two remarkably inventive day signs of Caban as full-figure glyphs, each holding a month glyph. The bejeweled figures have Caban glyphs as heads with a hint of a mouth, and numbers of their coefficients appear above, attached to the heads. On the left is the earlier of the two embodied dates, 6 Caban 10 Mol (9.16.12.5.17, the accession of Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaa) and on the right is the later anniversary, 4 Caban 10 Zip (9.17.12.5.17). Each head has an obsidian blade atop its head, which we also see on the animated number 11 and on the Caban sign from Quirigua. Here the nature of these odd figures as animate Cabans is not solely based upon their glyphic heads, but on their specific iconographic identities, as deities. The designer of Altar T artfully took the abstracted Caban signs, and almost with a knowing wink placed them where the faces of the day gods should be. Lucky for us, the artist revealed some esoteric knowledge of deep script history.

Figure 8. Repeating scenes of wading warriors with the Maize God. Note the dark Caban markings about the eyes, alternating with stripes. (a) K4117, (b) K1224, (c) K2011, (d) detail of K1365. Photographs by J. Kerr, drawing by D. Stuart.

Interestingly, God R of the codices has been described as a deity of war and sacrifice (Taube 1992:112-115). We can link this “Caban deity“ to several representations of obsidian-wielding warriors on codex-style vessels (Figure 8). These are single or multiple individuals who appear with the Maize God, Juun Ixi’m, in scenes that depict his entering the primordial waters. The facial Caban curls are clear in many of these depictions, and their obsidian weapons perhaps relate to the obsidian imagery we see in the glyphs. In two examples we also see ears or ear ornaments in the form of spondylus shells. Sometimes the distinctive Caban curls appear “floating” in front of the faces, as Taube (1992:112-115) has noted, in an apparent overlap with some representations of the Hero Twins (K1202 shows an image of Juun Ajaw with an identical curl before his face). On these warrior figures the Caban curls alternate freely with other painted eye marks in the form of doubled vertical stripes, or a stripe with an “IL” shape. It seems that the eye markings on all of these “Caban deities” could take a few different forms without affecting their identification. In general, they strongly resemble the darkened patch over the eye that we see in early examples of the KAB or Caban head described above (Figure 5a, for example). It would seem that the curl of the standard Caban hieroglyph was the lone vestige of the face, originating as the markings about the eyes, a distinctive characteristic of this particular god, or group of gods.

1 Caban at San Bartolo?

Figure 9. Day record (1 Caban?) from the east wall of Structure sub-1A chamber, San Bartolo, Guatemala. Drawing by D. Stuart.

The Late Preclassic murals of Structure sub1-A of San Bartolo include a painted day sign that once was on its east wall (Figure 9). Here we see a profile face with a spondylus shell ear, and striped “IL” markings over the eye. One of the two stripes bends backward, identical to the facial markings we see on some of the warriors just described in the mythological scenes of the Maize God’s watery entrance (FIgure 10). The shared spondylus shell ear is a feature that makes this connection especially compelling,  suggesting these are the same character — the same warrior with dark face paint over the eye.

Figure 10. Mythic warriors from K1366 and K2011, compared to the San Bartolo day sign. Details of rollout photographs by J. Kerr.

We therefore can entertain the possibility that the day sign at San Bartolo is not 1 Ahau, as I had previously believed, but rather 1 Caban. This day held importance in Maya calendar and forms the base date of one of the intervals written in the 4-column array from Structure 10K-2 (Macleod and Kinsman 2012). There, as the opening column, it is the header for the interval that established the base for the 819-day count cycle, a key component of Maya computational astronomy and four-quadrant cosmology (Linden and Bricker 2023). The 1 Caban from Structure sub1-A at San Bartolo has no surrounding elements that allow us to confirm such associations, but its juxtaposition with 3 Ik on the opposite wall was related to a four-part cosmological arrangement of the mural chamber (Stuart 2017, Stuart and Hurst 2018). In a future post, I will also explore how the day 1 Caban served an important role in the Year Bearer count as well.

Some Iconographic Implications

The simplified KAB sign appears in Classic Maya iconography as markings for ground lines and ground space (Stuart and Houston 1994:57-59). If we are to accept the idea that the image of KAB originated with the profile face, then these are best seen as non-textual extensions of the later abstraced glyph. I know of no examples of the KAB sign or its iconographic relatives in Preclassic Maya art, which is probably significant given the suggestions I’ve made here (it may not have existed as yet). The Classic period overlaps between sign and icon helps to accentuate the point that Maya iconography and writing, at least in its later stages, were inseparable visual and linguistic systems.

The basic meaning of kab as “earth, ground,” naturally suggests that the “God R” and the related warrior deities hold some identity with the earth itself. It is worth noting that there is no well-defined “earth god” in Maya mythology, so perhaps this Caban character (or characters) might qualify for such a role. Their imagery as warriors in the primordial waters of mythology may be related to this.

Finally, we should keep in mind the curious links that this Caban deity shows with Juun Ajaw and his other headband twin companion. This needs further exploration, for it may in the end offer some support for the initial identification I made of the San Bartolo day glyph as 1 Ahau. Nevertheless, for now, I see a stronger visual connection to the warrior deities discussed, pointing to its proper identification as 1 Caban. There is more to ponder, clearly.

Conclusions

The visual origin of the Caban day sign is now clearer, deriving from the profile portrait of a deity with distinctive facial markings (Figure 11). Its common, familiar form throughout the Classic period was a graphic shorthand of this portrait. The example from Rio Azul, dating to about 400 CE, hearkens back to the original and shows us the closest known Classic example to that underlying form, an example of which we may see as San Bartolo.

Figure 11. Hypothetical development of the Caban day sign from 100 BCE to ca. 682 CE. The first stage remains tentative. Drawings by D. Stuart.

This visual history takes us to a larger issue that was touched on briefly in my discussion of the day Men, and which bears repeating here. Underlying my interpretations of Caban and Men is the strong sense that most Maya day signs originated in the Preclassic as animated forms, as the heads of deities or animals. The very early use of the deer’s head for Manik at San Bartolo, at 300 BCE, is one example of this chronological tendency (we will explain the likely visual origin of the “Manik hand,” also the syllable chi, in a future post). To cite a couple of other examples, the common day sign for Chuen was first a portrait of the scribal monkey deity, and its eye came to be used as its standard shorthand representation. The day Ix similarly originated as the eye of a spotted feline. These original forms were still known to the artisans of Maya courts, but tended not to be used in regular scribal practice. What were once complex representations of deities and animals were simplified through expediency and convention, so that they began to take on abstract shapes and forms. I suspect this process began very early in the history of the script, long before the Classic period.

ADDENDUM (September 6, 2024):

I have remembered an important Late Classic example of the Caban day head variant, on a ceramic sherd on display in the Tonina site museum, illustrated below. This sign is the same as the KAB head variant we see in Figure 3, and a late version of the Rio Azul variant (Figure 1i and 11, middle).

Sources Cited

Linden, John, and Victoria R. Bricker. 2023. The Maya 819 day count and Planetary Astronomy. Ancient Mesoamerica 34(3):690-700. doi:10.1017/S0956536122000323

Macleod, Barbara, and Hutch Kinsman. 2012. Xultun Number A and the 819-day count. Maya Decipherment, June 11, 2012. https://mayadecipherment.com/2012/06/11/xultun-number-a-and-the-819-day-count/

Maudslay, Alfred P. 1889-1902. Biologia Centrali-Americana: Archaeology. Volume 2. R.H. Porter, London.

Mex Alboronoz, William Humberto. 2021. Tiempo y Destino entre los gobernantes mayas de Palenque: una perspective desde la cuenta de 260 días. Palabra de Clio, Mexico D.F.

Stone, Andrea, and Marc Zender. 2011. Reading Maya Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Maya Painting and Sculpture. Thames and Hudson, London.

Stuart, David. 2024. Day Sign Notes: Men / Tz’ik’in. Maya Decipherment, April 19, 2024. https://mayadecipherment.com/2024/04/19/day-sign-notes-men/

Stuart, David, and Stephen Houston. 1994. Classic Maya Place Names. Studies on Precolumbian Art and Archaeology, no. 33. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Stuart, David, and Heather Hurst. 2020. Creation in Four Acts: The Narrative Structure of the San Bartolo Murals. Paper presented at the 2020 Mesoamerica Meetings, UT Austin.

Stuart, David, Heather Hurst, Boris Beltran and William Satunro. 2022. An Early Maya Calendar Record from San Bartolo, Guatemala. Science Advances, DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abl9290

Taube, Karl A. 1992. The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies on Precolumbian Art and Archaeology, no. 32. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Thompson, J. Eric S. 1950. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC.