Article

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.

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Yesterday’s Moon: A Decipherment of the Classic Mayan Adverb ak’biiy

David Stuart

by David Stuart (University of Texas at Austin)

Deciphering the Adverb Ak’biiy, “Yesterday”

Maya inscriptions contain a few terms or phrases that we can classify as temporal adverbs, helping to specify the timing of events relative to the text’s internal time-frame. One such term is sahm-iiy, spelled sa-mi-ya, “earlier today,” which I identified some years ago in two moon age records at Palenque (Figure 1) (first presented in Houston, Robertson and Stuart 2000). In this context, before the verb hul-iiy, sahm-iiy simply states that the new moon appeared only within a day of some notable event in the narrative “present.” The full phrase illustrated here can be translated as sahm-iiy hul-iiy, “earlier today it arrived.” Its suffix -iiy is the Classic Mayan form traceable to proto-Mayan *-eer, “ago, before,” and is an extremely common deictic suffix found on most if not all of these adverbs that mark a point in the past. It can appear on intransitive verbs, adverbs, as well as on some enumerated nouns. Grammatically, sahm-iiy and its relatives work in a way similar to standard day-counts that reckon a span of time from some earlier event to up to a present one. For example, we find in other lunar day-counts the expressions jo’lahuun-ij-iiy (15-ji-ya),  “fifteen days ago…”, or wuk-bix-iiy (7-bi-xi-ya), “seven days ago.”

sahmiiy glyph
Figure 1. Parallel examples of sahm-iiy hul-iiy, “earlier today it arrived.” (a) PAL: Palace Tablet, Q10-R10, (b) PAL:T.XXI bench edge. Drawings by D. Stuart.

Here I identify another temporal pronoun that I read as ak’b-iiy, “yesterday,” or “the night before.” Like the examples just cited, these occur in records of moon ages, where short-term temporal expressions of less than thirty days are routinely found. The first instance comes from Stela F at Qurigua (Figure 2a), as part of the moon age record accompanying the Long Count 9.16.10.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip (March 14, 761 CE). Here before the verb hul-iiy (hu-li-ya), “it arrived,” (Macleod 1990), we find a glyph consisting of a turkey’s head with the suffix sign ya. Infixed into the turkey is a bi syllable. The second case comes from Zoomorph O’ (Figure 2b), where the same glyph appears but now with the prefix a-, also before hul-iiy. These related glyphs have remained undeciphered until now, but they have generally been recognized as indicating new moon, or the start of the lunar month.

ak'biiy glyphs
Figure 2. Two examples of ak’b-iiy hul-iiy, “yesterday it arrived.” (a) QRG Stela F, F6, (b) QRG: Zoo O’, J1-I2. Drawings by D. Stuart

There is good evidence to show that the turkey head is read AK’, based on the noun ak’ or ak’ach, “turkey hen.” In the inscriptions of La Corona, the very same sign appears in the spelling of the personal name Chak Ak’ Paat Kuy, where it alternates with the syllabic comination a-k’a (Figure 3) (Houston, Stuart and Zender 2017, Stuart and Zender 2018). The same turkey sign also occurs on Stela 1 of Dos Pilas in a variant of the “dance” verb AK’-ta-ja (Figure 4b) (see Grube 1990), suggesting it may be a head variant or a graphic elaboration of the more abstracted AK’ sign we find more frequently in that position (we will return to the connection between these signs a little further on).

Ckak ak'
Figure 3. The AK’ turkey logogram in a name from La Corona. (a) CRN: Elem. , (b) CRN:Elem. 56, pB1, (c) CRN: Elem. 56, pF2. Drawings by D. Stuart
ak'taj verbs
Figure 4. Substitution of AK’ in AK’-ta-ja, ak’t-aj, “he dances” (a) DPL: Stela 11, (b) DPL: Stela 1. Drawings by D. Stuart.

On Quirigua Stela F we therefore have a plausible reading AK’-bi-ya for the glyph before hu-li-ya. On Zoomorph O’ we have the very same expression, but with an a added as a prefix on AK’. The bi infix again looks to be present (photos are murky), so the full form here seem to be a-AK’-bi-ya. There can be little doubt that these two glyphs spell the temporal adverb ak’b-iiy, a form found in Ch’olan languages meaning “yesterday,” or “last night,” based upon the noun ahk’ab, “night.” Note its use in these sentences from from Ch’orti and Ch’ol:

ak’bi patneen, yesterday I worked (Wisdom 1950)
ac’bi tsa’ huliyon ilayi, yesterday I arrived here (Aulie and Aulie 1978)

In the last example cited, it is interesting to see that Ch’ol ac’bi serves as an adverb before a derived form of hul, “to arrive,” much as we find in the case of the Lunar Series examples from Quirigua. The same term can be traced more widely throughout lowland Mayan languages (all shown in their original orthographies).

Ch’olti’: acbihi, yesterday (Moran 1935)
Ch’orti’: ak’bi, yesterday, of yesterday (Wisdom 1950)
Ch’ol: ’ak’-b’i, yesterday; ayer (Hopkins, et al 2008)
Ch’ol: ac’bi, ayer (Aulie and Aulie 1978)
Chontal: ?äk’-bi, yesterday, before (Knowles 1984)
Chontal: äc’-bi, ayer (Keller and Luciano 1997)
Tzeltal: ahkab-ey, anoche (Polian 2020)
Tzotzil: ak’ub-e, anoche (Kaufman and Justeson 2003)
Yukatek: ak’be’, anoche, la noche anterior (Barrera Vásquez 1980)

In the two contexts from Quirigua the full verbal expression is therefore ak’biiy huliiy, “yesterday it arrived,” the subject being the lunar month of 29 or 30 days. This might be roughly understood to saying that the moon is simply one day old. However, we should exert some caution in assuming so, and reflect further on the descriptive language the Maya used in such records. The moon’s “arrival” is not simply the astronomical new moon, which corresponds to its dark, invisible phase. “Arrival” should be understood as referring to the moon’s first visibility, as a thin waxing crescent in the darkened sky. Landa made this point in his Relación, wherein he states that “they counted (the lunar month) from the time at which the new moon appeared until  it no longer appeared”  (Tozzer 1941:133). This is confirmed, I believe, by the form of the HUL logogram used in the vast majority of moon age records, which depicts a hand pointing at the crescent (see Houston 2012). The “pointing at the moon” form of HUL is especially clear in its Early Classic examples (Figure 5). All of this is to say that first visibility would fall a two or three days (depending on timing) after astronomical new moon. Thus ak’biiy huliiy can be best analyzed as an explicit statement about first visibility happening “yesterday,” falling two or even three days after the astronomical new moon.

HUL signs
Figure 5. Selection of Early Classic HUL logograms, emphasizing its origin as a hand pointing at the crescent moon. (a) RAZ: Tomb 1, (b) COP: St. 63, (c) CLK: Celt, (d) PNG: St. 30, (e) RSB: HS 3. Drawings by D. Stuart.
ak'biiy Coba
Figure 6. Alternate spelling of ak’biiy huliiy from COB: Panel D. Drawing by D. Stuart.

Apart from Quirigua, there may be one other example of ak’biiy in a text from Coba. This is Panel D, the unusual rectangular panel or altar with a spiral-shaped inscription. This text opens with a Lunar Series, probably a continuation of a calendrical text now lost. The initial glyph of the text (Figure 6) is “Glyph D” of the Lunar Series, incorporating the verb hul-iiy (HUL-li-ya). Before this we have a glyph shows an infixed bi element and a ya suffix. I suggest the main sign here is the alternate logogram for AK’, known from the frequent dance verbs mention above (AK’-ta-ja) (see Figure 4a). At first I wondered if this could be a spelling of bix-iiy, using a logogram for BIX that I identified in 1996 (Stuart 2012). However, it is possible to distinguish that form from the somewhat similar AK’, which consistently shows two darkened elements along the internal curved line. BIX seems to regularly feature a single darkened element, with an infixed bi. I suspect that this AK’ is graphically related to the turkey head variant, perhaps originating as a pars pro toto of it.

The use of the turkey AK’ in these spellings brings up a couple of interesting points regarding hieroglyphic orthography. First, we have here the rare use of a logogram for purely phonetic purposes (the adverb ak’biiy having nothing to do with turkeys). It also reflects a high degree of phonetic sensitivity in Maya script. As we have seen, the derived form ak’b-iiy results from two morphophonemic process that work on the underlying noun ahk’ab, “night.” The first is vowel syncope. In Ch’olan languages, any stem of more than two syllables, such as that formed by the combination of ahk’ab and -iiy, sees the loss of its penultimate vowel, in this case a (Kaufman and Norman 1984:86). The second process is the loss of the h before a cluster of two consonants. The root for “turkey” is ak’, lacking the internal h we find in ahk’ab. As Marc Zender has pointed out to me (personal communication, 2020), a spelling such as a-AK’-bi-ya appears to be a remarkably precise means of representing the phonetic result of these standard processes. A similar situation presumably exists in the spellings of the verb for “dance,” usually spelled AK’-ta-ja (see Grube 1990), at times with the very same AK’ turkey sign. The proto-Ch’olan verb root is ahk’ot, and the addition of the intransitivizing suffix -aj necessitates the same two processes just described, the result being ak’t-aj, “(s)he dances.”

Thus far I have not encountered the temporal adverb ak’biiy outside of the context of moon age records. This is not terribly surprising, given how Lunar Series passages focus on short-term time frames involving less than thirty days, sometimes focused on time changes within a single day, as in sahm-iiy.

Moon Ages and Correlations

The ak’biiy huliiy statements may be significant in considering the astronomical correlations of certain Maya calendar dates. For example, the Long Count on Quirigua, Stela F is 9.16.10.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip, falling on March 11, 761 according to the 584283 correlation. This is astronomical new moon, which occurred in the pre-dawn hours of that day.

YEAR 0761
New Moon          First Quarter       Full Moon         Last Quarter
Mar 11 05:43      Mar 18 01:19        Mar 25 04:59   Apr 2 05:49
(dates and times in Universal Time minus 6 hours).

It should be emphasized that astronomical new moon describes a phase of complete invisibility before the first sliver of the crescent is visible. Yet we know in Maya terms that the moon’s “arrival” was its first appearance to the naked eye, as discussed above, and as indicated by the visual forms of several HUL logograms (Prager 2020).  It is very difficult to see the young waxing crescent of the moon within 24 hours of astronomical new moon, in fact, suggesting that visibility with the naked eye during the night spanning March 11 and 12 would have been extremely unlikely. The night of March 13 is a more likely time for the moon’s true “arrival” and visibility. If we align these lunar phenomena with the different correlation constants for 9.16.10.0.0, we have:

584283, night of March 11, 761 – Astronomical new moon (invisible)
584284, night of March 12, 761 – initial waxing crescent, minimal visibility
584285, night of March 13, 761 – waxing crescent, newly visible
584286, night of March 14, 761 – one day after visibility

Here we see that the moon record on Stela F, explicitly stating that the moon “arrived yesterday,” accords best with either the 584285 (March 13) or perhaps even more so with the 584286 correlation (March 14) proposed by Martin and Skidmore (2012).

The ak’biiy huliiy date on Zoomorph O’ is the accession of the ruler we know as “Sky Xul,” on 9.17.14.16.18 9 Edznab 1 Kankin. In the 584283 correlation this falls on October 9, 785. New moon, the period of invisibility, had occurred just before midnight on October 7, into October 8, and would have continued for another 24 hours. First visibility would most likely have been no earlier than the night of October 10 or 11.

YEAR 0785
New Moon          First Quarter       Full Moon         Last Quarter
Oct 7 23:02        Oct 15 17:35         Oct 22 08:42    Oct 29 12:08
(dates and times in Universal Time minus 6 hours).

Using the 584285 constant, the accession date is October 11, and with the 584286 it falls on October 12. The ak’biiy statement on Zoomorph O’ therefore is in keeping with either of these correlations, but not so much with the 584283. Of the two, the 584286 may even seem more fitting, marking the arrival of the moon, or first visibility, on October 11. Zoomorph G celebrated the Period ending 9.17.15.0.0 5 Ahau 3 Muan, only 22 days after the accession of Sky Xul. Its moon age is recorded is recorded as 23 days, precisely what we would expect if we reckon from Zoomorph O’ and its ak’biiy statement of the moon being first visible on October 11. It is worth noting that these two uses of ak’biiy at Quirigua also correlate well with the probable eclipse record at Santa Elena Poco Uinic Stela (July 16, 790), which seems best anchored in the 584286 correlation, as discussed by Martin and Skidmore (2012).

These are only cursory observations about the correlation issue, and far more thought needs to go into these questions. The main point to stress is that, until recently, Maya epigraphers simply classified the two glyphs we can now read as ak’biiy and sahmiiy as general indicators of “new moon.” Now we can be more precise about their meanings. One is “earlier today,” and another is “yesterday.” The implications of these decipherments should be pondered further, for they might help in fine-tuning the correlation of the ancient Maya calendar with our own.

Note: Moon phases are from the historical lunar tables available on astropixels.com (http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phases0701.html).

References Cited

Aulie, William H., and Evelyn W. de Aulie. 1978. Diccionario Ch’ol-Español, Español-Ch’ol. Mexico City: Instituto Lingüistico de Verano.

Grube, Nikolai. 1992. Classic Maya Dance: Evidence from Hieroglyphs and Iconography. Ancient Mesoamerica 3(2):201-218

Hopkins, Nicholas A., Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and Kathryn Josserand. 2008. A Chol (Mayan) Vocabulary from 1789. International Journal of American Linguistics 74(1).

Houston, Stephen. 2012. Heavenly Bodies. Maya Decipherment, July 16, 2012. https://mayadecipherment.com/2012/07/16/heavenly-bodies/

Houston, Stephen, David Stuart, and Marc Zender. 2017. The Lizard King. Maya Decipherment, June 15, 2017. https://mayadecipherment.com/2017/06/15/the-lizard-king/

Kaufman, Terence, and John Justeson. 2003. A Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman., 1984. An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology and Vocabulary. In: J.S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell (eds.), Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, 77-166. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9. SUNY, Albany.

Keller, Kathryn, and Plácido Luciano G.. 1997. Diccionario Chontal de Tabasco (Mayense). Serie de Vocabularios y Diccionarios Idígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves,” Número 36. Tucson: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Knowles, Susan Marie. 1984. A Descriptive Grammar of Chontal Maya (San Carlos Dialect). Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University.

Martin, Simon, and Joel Skidmore. 2012. Exploring the 584286 Correlation between Maya and European Calendars. The PARI Journal 13(2):3-16.

MacLeod, Barbara. 1990. Deciphering the Primary Standard Sequence. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, TX.

Morán, Pedro [sic]. 1935. Arte y diccionario en lengua cholti. Edited by William Gates. Maya Society publ. 9.

Polian, Gilles. 2020. Tseltal-Spanish multidialectal dictionary.
Dictionaria 10. 1-8109. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3660891 (Available online at https://dictionaria.clld.org/contributions/tseltal, Accessed on 2020-08-01.)

Prager, Christian. 2020. A New Logogram for “to Arrive” – Implications for the Decipherment of the Month Name Cumku. Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya, Research Note 13. Universität Bonn.

Stuart, David. 2012. The Verb Bix “Go, Go Away.” Maya Decipherment, January 23, 2012. https://mayadecipherment.com/2012/01/23/the-verb-bix-go-go-away/

Stuart, David, and Marc Zender. 2018. Epigraphy and History at La Corona: Contingency and Surprise in Epigraphic Discovery.  Paper presented at the 83rd Annual Meetings of the SAA, Washington, D.C.

Toxxer, Alfred M. 1941. Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan: A Translation. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. XVIII. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA.

Wisdom, Charles. 1950. Materials of the Chorti Language. Middle American Cultural Anthropology Microfilm Series 5, Item 28. University of Chicago Library.

Preliminary Analysis of La Corona, Altar 5

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A new article has appeared in The PARI Journal on the recently discovered Altar 5 from La Corona, Guatemala, written by David Stuart, Marcello Canuto, Tomas Barrientos and Alejandro González. The altar is significant for being the earliest known monument from the site, and its historical reference to a previously unknown local king points to connections to nearby El Peru (Waka’) and, by extension, to the Kaanul dynasty. There is also an interesting spelling of a verb never before seen: k’o-to-yi for k’otoy, “he arrives there.”

Link to article here: A Preliminary Analysis of Altar 5 from La Corona. The PARI Journal 19(2):1-13.

La Corona, Altar 5, now on display at MUNAE, Guatemala City. (Photograph by D. Stuart)

The Universe in a Maya Plate

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by James Doyle, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Stephen Houston, Brown University

Expressing metaphors for a constantly shifting reality is a human universal, especially during the mid-8th century AD. At that time, in the center of the Yucatan peninsula, royal courts were on the cusp of political and demographic upheaval. Yet, in a signal irony—and perhaps as a cause?—they managed to sponsor innovative architectural and artistic programs. Consider the vase painters in and around Calakmul, Campeche, at c. AD 750.

The sheer volume of codex-style vessels, produced within a very few generations, suggest that ateliers were scaling up production for the struggling royal court and assertive sub-royals in sites nearby. Lack of archaeological context and legible texts impedes deeper understanding of the circumstances under which such paintings were produced (but see Delvendahl 2008:125-128; García Barrios 2011). A suggestive comparison, though, could be made with the proliferation of lintels and panels in the Usumacinta region within the Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras kingdoms: that is, art was distributed in exchange for loyalty and tribute when such had become, perhaps, more precarious (Martin and Grube 2008:135-137, 153).

Only slightly more than 20 painters are identified by name in the Classic period, far fewer than the ca. 120 sculptors who signed works in stone (Houston 2016; Houston, Stuart, and Fash 2014; Stuart 1987, 1989). Recent studies have traced the oeuvres of individual vase painters in specific temporal contexts (see Just 2012). Without scribal signatures, however, researchers are left to the detailed study of the “hands” of Classic Maya artists. This is an evaluation that rests on habitual, “unconscious” details, as pioneered by Giovanni Morelli, Bernard Berenson, and others for Renaissance masters such as Raphael, or by John Beazley for Classical Greek painters (See Beazley 1911, 1946; Berenson 1901, 1903; Morelli 1900; Wollheim 1974). Such work could be tedious to an extreme, and highly subjective. Morelli himself, founder of such studies, admitted that it required “long practice” and that each eye might see different patterns.

Certain Maya painting styles nevertheless lend themselves to identifying artists’ hands. The limited number of variables and limited palette within the corpus of codex-style painting facilitate that search. This opportunity was recognized by Justin and Barbara Kerr in the early years of their valuable and innovative documentation of Maya ceramics (Kerr and Kerr 1988). The Kerrs proposed the existence of several codex-style masters on the basis of details revealed through close study of brush flourishes or the execution of hands, feet, and other minutiae. We were recently invited by Mary Miller to honor Justin Kerr at a special session in the 2017 College Art Association meeting and decided to revisit this important contribution.

The presentation coincided with the publication of an article celebrating codex-style vessels in the recent Metropolitan Museum Journal, Creation Narratives on Ancient Maya Codex-Style Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum, and a concurrent Maya codex-style installation at The Met. All depict the Classic Maya rain god, Chahk, in typical codex style. Red bands and black calligraphic line fill a cream or light beige background. Washes embellish figures, fluids, and the hieroglyphic texts that accompany them. In this genre, undulating shapes tend to dominate, along with a decided abhorrence of straight lines. Michael Coe called this “whiplash” calligraphy, endowed with lines that seem to curve and “snap” with vigorous energy (Coe 1973:91). New rollout photos, inspired by the Kerrs’ original work, include a hi-res image of the Metropolitan Vase and its visual narrative pertaining to the birth of a mythological infant jaguar deity. This vessel anchored one of the groups identified by the Kerrs, who identified a workshop controlled by a painter they dubbed the “Metropolitan Master.”

One codex-style masterwork not included in the Kerr’s original study was the unusually large tripod plate studied by Linda Schele and Mary Miller in their landmark exhibition, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Nicknamed the “Cosmic Plate” for its dense imagery, cosmogonic themes, and fineness of execution, it is a unique work, with few peers in terms of size, ambition, and care of painting (Figure 1, for a close competitor in quality, see, however, see Coe and Houston 2015:pl. XVIII). In producing a new line drawing of the plate’s great Chahk representation from Justin Kerr’s photos, Doyle quickly realized that advances in knowledge allowed for a fresh study of this masterpiece.

Figure1.jpg

Fig. 1  Tripod plate showing Chahk as the great progenitor, 7th–8th century AD. Guatemala or Mexico, Maya, Late Classic. Ceramic with red, cream, and black slip, Diam. approx. 16 1/2 in. (42 cm). Private collection, photo by Justin Kerr, ©Kerr Associates.

The monumental plate is an object made for display, likely at feasting occasions in the royal court (in fact, few known Maya plates are so large—one example, impressive in size yet smaller than the “Cosmic Plate,” is a 31 cm-diameter Hutzijan polychrome plate excavated in Structure C-10 at Piedras Negras, see Muñoz 2004:103). A plate like this one could have been a grand diplomatic gesture, a gift between Maya rulers. The codex style is clearly a hallmark of the royal courts and loyal local palaces around the great city of Calakmul, straddling the border between southern Campeche and northern Guatemala (see Hansen et al. 1991; Reents-Budet et al. 2010). In our view, two potential models might explain the circulation of codex-style vessels: (1) non-royal political leaders commissioned them; or, more likely, (2) the most exquisite and elaborate were bestowed by the rulers of Calakmul itself. Perhaps local lords received handsome presents in return for their loyalty, through low-cost rewards distributed by the center. After all, a painted pot reveals deep training, but its making demanded only negligible expense in materials, time, and fuel for firing. Recall the high value that scholars had long-assumed for certain Athenian ceramics. In a provocative argument, Michael Vickers and David Gill (1994) suggested that this was a latter-day projection, one inconsistent with an actual, ancient emphasis on vessels of precious metals.

On the Cosmic Plate, the outer walls of its sloping rim are boldly painted with watery motifs, visible from afar, that include swirls, registers of droplets, and waterlily vegetation (Figure 2). The delicate main scene on the upper surface, however, would only have been visible by those directly above the plate at close range. The potter and painter collaborated on a clever conceit. The three feet of the vessel imitate downpours, a vertical deluge of concentrated form—these occur routinely in the Yucatan peninsula. In this case, columns of rain appear to precipitate from the plate itself and the watery milieu on its exterior.

Figure2.jpg

Fig. 2. Detail of the outside of the tripod plate and supports. Private collection, photo by Justin Kerr, ©Kerr Associates.

Traits on the Chahk plate—including the form of certain common motifs, the singular aspects of its composition, and the virtuoso brushwork over the large surface—distinguish it from almost all other Maya ceramic paintings. Some have argued that three vessels in the Princeton University Art Museum come from the same hand, executed by the painter ?-n Buluch? Laj, and painted around AD 755 (Robiscek and Hales 1983:249; see Just 2012). Indeed, the portrayal of a jaguar on the largest of those vessels invites close comparison with the howling jaguar growing from Chahk’s head. But the hypothesis that ?-n Buluch? Laj also painted the great Chahk plate raises a number of questions about painterly practice.

Maya vase painters appear to have experimented with different styles. The Princeton vases were likely commissioned by a Peten Itza king in north-central Guatemala. Hypothetically, the Cosmic Plate either came from there or from Calakmul, although still influenced by exemplary works to the south. The renowned “Altar vase,” clearly from the Ik’ kingdom near Peten Itza, proves that such pots traveled far and wide (Just 2012:142-149). Another source of inspiration might have been circulating books or paintings. Imperial China is known to have had such exchange, and scrolls gained uniformity, often over vast areas, by their energetic dispersion, study, and copying (see Miller 1998:216-218).

Whether the plate is the lone known work of a master or not, its unrecorded artist certainly fused the mythic and the historical in microcosmic form. The mythic frame of the narrative describes the context of the sprouting Chahk in deep time and in linked primordial locations. The fictive date of 13 Ok 8 Zotz must be significant to wider Maya myths: that Calendar Round appears in the Dresden Codex, in reference to the planet Venus, a point recognized by David Stuart (Miller and Schele 1986:310-312, pl. 122). Three Venus signs as well as the frontal and rear parts of the body of the celestial “starry Deer Crocodile” appear on either side of the upper scene, signifying the sky as the upper part of the composition (Martin 2015; Velásquez García 2006:Fig. 5). A celestial bird carries what appears to be the month name, 4 Ceh.

On the 13 Ok 8 Zotz date, an event “happened” (utiiy). This form of the verb has been suggested by David Stuart (personal communication, 1992) to refer to actions in remote time. The ancient subject seems to be k’uhul jinaj ? or “sacred milpa/planted-maize water,” perhaps a reference to the sprouting of maize, as part of a phrase consistent with the overall theme of emerging vegetation (Figure 3).

Figure3.jpg

Fig. 3. Hieroglyphic text describing events in mythological time and the four god names.

The scribe went on to describe the mythological setting in triplet form: it “happened” (utiiy, this time in a more conventional, syllabic spelling) “at the black cenote, at the black water, at the five-flower house (?).” The agents at the event in deep time are probably described as the four gods of matawil (4 ma-ta-K’UH), which could be a reference to a watery paradise (Stuart and Stuart 2008: 211-215). The gods are named as a feline or jaguar (hi-HIX)—he appears here, roaring, head-back—we suspect (the text is eroded), the presence of two other gods in addition to the Chak-Xib-Chahk at the center (Stuart was the first to identify this version of Chahk—others are known in the Dresden Codex and at Itzan, among other places; the connection to “red,” Chak, may be purely coloristic or refer to a direction, East). The text accords with visual clues to that toponymy. The centipede’s jaws, in a reference to the black cenote, frame Chahk’s watery emergence from a heavy register marked with the same hieroglyph for black water. There might also be a specific seasonal aspect to the scene, found in the single glyph blocks that flank the jaguar. These are variants of Wind God and sun-related glyphs, similar to the two glyphs born by characters in the Lamb panel from “Laxtunich” (Schele 1990:2).

Chahk is the undisputed protagonist as he rises waist-deep from the “black water.” He takes the form of an active, dancing character, perhaps a releaser of vegetation, and is shown in other depictions poised to chop with his axe. He wears his characteristic Spondylus earspools and holds the lightning axe symbolic of K’awiil. The main image of the scene is the branching head and left arm of the rain deity, with many sprouting beings (Figure 4). These include the large serpent to the left, the jaguar mentioned above, and a large “jester god” in the upper right that is recognizable by its crossed-bands motif. Th text is eroded and its details uncertain, but some of these could correspond the four gods of matawil mentioned in the text, including Chahk himself. Moreover, to lower right, that god’s left hand sprouts a personified version of obsidian. The branching Chahk with the other gods of matawil cue, as Karl Taube has suggested to us, the fractal forms of eccentric flints or obsidians. The overall being is both “hard” and “soft” in its asserted texture, material, and surface.

Figure4.jpg

Fig. 4. Drawing of a detail of the plate by James Doyle.

The hieroglyphic text contains a disjuncture. The jump separates mythical events and deity protagonists from a likely historical frame of reference and a human owner (Figure 5). The damaged day sign probably carries the coefficient 12, and the Pohp month may be prefaced by a variant of the number 6, identified long ago at Palenque by David Stuart. Though pinning down the date is speculative, style and proximity to major period endings suggests the following possibilities:

9.12.19.16.18             12 Etz’nab     6 Pohp             Feb. 26           AD 692

9.14.19.8.13               12 Ben            6 Pohp              Feb. 17           AD 731

9.16.5.15.3                 12 Ak’bal       6 Pohp              Feb. 10           AD 757

9.16.19.0.8                12 Lamat        6 Pohp              Feb. 7            AD 770

We find the latter two dates more likely, given the available evidence for the temporal distribution of codex-style ceramics, and the possible connection to the Ik’ painters who were active in the 750s-780s. The misalignment and asymmetry in the two sets of glyph blocks underscore the textual split between ancient time and contemporary events.

Figure5.jpg

Fig. 5. Historical Text.

The action that follows the date is likely a variant of the verb for ceremonial “raising” of a jawte’, plate (not “death,” as posited by Schele). The execution of the dedication verb on the plate is coincidentally very similar to that on the vessel in the Princeton museum and another cup likely by the same painter from the Ik’ polity, the first dated to approximately AD 755 (9.16.3.13.14  4 Hix 12 Kumk’u). The name and title that follow almost certainly name an actual historic figure (la-ch’a-TUUN-ni si-k’u-AJAW), though this name does not seem to be attested elsewhere in the corpus of Maya writing.

The plate with the mythic scene thus belonged to a living, historical owner who carried the ajaw title. Presumably, maize tamales filled the plate during important meals. By another, clever conceit, the plate would have contained actual maize products atop a scene in which growth is shown at first emergence. The reference to the mythological creation of maize and the depiction of this watery Olympus of quadripartite gods of matawil is indeed cosmic, but with a terrestrial focus. See, for example, the three partially preserved figures between the black water band and the potential representation of the “five-flower house” below (Figure 6).

Figure6.jpg

Fig. 6. Detail of personified plants: (left) “root” figure, possibly manioc or sweet potato (note sign for “darkness,” a feature first discerned by Marc Zender); (center) dancing Maize God with elongated cranium and breath bead; (right) “tobacco” figure (note sign for “darkness” on body of figure, a possible reference to nocturnal conditions or even a plant disease such as black shank?).

Accompanying the leafy plants is another upside-down figure on the left projecting downward from the water register. The scribe depicted this figure’s headdress as something close to the wi syllable, identifiable as a pan-Lowland word for “raíz, root,” in languages such as Ch’ol, Chontal, and Ch’orti’ (Kaufman and Norman 1984:126). This could refer to a type of indigenous root crop, such as sweet potato or manioc, the latter extensively documented as a staple in places like Joya de Cerén, El Salvador (Sheets et al. 2012). If so, this character may constitute a unique depiction of root crops in Maya art. Much like the vegetation around Pakal’s sarcophagus, these beings correspond to plants of economic import to the Maya, and to key elements of consumption.

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 6.18.27 PM.png

Fig. 7. Comparison of wi syllable from Chahk plate and Palenque’s Tablet of the 96 Glyphs.

The deeper meaning of the plate thus comes into crisp focus. The object would have existed in two time frames, offering both real food and mythic food stuffs. In deep time, lightning and rain came together under the auspices of Venus and stars, at a location in or near the black cenote/black water place, calling together a dream-team of four deities. Chahk, as the central figure from which the other gods are sprouting, wields his axe to strike and release primordial vegetation: root crops, maize, and tobacco, in the form of godly figures. Fast forwarding to the 8th century, one can imagine a recitation by someone seated next to the plate. At a sumptuous feast, he or she would read the image and text and recount distant (yet close!) mythological events. The owner perhaps entreated the very deities pictured within, in earnest hopes for bountiful crops and plentiful rains in a time of impending social upheaval.

Acknowledgments

This post is dedicated to Justin Kerr, who built a life with his wife Barbara devoted to the study and preservation of Maya artworks. Mary Miller kindly invited us to the CAA meeting, where we had fruitful conversations with her, Claudia Brittenham, Bryan Just, Megan O’Neil, and Justin himself. Simon Martin and David Stuart also provided useful and timely comment.

References

Beazley, John D. 1911. The Master of the Berlin Amphora. Journal of Hellenic Studies 31: 276–295.

— 1946. Potter and Painter in Ancient Athens. London, Cumberlege.

Berenson, Bernard. 1901. The Study and Criticism of Italian Art. London, Bell and Sons.

— 1903. The Drawings of the Florentine Painters Classified, Criticised and Studied as Documents in the History and Appreciation of Tuscan Art, with a Copious Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols., London, J. Murray.

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

Coe, Michael D., and Stephen Houston. 2015. The Maya, ninth edition. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

Delvendahl, Kai. 2008. Calakmul in Sight: History and Archaeology of an Ancient Maya City. Merida, Mexico: Unas Letras Industria Editorial.

García Barrios, Ana. 2011. Análisis iconográfico preliminar de fragmentos de las vasijas estilo codice procedentes de Calakmul. Estudios de la Cultura Maya 37:67­–97.

Hansen, Richard, Ronald L. Bishop, and Federico Fahsen. 1991. Notes on Maya Codex-Style Ceramics from Nakbe, Peten, Guatemala” Ancient Mesoamerica 2(2): 225–43.

Houston, Stephen. 2016. Crafting Credit: Authorship among Classic Maya Painters and Sculptors. In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Lynne Costin, pp. 391–431. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Houston, Stephen, Barbara Fash, and David Stuart. 2015. Morelli and the Maya on the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Copan, Honduras. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. Vol. 65/66, pp. 15-36.

Just, Bryan. 2012. Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom. Princeton University Art Museum.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William M. Norman. 1984. An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology and vocabulary. In Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies publ. 9, ed. by John. S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77–166. Albany, State University of New York.

Kerr, Justin, and Barbara Kerr. 1988. Some Observations on Maya Vase Painters. In Maya Iconography, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Gillett G. Griffin, pp. 236–59. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicles of the Maya Kings and Queens. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

Martin, Simon. 2015. The Old Man of the Maya Universe: A Unitary Dimension to Ancient Maya Religion. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston, and Joel Skidmore, pp. 186-227. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

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

Miller, Mary. 1998. A Design for Meaning in Maya Architecture. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, pp. 187-222. Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks.

Morelli, Giovanni. 1900. Italian Painters: Critical Studies of Their Works, vol. 1, The Borghese and Doria-Pamphili Galleries in Rome, trans. Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes. London, J. Murray.

Muñoz, Arturo René. 2004. The Ceramic Sequence of Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Type and Varieties. FAMSI http://www.famsi.org/reports/02055/index.html

Reents-Budet, Dorie, Sylviane Bouche le Landais, Ronald L. Bishop, and M. James Blackman. 2010. Codex-Style Ceramics: New Data Concerning Patterns of Production and Distribution. Paper presented at the XXIV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala.

Schele, Linda. 1990. The Site R Panels. http://www.mayavase.com/siterpanel.pdf

Sheets, Payson, David Lentz, Dolores Piperno, John Jones, Christine Dixon, George Maloof, and Angela Hood. 2012. Ancient Manioc Agriculture South of the Ceren Village, El Salvador. Latin American Antiquity 23(3): 259-81.

Stuart, David. 1987. Ten Phonetic Syllables. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 14. Washington, D.C., Center for Maya Research.

— 1989. Hieroglyphs on Maya Vessels. In The Maya Vase Book, A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, vol. 1, edited by Justin Kerr, pp. 149–160. New York, Kerr Associates.

Stuart, David, and George Stuart. 2008. Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya. London and New York, Thames & Hudson.

Vickers, Michael, and David Gill. 1994. Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 

Wollheim, Richard. 1974. Giovanni Morelli and the Origins of Scientific Connoisseurship, in On Art and the Mind: Essays and Lectures, pp. 177–201. London, Allen Lane.

The Caracol Hieroglyphic Stairway

David Stuart

by Simon Martin, University of Pennsylvania

The summer of 2016 produced discoveries of tremendous importance for understanding the political history of the Classic Maya lowlands. While excavating Structure A9 at Xunantunich, Belize, Jaime Awe and his team unearthed two inscribed monuments of rare significance, their contents revealed in detailed textual analyses by Christophe Helmke (Helmke and Awe 2016a, 2016b). These inscriptions support and elaborate some existing proposals, while supplying entirely new twists to the story. What follows are a few thoughts inspired by these finds.

Xunantunich Panels 3 and 4 were immediately recognizable as parts of a hieroglyphic stairway first uncovered at the site of Naranjo (Maler 1908:91-93, Pls.24-28; Morley 1937-38.2:42-59; Graham 1978:107-110). There Teobert Maler uncovered 12 blocks bearing outlined medallions of text in two different formats, one of nine glyph-blocks and the other of four. The Xunantunich stones differ in their larger size and the inclusion of two of the smaller medallions apiece. That the monument had a complex history, with portions of it moved in ancient times, was already clear from the discovery a lone block at Ucanal—first designated in the Naranjo series as Step XIII and later as Ucanal Miscellaneous Stone 1 (Graham 1978:107, 110, 1980:153-154). In regard to its content, it has long been realized that the narrative focus falls on the career of the Caracol king we know as K’an II, repeating much of the information we find on his Caracol Stela 3 (Beetz and Satterthwaite 1981:12-22, Figs. 3, 4; Stone, Reents, and Coffman 1985:273-274, Table 1). In this light the stairway’s presence at Naranjo was initially explained as a “conquest monument” erected by K’an II to celebrate his subjugation of Naranjo (Schele and Freidel 1990:174, 178). But there were a number of holes in that argument, and I later suggested that the steps did not originate at Naranjo but were instead brought there from an original setting at Caracol (Martin 2000:57-58).

Xunantunich Panel 4b
Figure 1. Inscribed fragment from Caracol, Str. B5 (drawing by S. Martin, after one by N. Grube in Grube 1994:Fig.9.14a)

That idea was provoked not simply by the Caracol subject matter, but by an inscribed stone fragment excavated by Arlen and Diane Chase from rubble at the foot of Caracol Structure B5 (see Grube 1994:113, Fig.19.4a) (Figure 1). It shared the outlined border and rounded corners of the stairway medallions and, anecdotally, was carved from the same pale grey limestone that one can see when visiting the Naranjo steps stored in the British Museum. Importantly, when the drawing was sized to the scale of those blocks it proved to be a very close match (Martin 2000:Fig.12; see also Helmke and Awe 2016:Fig.3b). The hypothesis put forward was that the Caracol fragment was a discarded piece of the same monument. There is no way to be sure when the stairway was broken up and removed, but we know that Naranjo attacked Caracol in 680, forcing its king to flee, and the 168 days that the Caracol king was exiled would seem to be a good opportunity to seize such a trophy. With two further parts now found at Xunantunich, the dispersal of this dismembered monument proves to be wider still, and Helmke and Awe (2016a:4) have noted the likely significance of both Ucanal and Xunantunich as one-time allies, associates, or clients of Naranjo in the Late Classic period. In short, there may be political meaning behind the distribution.

fig-2-nar-hs-step-5
Figure 2. Step V of the Naranjo Hieroglyphic Stairway (HS. 1) (drawing by I. Graham, from Graham 1978:108. Courtesy of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Trustees of Harvard University)

Xunantunich Panel 4 has been identified as part of the opening statement of the inscription, directly following the Long Count of 9.10.10.0.0, falling in 642, on Step V of the Naranjo Hieroglyphic Stairway (Helmke and Awe 2016b:9, Fig.9) (Figure 2, 3a).[1] The first medallion completes the essentials of the Period Ending and names its presiding deities, but the second pivots to describe a key political upheaval of the time, the shift of the dominant portion of the Snake dynasty from Dzibanche to Calakmul (ibid.:16) (Figure 3b). Such a transfer had been posited from converging lines of evidence pointing to a “reconstitution” of the polity at Calakmul during, or shortly before, the reign of its most important king Yuknoom Ch’een II (Martin 2005). That such an explicit statement is now forthcoming—describing first the negation and then the formation of political authority at the toponyms of Dzibanche (kaanul) and Calakmul (uxte’tuun) respectively—confirms the historicity of this event and demonstrates the significance it held for its contemporaries (Helmke and Awe 2016b:13-16; Martin and Velásquez 2016). The implications of its placement here at the very start of the narrative are startling, since it compels us to see the entire monument as a single metahistory, in which each event contributes to the greater story of the transfer.

Print
Figure 3. Text medallions from Xunantunich Panel 4 (drawings by S. Martin after those by C. Helmke in Helmke and Awe 2016b:Fig.11)

The other find at Xunantunich, Panel 3, has contributed entirely new information (Helmke and Awe 2016a:8-10, Fig.7). Here the first medallion offers us the death-date of K’an II’s mother in 638, while the second presents a further death in 640, this time specified as ti-ye-TUUN-ni ti yehtuun, literally “at the edge of the stone.” The exact meaning of this construction continues to be debated, but there is little doubt that it is associated with an act of violence consistent with execution. The subject is named as Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan and his full k’uhul kaanul ajaw title establishes him as a previously unknown Snake monarch. As Helmke and Awe point out, this sheds immediate light on Step I from Naranjo, where the partially surviving name of this king—absent his title—has him suffering a “star war” defeat in 636 at the hands of another Snake lord, this one a lesser kaanul ajaw, I’ve previously nicknamed Yuknoom Head (see Martin and Grube 2000:106). From this we learn that the break between Dzibanche and Calakmul was a violent one, a conflict that we can essentially characterize as a civil war. Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan evidently spent four years as a captive, or on the run, before he was put to death. Crucially, Panel 3 comes at the very end of the text, its chronology advancing to the same Period Ending in 642 with which the stairway begins. This is the last action recorded on the monument and therefore constitutes its narrative closure—perfectly in line with the metahistorical purpose set out on Panel 4.

* * *

If this summarizes what the Xunantunich discoveries have told us thus far, what other implications can be seen to arise from them? With Panel 4 established as the second block in the program, I believe we can go further with this re-assembly and here I would like to offer a speculative scheme for the next four step-blocks, of which three are currently known. The first move is to suggest that the reference to the Calakmul toponym 3-TE’-TUUN-ni uxte’tuun that ends Panel 4 is part of a pair and joins the other Calakmul toponym, chi[ku]-NAHB chiiknahb, that begins Step XII from Naranjo (Figure 4a). These place-names are paired, in this order, on La Corona Element 13 (formerly Site Q Ballplayer 1) (Stuart and Houston 1994:28-29, Fig.29; also Schele and Miller 1986:257-258, Pl.101), and appear together again on Step VI—if there employed for a different purpose (see below).

fig-4ab-steps-12-11
Figure 4. Steps XII and XI from the Naranjo Hieroglyphic Stairway (HS.1) (drawings by I. Graham, from Graham 1978:110. Courtesy of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Trustees of Harvard University).

But this is not the only argument one can make for the sequencing of these blocks. After a “focus marker” the text on Step XII moves directly to the verb i-pi-tzi-ji ipitzij “then ball is played,” with no subject named. An unusual event to be associated with a Period Ending, this is precisely the verb that re-appears at the close of the program when Xunantunich Panel 3 refers to the upcoming 9.10.10.0.0 mark (Helmke and Awe 2016a:7, 11, Fig.9).[2] This association is even better evidence that Step XII should be inserted at this point. Symbolic ballgames are regularly associated with monumental steps, where they were staged to celebrate success in war and the subsequent tormenting of prisoners (Miller and Houston 1987:52-63). Indeed, Step XII goes on to name the steps in question with a-ku-?-TUUN-ni u-K’ABA’-ba-a ?-tuun uk’aba’ “?-stone is the name of.” It has been appreciated for some time that this passage continues on Step XI, which begins ye-bu for yehb “the stair of” and then provides the beginning of a royal name (Figure 4b). There can be little doubt that this takes us into the extended name phrase of K’an II.

fig-5ab-steps-9-3
Figure 5. Steps IX and III from the Naranjo stairway (HS. 1) ([a] drawing by I. Graham, from Graham 1978:109. Courtesy of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Trustees of Harvard University; [b] drawing by S. Martin after photograph by T. Maler)
The next suggested join is less certain. Step II contains the name and emblem glyph of K’an II and would seem to be a possible fit here. However, that text goes on to list two deities which supervise the king’s actions, a construction that does not typically fit with the syntax and subject matter we have here. Instead, Step IX, which also includes the name and titles of K’an II, shares the same double-size glyphs as Step XI and, for this reason alone, is a better candidate (Figure 5a). It might have followed Step XII directly, or via one or more other now-missing steps that made for an even longer nominal sequence. Since Step IX does not include a Caracol emblem glyph or other terminal titles we must assume, lacking a suitable candidate, that the following step is missing. The next contender for a continuation of the sequence is Step III, which is dedicated to the parentage of K’an II (Martin in Grube 1994:107) (redrawn here as Figure 5b). While it could have been placed at other points in the narrative, this first reference to the king would be a typical position. The combined scheme is set out in Figure 6, below.

fig-6-paste-up
Figure 6. A speculative scheme for the opening sequence of the Caracol Hieroglyphic Stairway. (a) NAR HS.1, Step V; (b, c) XUN Pan. 4; (d) NAR HS.1, Step II, (e) NAR HS.1, Step XI; (f) missing; (g) NAR HS.1, Step III. (Drawings of the Naranjo HS by I. Graham, courtesy of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Trustees of Harvard University; drawings of Xunantunich panel by S. Martin, after those by C. Helmke in Helmke and Awe 2016b:Fig. 11)

From here on we must turn to the chronology of the stairway, which is one of the more important contributions of the new studies (Helmke and Awe 2016b:Table 2). We still do not know how many step-blocks were in the original composition, but the number of proven joins suggest that a good proportion are already in hand. Of the 13 steps from Naranjo and Ucanal, seven can be fixed in relative order by means of their dates and distance numbers, while four undated ones receive suggested placements in this study. This leaves only two blocks, Steps II and IV (Figure 7a, b). The closest parallel for the supervision of deities on the first of these appears on Caracol Stela 3 at C5-D5, where the same divine oversight takes place at K’an II’s accession in 618. It is not unlikely that the stairway text referred to this important event and one might posit that Step II is a surviving part of that account. If so, this is an area where two or more adjoining blocks must be missing, since we have no Distance Numbers to count to and from that point. Step IV presents a steeper challenge. The text looks very much like a truncated version of the one on Stela 3 at D10b-D14a. There a series of actions are recounted for the day 9.9.9.10.5 in 622, including the arrival of what seems to be a god effigy of some sort and the presentation of a gift, using the ya-k’a-wa yak’aw verb seen on Step IV, where the Snake king Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ is named as the bestower (the gift may well be the effigy itself). However, Step IV ends with a Distance Number of 14.7.10, which is too large to fit into the slowly accumulating chronology of the stairway as we currently understand it. Since Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ acceded in 622 and died in 630 it cannot link events within his reign. Wherever this stone fits, it is an outlier of some kind, directing us to another event of unknown significance in the future or past.[3]

fig-7a-b-steps-2-4
Figure 7. Steps II and IV of the Naranjo hieroglyphic stairway (HS.1) (Drawings by I. Graham, from Graham 1978:107-8. Courtesy of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Trustees of Harvard University)

* * *

But there is a final nagging feature of the stairway narrative that demands our attention. As we have seen, the known text discusses two characters that bear the full k’uhul kaanul ajaw title of Snake kings, Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ (in 630) and Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan (in 636 and 640), as well as one carrying the lesser epithet of kaanul ajaw Yuknoom Head (in 631 and 636) (Figure 8a). Conspicuous by his absence is the Snake king in power when the stairway was commissioned in 642, Yuknoom Ch’een, who had assumed the throne six years earlier in April 636—an event that, according to the new chronology, the stairway completely ignores.[4] I have previously wondered if Yuknoom Head could not be some pre-accession guise for Yuknoom Ch’een since, if true, it would resolve a number of difficulties (Martin 2005:7, n.9).

fig-8ab-yuknoom-head-names
Figure 8. Comparison of names of Yuknoom Head from Steps VI and I of the Naranjo hieroglyphic stairway (drawings by S. Martin after personal inspection of the originals).

To examine this question, we should begin by comparing what we know of each character. In addition to his mentions on the stairway, Yuknoom Head is twice named on Caracol Stela 3, at D20a and F4a, where he is linked to conflicts in 627 and 631. The later of the two is the great triumph also commemorated on Step VI, his conquest of Naranjo by means of a “star war.” The earlier one is a battle credited to K’an II which is done yiitij/yitaaj “with” Yuknoom Head (this phrase is syntactically scrambled so that the Caracol emblem glyph can complete the rear face text). This no doubt indicates cooperative military action between the two polities, though not necessarily as equals. Although Yuknoom Head is without title here, the reference is consistent with his lack of kingly status since Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ was alive at this time. When Yuknoom Head battles the next k’uhul kaanul ajaw, Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan, in the “civil war” of 636 he is identified with a combination where his title ka-KAAN[AJAW] overlays his name, which can be seen only as yu[ku] at top and li below (Figure 8b). This is not a unique case, not dissimilar amalgams occur in the texts of the later Calakmul king Yuknoom Took’ K’awiil, for example on Calakmul Stela 52 at G1.[5]

Turning now to Yuknoom Ch’een, until recently we knew nothing of his career before his attack on Dos Pilas in 648 (Guenter 2003). However, one of the new La Corona panels delivers a much earlier reference, describing a ballgame he conducted at that site in February 635 (Stuart 2012). It is notable that this date falls between the two mentions of Yuknoom Head on the stairway. The ballgame occurs 54 days before a “foundation” event—a verb associated with both newly installed and restored royal authority—which appears to take place at Dzibanche (Stuart 2012; Martin and Velásquez 2016). Evidence from Calakmul establishes that Yuknoom Ch’een took the role of “founder” in its short dynastic count, clearly claiming that he was the first Snake king at that site (Martin 2005:7-8). However, on Step VI a reference to Yuknoom Head as “at Uxte’tuun, Chiik Nahb Person” appears to place him as the first Snake dynast at Calakmul (Tokovinine 2007:19-21). Yuknoom Ch’een acceded to office just 58 days after Yuknoom Head’s victory over Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan, and the two events seem connected—indeed that the second appears to be dependent on the first (see also Helmke and Awe 2016b:18).

To recap, here is a chronology of the major events falling between 630 and 640:

9.09.17.11.14       630     Death of Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’ (Ucanal Misc. Stone 1)

         01.04.09 +

9.09.18.16.03       631     Naranjo conquered by Yuknoom Head (Naranjo HS Step VI & Caracol St. 3)

         03.03.07 +

9.10.02.01.10       635     Ballgame of Yuknoom Ch’een  (La Corona Elements 33 & 35)

               02.14 +

9.10.02.04.04       635     Foundation at(?) kaanul  (La Corona Element 33)

               16.08 +

9.10.03.02.12       636     Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan defeated by Yuknoom Head (Naranjo HS. Step I)

               02.18 +

9.10.03.05.10       636     Accession of Yuknoom Ch’een  (Calculated from La Corona Altar 1)

          04.04.07 +

9.10.07.09.17       640     Execution of Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan  (Xunantunich Panel 3)

 

What are we to make of all this? Lacking a clear solution, we are left with two main scenarios:

(1) Yuknoom Head and Yuknoom Ch’een were contemporaries, perhaps siblings or a father and son. The former was established at Calakmul by at least 631 (kaanul having at some point replaced an existing dynasty there) and after the death of Tajoom Ukab K’ahk’ he fought the next king and holder of the k’uhul kaanul ajaw title Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan. He succeeds but, possibly wounded or killed, disappears at much the same moment and Yuknoom Ch’een quickly takes on the kingly mantle; or (2) The same set of events unfold but Yuknoom Head is either a pre-accession name, or simply a distinct or more elaborated moniker, for Yuknoom Ch’een. It would be the same person who establishes a base at Calakmul, attacks Naranjo, triumphs in the civil war, and assumes the full Snake title.

There are pros and cons to both positions. If the stairway seeks to encapsulate the instantiation of legitimate authority and practical power at Calakmul, how can the first true Snake king there—and the current one at that—be excluded from the narrative? Was the immense influence that Yuknoom Ch’een later displayed based on no more than his good fortune in inheriting the accomplishments of his predecessor, or was it instead grounded in spectacular successes from his early career? The strongest counter-argument is that it would be very unusual for a pre-regnal name to so closely resemble that of an eventual king. That point recedes if the form were instead an unusually complete or alternative name for Yuknoom Ch’een, since Classic Maya kings had lengthy nominal sequences and the short name ubiquitously ascribed to him can only be one part of it. Snake kings seem especially prone to having different parts of their name emphasized at different places and times (e.g. Martin and Beliaev, in press). Even so, it is patently an obstacle that no other source associates him with the form given at Caracol.

* * *

To conclude, the finds at Xunantunich provide valuable new insights into Caracol’s hieroglyphic stairway and the events it describes. It is a Period Ending monument, but one dedicated to the ritual ballgame that appropriately chimes with the martial flavor of the whole text. Beyond that, its rhetorical purpose is to assert K’an II’s support for the new Snake order, presenting its own wars against Naranjo as contributions to the decisive Calakmul triumph over that rival in 631. K’an II was a self-declared client of the kaanul dynasty, having received his royal headband in a ceremony supervised by Yuknoom Ti’ Chan in 619, the year after his initial accession (Martin 2009, 2014:184). He continued to be a dutiful subject ally in the time of Yuknoom Ti’ Chan’s successor, Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’—accounting for the positive contact with that king—but evidently took common cause with Yuknoom Head against Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kaan. Alex Tokovinine (pers. comm. 2016) suggests that the wars between Naranjo and Caracol arose because they backed different sides in the civil war. Here Naranjo, itself a long-time vassal to the kaanul kings, would play the loyalist and thus enemy to the aspiring power of Calakmul, whereas Caracol supported the breakaway and the stairway celebrates the success of that choice. Yet the general struggle must have begun somewhat earlier, in the time of Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’, since Caracol was at odds with Naranjo from at least 626. The data demonstrate that as early as 642 the rise of Calakmul was considered to be a significant development in the political landscape of the central lowlands, one worthy of special record. The following decades of Yuknoom Ch’een’s rule would more than bear out that judgement, as the Snake dynasty drew ever more royal houses into its orbit and came closer than any of its rivals to forming a Maya “imperium.”

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to David Stuart, Stephen Houston, and Christophe Helmke who made helpful comments in the development of this text.

Notes

[1] Theoretically, there could be an intervening Lunar Series on another block or blocks. However, the direct join between Glyph F on Naranjo HS Step VI and 18 K’ank’in on the first medallion of Xunantunich Panel 4 makes that unlikely.

[2] David Stuart (pers. comm. 2016) reminds me of a pair of monuments at Ceibal (Seibal)—Stela 5 and 7— that show a single king equipped with ballplaying gear, where the texts also associate a Period Ending with a game.

[3] Following incremental insights and corrections from Spinden and Joyce, Morley (1937-38.2:44) connected this Distance Number of 14.7.10 to the terminal mark of 9.10.10.0.0. This would date the missing event to 9.9.15.10.10 in 628, which has no outside corroboration but does at least have the merit of falling within the reign of Tajoom Uk’ab K’ahk’.

[4] It could be argued that the lack of interest shown in Yuknoom Ch’een was because K’an II had, by means of his support for the new regime, pulled away from kaanul supervision. There may be something to that, but the grandiosity of this monumental statement—which serves to glorify Calakmul—must place as much of an eye on the present and future as it does on the past.

[5] The names of Yuknoom Head and Yuknoom Took’ K’awiil share several features. Both show the yu[ku] conflation atop a human face with a dot on its cheek, together with a li suffix (Martin 2005:5, n.5). The same form appears in the name of an unrelated sculptor on Calakmul Stela 51 (Martin, Houston, and Zender 2015) and, more distantly, at Palenque where K’inich Kan Bahlam II is associated with the same name as a child (Tablet of the Foliated Cross, G4, and Tablet of the Sun, J2). Variable elements are cloth-like projections extending over the cheek, an infixed k’in sign that might signal CH’EEN (none of the examples are sufficiently well-preserved to be clear on this point), and a TOOK’ “flint” sign. Yuknoom Head’s name does not include these, but on Caracol Stela 3 at D20a we might see the presence of the arm-and-stone motif that cues the god-name YOPAAT, but that identification remains uncertain.

References

Beetz, Carl P., and Linton Satterthwaite. 1981. The Monuments and Inscriptions of Caracol, Belize. University Museum Monograph 45. The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Graham, Ian. 1978. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 2, Part 2: Naranjo, Chunhuitz, Xunantunich. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1980. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 2, Part 3: Ixkun, Ucanal, Ixtutz, Naranjo. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Grube, Nikolai. 1994. Epigraphic Research at Caracol, Belize. In Studies in the Archaeology of Caracol, Belize, Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute Monograph 7, edited by Diane Z. and Arlen F. Chase, pp.83-122. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Guenter, Stanley Paul. 2003. The Inscriptions of Dos Pilas associated with B’ajlaj Chan K’awiil. www.mesoweb.com/features/Guenter/Dos Pilas/

Helmke, Christophe, and Jaime Awe. 2016a. Death Becomes Her: An Analysis of Panel 3, Xunantunich, Belize. PARI Journal 16(4):1-14.

__________________________. 2016b. Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth: A Tale of the Snake-head Dynasty as Recounted on Xunantunich Panel 4. PARI Journal 17(2):1-22.

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Martin, Simon. 2000. At the Periphery: The Movement, Modification and Re-use of Early Monuments in the Environs of Tikal. In The Sacred and the Profane: Architecture and Identity in the Southern Maya Lowlands, edited by P.R. Colas, K. Delvendahl, M. Kuhnert, and A. Pieler, pp. 51-62. Acta Mesoamericana 10, Markt Schwaben.

___________. 2005 Of Snakes and Bats: Shifting Identities at Calakmul. The PARI Journal 6(2):5-15.

___________.  “On the Trail of the Serpent State: The Unusual History of the Kan Polity.” Paper presented at the 33rd Maya Meetings at Texas “History and Politics of the Snake Kingdom”, February 23rd-March 1st 2009. University of Texas at Austin.

____________. 2014 The Classic Maya Polity: An Epigraphic Approach to Reconstructing a Pre-Hispanic Political System. PhD thesis, University College London.

Martin, Simon, and Dmitri Beliaev. In press.  K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’: A New Snake King from the Early Classic Period. The PARI Journal 17(3).

Martin, Simon, Stephen Houston, and Marc Zender. 2015. Sculptors and Subjects: Notes on the Incised Text of Calakmul Stela 51. Maya Decipherment: https://mayadecipherment.com/2015/01/07/sculptors-and-subjects-notes-on-the-incised-text-of-calakmul-stela-51/https://mayadecipherment.com/2015/01/07/sculptors-and-subjects-notes-on-the-incised-text-of-calakmul-stela-51/

Martin, Simon, and Erik Velásquez. 2016. Polities and Places: Tracing the Toponyms of the Snake Dynasty. The PARI Journal 17(2):23-33.

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Stone, Andrea, Dorie Reents, and Robert Coffman. 1985. Genealogical Documentation of the Middle Classic Dynasty of Caracol, El Cayo, Belize. In Fourth Palenque Round Table, 1980, Volume IV, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, pp. 267-276. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

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