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

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

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 CoronaThe 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

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

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.

Maler, Teobert. 1908. Explorations in the Department of Peten, Guatemala and Adjacent Region Topoxté, Yaxhá, Benque Viejo, Naranjo: Reports of Explorations for the Museum. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 4(2). Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

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.

Morley, Sylvanus G. 1937-8. Inscriptions of Peten. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 437: 5 Vols. Washington, D.C.

Miller, Mary Ellen, and Stephen D. Houston. 1987. The Classic Maya Ballgame and its Architectural Setting: A Study of Relations between Text and Image. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 14:46-65.

Schele, Linda and David Freidel. 1990. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. William Morrow, New York.

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

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.

Stuart, David. 2012. Notes on a New Text from La Corona. Maya Decipherment: http://mayadecipherment.com/2012/06/30/notes-on-a-new-text-from-la-corona/

Stuart, David, and Stephen D. Houston. 1994. Classic Maya Place Names. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology No.33. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.

 

The Face of the Calendar Stone: A New Interpretation

by David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

Note: The following post, a bit off-topic from the world of Maya hieroglyphs, is excerpted from a larger work now in preparation, provisionally titled “The Face of the Cosmos: Further Interpretations of the Aztec Calendar Stone”

Figure 1. Photograph of the sculpted face of the Aztec Calendar Stone, or Piedra del Sol, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.
Figure 1. Photograph of the sculpted face of the Aztec Calendar Stone, or Piedra del Sol. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.

After over two centuries of intensive scholarly attention and commentary there would seem little left to say about the symbolism of the so-called Calendar Stone or Piedra del Sol of Tenochtitlan, the single most iconic image of Aztec culture and ancient Mexico (Figure 1). Much has been written and debated about its imagery and iconography, yet a few basic questions regarding its intended meaning continue to be the subject of discussion and even fervent disagreement. If nothing else its varied interpretations reveal that the full significance of this quintessential Mesoamerican object, like much of Aztec and Maya iconography, still remains beyond our reach. Or, as Villela, Robb and Miller (2010:4) point out, “for all that has been written on the Calendar Stone, we can be sure that it has not yet full revealed its secrets.”

The truth of this statement comes across as soon as one delves into the long-running debate over the identity of the face at the very center of the design (Figure 2). It seems at once integral to the larger design of the solar disc as well as to the Olin day sign that forms the Nahui Olin (“Four Movement”) name of the current sun or era.  Early in the twentieth century, Eduard Seler and Hermann Beyer were adamant that the visage at the center of the disc was that of Tonatiuh, or “an image of the sun, no more and no less,” as Seler (1904a:797) once put it. This became the standard interpretation reinforced by numerous publications over the ensuing decades. However, Navarrete and Heyden (1974) proposed that the face was rather that of the animate earth, Tlalteuctli. Around the same time Townsend (1979) made a similar interpretation in his important study of Aztec imperial art. And in a somewhat related vein Klein (1976) rejected the traditional Tonatiuh interpretation in favor of seeing it as the face of the night sun, Yohualteuctli. In this essay I would like to add some additional thoughts on this key question, based on epigraphic clues in the surrounding design, suggesting that it may also have a firm historical identity as a deified portrait of the Mexica ruler Moteuczoma II.

Calendar Stone center photo
Figure 2. The central Nahui Olin glyph of the Calendar Stone.
Figure 3. S simpler example of the hieroglyph for Nahui Olin (Four Movement), showing an eye (ixtli) in the center of the standard Olin element.
Figure 3. A standard presentation of the hieroglyph for Nahui Olin (Four Movement), showing an eye (ixtli) in the center of the Olin element. From the Codex Borbonicus.

The face itself is clearly embedded within the hieroglyphic forms around it. As Klein noted (1976:9), the face’s location in the center of the Olin glyph points to it being a graphic elaboration on the central eye motif that appears in nearly all other (simpler) examples of the Olin sign (Figure 3). This surely plays off of the full range of meanings of the Nahuatl noun ixtli, meaning “face, eye, surface” (Kartunen 1983:121). This is an important detail to consider, for it suggests that the central face, as a more visually developed ixtli, is more integral to the Olin sign than to the solar disc. In depicting a face at the center, the Nahuatl-speaking artist(s) thus chose to develop the Olin’s design in a way that was linguistically and conceptually logical. Interestingly, ixtli can have a more abstract notion of “identity” – the diagnostic “face” of a person or thing.  The last of these definitions of ixtli is of special note given the many varied interpretations of the central visage proposed over the last several decades. Here we see how language serves as an important conceptual baseline for interpreting the Calendar Stone’s composition and hieroglyphic design – something that seems underappreciated in some of what has been written on the monument and Aztec art in general.

Before the 1970s nearly all scholars followerd Seler and Beyer in seeing the central face as a straightforward portrait of Tonatiuh, the sun god. Differing interpretations have largely hinged on two features of the central visage — the knife-tongue of that emerges from the grimacing mouth and the clawed appendages that flank the face, each grasping a human heart.  According to Navarrete and Heyden (1974) and Townsend (1979) these were clear indications that the face is that of Tlalteuctli, the earth lord. As Navarrete and Heyden concluded:

…nos parece que el rostro esculpido en medio del Calendario Azteca or Piedra del Sol, no es de Tonatiuh sino de Tlaltecuhtli, que irrumpe hacia arriba mirando al cielo, de acuerdo con la verdadera posición del monumento, esculpido y dedicado al Quinto Sol, el Sol de movimiento de Tierra, Nahui Ollin, o 4 Movimiento (Navarrete and Heyden 1976:374).

Townsend furthermore noted, “the idea that the central mask of the Sun Stone represents the face of the earth, and not the face of Tonatiuh, ‘the sun,’ is consistent with the enclosing glyph ollin” (Townsend 1979:69). This is because of the common translation of olin as “earthquake” (its meaning is actually a bit more general, hence my preference for “movement” or “quake”), and perhaps also that the meaning of the corresponding seventeenth day in other Mesoamerican cultures includes “earth” (for example, the Maya day Caban < kab, “earth”). In his view the central visage represented “both the sacred earth and the territory of the Mexica nation” (Townsend 1979:69).  Such interpretations in favor of Tlalteuctli, the animate earth, at the center of the Calendar Stone seem compelling for two reasons: the face’s formal qualities as well as the stone’s original orientation as a flat, upward-facing surface. Spatially this all seems to make considerable sense.

The Tlalteuctli interpretation failed to win over all specialists in Aztec iconography, however. In a nuanced and influential study, Cecilia Klein (1976) also called into question the traditional Tonatiuh identification but proposed that the central face is neither a direct representation of the sun nor of the earth.  Rather she interpreted it as an image of Yohualteuctli, the “Night Lord,” who Seler had specifically identified as the nocturnal sun within the Underworld.  As Klein noted, “since Yohualtecuhtli was a god of the earth, darkness, death and the south a center of the world, his appearance in a context of the world at the center of the earth in the middle of the night is far more logical than would be that of Tonatiuh” (Klein 1976:10). Klein suggested that a specific aspect of a solar being is at the center of the Calendar Stone, just not its more obvious aspect as the warming Tonatiuh who rises in the eastern sky.

Nicholson (1993:14) offered a strong rejoinder to all of the many alternate interpretations that emerged in the 1970s, preferring to adhere to Seler and Beyer’s original and more direct interpretation: “Despite all of the recent efforts on the part of many serious students to refute or significantly modify the traditional view that this image represents Tonatiuh, the diurnal solar diety, I believe the best evidence still supports this identification.”  Nicholson noted that the knife-tongue of the central face was not necessarily a strong diagnostic feature of Tlateuctli, appearing with some frequency on images of other other deities in Aztec iconography. Nicholson was not even sure of the knife-tongue’s “debatable” significance.

To complicate the debate further, Felipe Solís more recently noted that the central face of the headdress of this Calendar Stone’s might be best interpreted as Xiuhteuctli, the “Turquoise Lord,” considered the god of “the center of the universe, whose image has hybrid characteristics of the earth and underworld” (Solís Olquín 2000:36). He based this assertion on a consideration of the headband, seeing its central jewel as a variant of the xiuhtototl bird, considered a diagnostic feature of that deity (see also Matos Moctezuma 2004:63).

Although such arguments reflect significant disagreement regarding the identity of the central face, they also could reveal the inherent ambiguity in identifying some Aztec deities as singular, discrete entities. The rigid either-or dichotomies of those earlier studies go against the more fluid senses of identity that Aztec artisans and theologians ascribed to such religious imagery.  Nicholson was surely correct in pointing out that the animate knife-tongue and clawed hands clutching hearts pertain to different supernatural beings, but I would argue that their meaning is fairly clear: rather than being diagnostic features, they characterize those powerful deities that pierce, cut, take and consume the hearts from human sacrifice. Knives used in sacrifice were, perhaps, metaphorical “tongues” of the sun and of the earth. Both the earth and the sun in their varied aspects are equally viable candidates in this respect. Moreover, I think it also very relevant that one of the hieroglyphs prominently featured in relationship to the central image of the Calendar Stone is 1 Flint (Ce Tecpatl), equally translatable as “1 Knife” (see Figure 4, below). This day-sign shows the same attached eyes and fangs replicated the animated knife-tongue of the central face. As we will see, this hieroglyph carries specific mythological meaning as a calendar name for yet another important Mexica deity.

Decades after the related studies by Klein, Navarrete, Heyden and Townsend, the identify of the central face of the Calendar Stone’s Olin glyph will no doubt continue to be debated. Again, I suspect that a lack of any firm consensus reflects the deliberate intention of the stone’s original designers to present a conflation of forms and spatial ideas.  The face shows a combination of features that at once suggest Tonatiuh as well as the sun’s reflection on or within earth. In other words, a number of merged identifies may play into the overall significance of the central face. Surely the original orientation of the Calendar Stone as an upward-facing monument reflects its earth-bound nature, but it was also a reflection of the sun at zenith  (Taube 2000). And as the face of the Olin sign it presents the animate visage of both terrestrial and celestial “movement.”

There is a good deal more to say about the identity of the central face. What previous writers have neglected to point out is that the designers of the Calendar Stone may have been quite explicit in marking its identification by means of hieroglyphic labels and elements. As I elaborate in the following section, certain hieroglyphic names and designation that are embedded in the design of the Calendar Stone gravitate to the central olin sign and seem to make direct reference to it, serving as labels of identity that have until now gone unrecognized or misunderstood.

Featured within the interior of the design, adjacent to the Olin glyph, are four smaller hieroglyphs grouped into two pairs. Like the four “era” glyphs infixed within the arms of the olin, these are oriented to face one another along the central vertical axis of the composition. At the base of the circle are two date glyphs, 1 Rain and 7 Monkey, the significances of which remain uncertain. Umberger (1988) pointed out that 1 Rain was the day, according to Sahagún, when sacrifices were made to rejuvenate the strength of the king. She notes (ibid.) that “Motecuhzoma, like the sun, apparently needed sacrifices to renew him.” Of the the upper pair of glyphs, the left-most hieroglyph shows a royal xuihuitzolli headband with falling hair and various adornments, opposite a calendrical reference to 1 Flint (Figure 4, in blue). The placement of these hieroglyphs above and in in direct association to the central Olin hieroglyph suggests to my mind that these may have direct bearing on the long-standing question of the identity of the central face.

Calendar Stone, central circle
Figure 4. The two principal hieroglyphs (in blue) adjacent to the Nahui Olin sign. To the left is the name of Moteuczoma II, to the right is 1 Flint, the likely calendar name of Huitzilopochtli (Drawing by E. Umberger).

The headdress or headband glyph was seen by Seler and Beyer as a symbolic reference to the spirits of deceased warriors and, by extension, to the eastern sky (Seler 1904). However, Umberger (1981:205, 1988), following an earlier suggestion by Peñafiel (1890), was surely correct to see this as a particularly elaborate version of the name hieroglyph of Moteuczoma II, of which there are many examples on other monuments (Umberger 1981, 1988) (Figure 5). Her groundbreaking insight provided a key historical context for the monument , dating it to between 1503 and 1519, an attribution that is now widely accepted.

Moteuczoma's names
Figure 5. Various examples of Moteuczoma’s name glyph, (g) being from the Calendar Stone. From Hajovsky 2015:Fig. 1.1. (Drawings by P.T. Hajovsky).

 

The adjacent 1 Flint glyph, opposite the personal name of the ruler, has been variously interpreted. It was the name of a key year in the migration history of the Mexica, marking the departure date from Aztlan and also the year in which the Mexica defeated the Tepenecs early in the reign of Itzcoatl.  However, it is perhaps significant that the 1 Flint glyph here lacks the square xihuitl cartouche that one customarily finds with year records. Perhaps, then, it is not to be taken as an explicit year reference, but as something more oblique and metaphorical. Indeed, in another important insight Umberger (1988) suggested that it should more correctly be seen as the calendrical name of Huitzilopochtli, the patron deity of Tenochtitlan, an embodiment of the sun, and in certain respects Moteuczoma’s supernatural counterpart. This interpretation seems intrinsically attractive given 1 Flint’s visual juxtaposition with Moteuczoma II’s name glyph, as if these were two names associated with and reflective of one another. And in addition to being a probable calendar reference to Huitzilpochtli, 1 Flint may symbolically evoke the theme of heart sacrifice. Here I am reminded of the evident symbolism of the day 1 Etznab (equivalent to 1 Flint) among the Classic Maya. In the mythological text of Temple XIX at Palenque, 1 Etznab is the day of the axe sacrifice of the great alligator(s) by the local dynastic patron god GI (see Stuart 2005:68-75).

Those who accept the presence of Moteuczoma II’s name on the Calendar Stone generally consider his hieroglyph as designating the tlahtoani (ruler) who commissioned the sculpture in the early sixteenth century, not as something more functional or integral within the larger design of the monument. However, it seems reasonable to suppose that the careful and intentional positioning of both the ruler’s name and the 1 Flint glyph (also a name) within the inner circle is important to the Calendar Stone’s overall composition and meaning, all worthy of further consideration. Simply put, as we see in Figure 4, both names appear within the circular frame, directly above the face and its surrounding Nahui Olin glyph.  They are thus integral to the central design. But why are they there? This interior placement is highly significant, for it suggests that the glyphs are closely associated with the central face in some way, perhaps as labels or designations. Name glyphs do not simply “float” within compositions in painting and sculpture; they must act to identify something specific and visible. It’s no great leap to suppose, then, that they here serve to identify the face at the center of the Calendar Stone as both historical and mythical aspects of the sun. This seems natural, given how we see the interaction of name glyph and image on several other examples from mexica sculpture. Moteuczoma II’s name glyph directly accompanies his portraits on the Hackmack Box, on the Chapultepec Cliff Sculpture, and on the Teocalli of Sacred Warfare (see Figure 5, e and f). In this new interpretation the central face of the Calendar Stone is similarly labelled as Moteuczoma II as well as an embodiment of 1 Flint, the birth date of Huitzilopochtli. Here we should recall that the 1 Flint name glyph visually echoes an obvious feature of the central face, its flint-knife tongue. The xiuhuitzolli diadem that adorns the name glyph of Moteuczoma likewise bears an animated “flint face,” perhaps visually linking it as well to the central face of the monument.

If we interpret these two related name glyphs as labels for the accompanying image, we naturally must wonder how such a dual identification would fit in the long debate about the identity of the central face as either the visage of the sun or of the earth. I doubt the issue is so binary and oppositional, as explained above, and prefer to see an intention to convey multiple identifies for the central face. But the key point here is that the monument provides its own explicit indication of two identities: one historical, the emperor Moteuczoma II, and one mythological, the solar aspect of Huitzilopochtli. The face is directly labeled by these hieroglyphs as a portrait of the defied ruler who embodies and exemplifies the Mexica patron god.

As Stephanie Strauss has pointed out to me (personal communication, 2016), one intriguing detail of the inner circle could be taken as indirect support for such a historical identification. If we consider the face to be a deified portrait of the tlahtoani, it is possible see the large pointed form above the head, a feature of the Olin glyph — as a playful visual reference to the ruler’s xuihuitzolli diadem.  Indeed the shape is identical to the diadems when they are seen in frontal view (Figure 6).  And as we can see in Figure 5 above, the very same diadem (in profile view) and the strands of hair visible on other side of the face are the two consistent elements of the king’s name glyphs. In those examples the diadem stands for the word teuc(tli), “lord,” a core term embedded within the name Moteuczoma.

xiuhuitzolli diadem
Figure 6. Comparison of the headband of the Calendar Stone’s central face to the royal xiuhuitzolli diadem as depicted in the Codex Borboniicus.

It seems appropriate then that the central image of the Calendar Stone would be at once cosmological and personalized, linking the cosmic forces of the sun to the persona of the living ruler.  The solar identification of the tlahtoani was elegantly conveyed by the oration of Nezahualpilli, the king of Texcoco, at the accession ceremony of Moteuczoma II, as described in Duran’s Historia:

O most powerful of all the kings on earth! The clouds have been dispelled and the darkness in which we lived has fled. The sun has appeared and the light of the day shines upon us after the darkness that had been brought by the death of your uncle the king. The torch that illuminates this city has again been lighted and today a mirror has been placed before us, into which we are to look (Durán 1994:391)

Here the poetic parallelism is made between the inauguration of the king, the rise of the bright sun, and to the symbolism of New Fire ceremony.  The ruler is the diurnal sun as well as a mirror of the community. All of these metaphors are among the many visual messages that are encoded visually in the design of the Calendar Stone.

To refine these concepts further, it is important to note that the person of the tlahtoani was viewed at times as the embodiment and personification of Huitzilopochtli, himself a specific aspect of the sun. In fact this equation is a basic tenet of ancient Mexica ideology. The core myth of Huitzilopochtli’s birth was a metaphor of solar birth and creation, famously replicated through spatial performance at his shrine in the huey teocalli in the main precinct of Tenochtitlan.  His main weapon, as described in Sahagún and elsewhere, was the xiuhcoatl serpent representing the shooting stars or the sun’s piercing rays, and of course these are the two dominant images at the edge of the Calendar Stone. As Umberger (1987:425) noted, “the ruler, Huitzilopochtli and the sun are closely related in Mexico thought: the ruler is the human imitator of the sun god, and the fortunes of both are compared to that of the sun.” We see this fundamental unity of ruler and patron god depicted in a very overt manner on the Stone of Tizoc, where the one labelled image of that ruler shows him as a conqueror wearing the regal hummingbird headdress of the Mexica patron deity (Hajovsky 2015:104) (Figure 7). I see a similar fusion of identities encoded by the hieroglyphic labels on the Calendar Stone, referring to the deified central face that visually presents itself as a more “generic” cosmic force and actor as the sun, the earth, or as some fusion of the two.  It is the hieroglyphs that provide the specific ideological message.

Tizic Huitzilopochtli
Figure 7. The ruler Tizoc (left) in the guise of Huitzilopochtli. From the Stone of Tizoc. (Photograph by D. Stuart).

We know that elsewhere in Mesoamerica rulers were frequently presented as embodiments of the sun and of calendrical cycles, and in this light the Calendar Stone seems little different. Among the Classic Maya are several images of historical rulers as the hieroglyphs for Ahau, becoming the personified essence of of period endings in the Long Count calendar. On La Palma, Stela 5, for example, the local king of the Lakamtuun royal line is portrayed within a hieroglyph pronounced ajaw, “king,” in the writing of the time period 7 Ahau (Figure 8). In a similar way Maya kings were often shown on ritual occasions and upon their accessions as embodiments of katuns and of other units of time (see Stuart 1996).  I wonder if similar ideas existed among the Mexica, and if the Calendar Stone similarly equates a specific ruler not only with  the sun and with celestial power, but also with a particular calendrical and temporal identity, Nahui Olin. The notion that time itself could be embodied and personified through a living king or queen seems to have been prelevant in Mesoamerican ideology and theology.

7 Ahau ruler
Figure 8. A Maya ruler as the embodiment of the time period 7 Ahau. Detail from El Palma Stela 5. (Preliminary drawing by D. Stuart).

In sum, my identification of the Calendar Stone’s central face as a deified portrait of Moteuczoma as Huitzilopochtli, together embodying the sun, remains a working hypothesis.  It is not a portrait in a conventional sense, but rather a mythologized image of the living ruler who embodies other beings and cosmic elements. If true, this new interpretation would add an important new historical dimension to the long-standing questions surrounding the monument and its overall meaning, and of course regarding the old debate of its identity as Tonatiuh or Tlalteuctli, etc.. To my mind either or both of these interpretations seem possible. In any case, layered with these multi-faceted identities are the labels that suggest the face is a deified image of Moteuczoma II as the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli. Whatever other significances the central face may have, these two names appear to be the two specific written identities featured by the artist who designed the Calendar Stone. This iconic monument thus becomes a more overt political, even personalized, statement, featuring the reigning emperor not only in the cosmic role as the reborn sun and/or consuming earth, but also as the embodiment of time in general.

Note and Acknowledgements

Some readers may be confused by the varied spellings of the Aztec ruler’s name. I use Moteuczoma following my former Nahuatl professor, J. Richard Andrews, who long insisted that common spellings such as “Motecuhzoma” or “Moctezuma” don’t accurately reflect the underlying Nahuatl phonology nor the semantic parsing of the name, meaning “One Who Frowns Like a Lord.”

I thank Emily Umberger and Stephen Houston, who provided very useful feedback. As noted, this essay is an excerpt of a longer study of the Calendar Stone now in preparation, much of which grew out of from my UT-Austin course on Aztec art in the fall of 2015, and a graduate seminar on Mesoamerican iconography in the spring of this year.  I would also like to thank a number of students and colleagues at UT-Austin for their insights, including Tim Beach, Elliot Lopez-Finn, Edwin Román Ramirez, Sergio Romero, and, especially, Stephanie Strauss, who first pointed out the possible diadem on the Calendar Stone’s central face.

References

Durán, Fray Diego. 1994. The History of the Indies of New Spain. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Hajovsky, Patrick Thomas. 2015. On the Lips of Others: Moteuczoma’s Fame in Aztec Monuments and Rituals. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Kartunnen, Francis. 1988. An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Klein, Cecilia. 1976. The Identity of the Central Deity on the Aztec Calendar Stone. The Art Bulletin 58(1):1-12.

Navarrete, Carlos, and Doris Heyden. 1974. La cara central de la piedra del sol: una hipótesis. Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, vol. XI, pp. 355-376.

Nicholson, Henry B. 1993. The Problem of the Identification of the Central Image of the Aztec Calendar Stone. In Current Topics in Aztec Studies: Essays in Honor of Dr. H.B. Nicholson. San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego.

Peñafiel, Antonio. 1890. Monumentos del arte mexicano antiguo. A. Asher, Berlin.

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