Emblems & Toponyms

Reinterpreting a “Creation” Text from Chancala, Mexico

David Stuart2 Comments
Fig. 1. Sawn section of a panel, probably from Chancala, Mexico (From Mayer 1991:Pl.96).

The incomplete text panel shown in Figure 1, now in a private collection in Florida, has been the focus of some attention since it was first commented upon by Schele, Friedel and Parker (1993:66) in their analysis of ancient Maya creation mythology surrounding the date 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u. It was first published by Mayer (1991:Pl. 96) and more recently by Van Stone (2010); a photograph by Justin Kerr also is available. Given the increasing interest in the 13.0.0.0.0 base-date of the Long Count calendar and its upcoming repetition in 2012, it seems a few words about the interpretation of this partial inscription might be important, especially since widely published readings of the glyphs look to be incorrect in some key details. Others have made similar points in re-assessing this inscription — Steve Houston and Marc Zender in particular — so this is meant to be no more than a summary of more current thinking on the inscription.

The text begins in mid-sentence, with a partion of a Calendar Round date “8 Zip” (8-CHAK-AT). A distance number then follows, written oddly as 18-0-WINIK-ja-ya. These numbers as written simply don’t work, however, and there’s little question that the scribe has here made an error. The date resulting from this calculation is shown later as 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u, and the only means of connecting “8 Zip” and “8 Kumk’u” is to make a slight adjustment in the distance number as its written, from 18.0 to *16.0 (“18 Winals” would be an impossibility in any case). So we have the following chronological link between these two dates being the most likely:

[9 Ahaw] 8 Zip
+*16.0 (written in error as 18.0)
4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u

We have no idea what transpired on the earlier date; that section of the text remains missing.

4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u will be familiar to many as the Calendar Round for the so-called “Creation” date that serves as the base-line for the shortened Long Count, falling on 13.0.0.0.0. Here it almost certainly does not correspond to 13.0.0.0.0, but instead to a far, far later position in the Long Count, probably near the so-called Terminal Classic era of Maya history. The main reason for thinking this comes from the glyphs that follow the date, which Schele, Freidel and Parker (1993:65) translated as “the first image turtle was seen.” They got it nearly correct, but some key details force us to reassess their interpretation. The verb at pB3 they originally read as IL-la-ji-ya, for ilajiiy, “it was seen,” a passive construction (Schele et al transliterated this as ilahi, following older conventions of Maya epigraphy). However, a closer look at the glyphs clearly shows that this verb takes the initial sign yi-, infixed into the main eye main sign. This would spell the ergative third-person pronoun (u)y- before the initial i- of ilajiiy, meaning that it cannot be a passive verb construction (intransitives, unless they are nominalized, can never take an ergative pronoun prefix). Yilajiiy is well known in ancient texts, functioning either as a derived transitive form, “he saw it,” or as a participial noun “his seeing it” (both interpretations are debated and have merit, although opting for one over the other doesn’t change the meaning of the passage). The subject of this statement comes next in the personal name Yax K’oj Ahk (YAX-k’o-jo a-AHK). Schele et. al., interpreted this as a deity, namely the turtle (ahk) represented in some mythical scenes of the rebirth of the maize god (see Schele, et. al. 1993:65). However, this is far more likely to be a name of a local king or ruler, for the glyph after the name reads Chak K’uh Ajaw, “the Chak K’uh Lord.” Chak K’uh is a known but fairly obscure emblem glyph that I have for some years now associated with the ruins of Chancala, located to the south of Palenque. One fragmentary relief from Chancala bears the same emblem title (see Stuart and Stuart 2008:235), as does a panel that Mary Miller and I long ago posited might be from the same region (Miller and Stuart 1981).

Fig. 2. K'inich Janab Pakal "witnesses" a period ending. PAL:T.I.middle (Drawing by L. Schele)

Yax K’oj Ahk therefore was a historical ruler from the court of Chak K’uh, who “saw” the day 4 Ajaw 8 Kumk’u in his lifetime — not the original “Creation” date, of course, but a recurrence of the same Calendar Round at a far later time. Similar references to the witnessing of period endings and anniversaries are common in Maya texts (Figure 2), and imply some degree of “oversight” of the events and rituals involved with their celebration. As others have noted, there is no reason to consider it a mythical reference.

The text goes on to mention an interval of nine years (9-HA’B-ya) reckoning forward to another date now missing, but which we can easily calculate as 7 Ahaw 3 Pax.

The proportions and style of the glyphs look to me to be late, falling in the so-called Terminal Classic period in early ninth century. Only one placement of the dates in the Long Count seems fitting, anchored to 10.0.6.16.0 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u (see below for all three positions).

Transcription of Text (designating the two columns as A and B, and the rows by number; the “p” indicates “provisional” given the incomplete nature of the text):
pA1: 8 CHAK-AT
pB1: 0-*16-WINIK-ji-ya
pA2: i-u-ti
pB2: 4-AJAW
pA3: 8-HUL?-OHL-la
pB3: yi-IL-la-ji-ya
pA4: YAX-ko-jo
pB4: a-AHK
pA5: CHAK-K’UH-AJAW
pB5: 9-HA’B-ya i-u-ti

Summary of Dates:
[10.0.6.0.0 9 Ahaw] 8 Zip
[10.0.6.16.0] 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u
[10.0.15.16.0 7 Ahaw 3 Pax]

References:

Mayer, Karl Herbert. 1991. Maya Monuments: Sculptures of Unknown Provenance, Supplement 3. Graz: Verlag Von Hemming.

Miller, Mary Ellen, and David S. Stuart. 1981. Dumbarton Oaks Relief Panel 4. Estudios de Cultura Maya, vol XIII, pp. 197-204.

Schele, Linda, David Freidel and Joy Parker. 1993. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path. New York: William Morrow.

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

Van Stone, Mark. 2010. 2012 Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya. Imperial Beach, CA: Tlacaelel Press.

Let Thy Glyphs be Few: Abbreviations in Maya Writing

mayoid6 Comments

by Stephen Houston and Simon Martin

“Let thy words be few,” says the Bible.  Yet concision is not a description that ordinarily applies to Maya texts.  Some inscriptions preserve the lush cadence and structure of formal orations. A few stretch across a dozen columns or more. But, undeniably, many Maya inscriptions are terse.  This feature arises from several things: a reliance on set formulae that communicate little more than essential information (date, event, “arguments” in the linguistic sense); restrictive formats that are inhospitable to prolix writing; the role of ancillary images in fleshing out a story, especially in descriptive detail; and the basic, innate challenge of being too prosy in bas-relief carving.

Terse texts can also be understood as ways to achieve “textual completeness,” i.e., the state resulting from the question, “what information is necessary and sufficient in this particular text?” What set of words in sequence is neither too much nor too little, in this place, at this time?  Someone had to make that deliberation as part of the compositional process. If textual economy were a consideration, there might be a further impulse to shorten the text. For clarity, however, the compositor might still signal the presence of a particular element by the expedient of abbreviation. By this orthographic alchemy, a word or sound is removed yet its presence implied.  A vacancy exists that the compositor asks the reader to fill.

English is full of abbreviations.  Presumably, these helped save expense at the typesetters or, in the yet more remote past, reduced copy-time for scriveners and economized on expensive materials like vellum. Thus, in English, a university might record “A.M.” for the degree of artium magister, and more formal writing would employ “et al.” (et alii, “and others”) or “e.g.” (exempla gratia, “for the sake of an example”).  Such abbreviations serve as sociolinguistic gates, at multiple levels. The reader must decode the notations by connecting them to words and meanings in fuller form. Ideally, in a fine display of erudition, that act would link one language, Latin, to another, English. In point of fact, few readers today would recognize the ablative case or masculine plural in Latin. The terms have become word- or idea-signs that launch directly into English.  But they still convey a surface gloss of more refined knowledge.

An ongoing debate in Maya glyph studies is the extent to which there were “underspellings” in the writing system. These would be examples where the compositors could not be bothered to add a final consonant or to include a certain pronoun or verbal suffix.  Such underspellings certainly existed—the variable presence of the ergative U in Glyph F is a case in point—but another essay would be needed to address whether they were rampant or systematic.  Interestingly, they are most common in personal names—in many cases surely because their local recognition factor was high, although this could not be true where foreigners were concerned.

What interests us here is an example of abbreviation that appears to date to the final years of the Late Classic period (c. AD 769 to 799).  This is an underspelling at the level of an inflected word.  It elides a pronoun and focuses on a relatively late homophone or near-homophone, the terms for “4” (kan/chan), “sky” (ka’n/cha’n), and “snake” (kaan/chaan) (Houston 1993; Robertson et al.  2007:43, 44) (Endnote 1). The context is the still-enigmatic “captor/guardian/master” expression that specifies a relationship between a captive and a captor. In two cases, it identifies a person looking after a royal youth, rather like our terms, “governor” and its female equivalent, “governess” (Dos Pilas Panel 19, and, on K7055, with a woman).

There are several examples of this abbreviation. The favored form always uses “4” or, in one case, ‘SKY’ in place of U-‘SNAKE’. To put this another way, the marked, more unusual forms (‘4’ and ‘SKY’) occur in these shortened spellings, not the older, more established glyph (‘SNAKE’). One kind of marking, for near-homophones, lends itself to another kind of marking, for abbreviation:

1) Tonina Monument 159 (F5) gives ‘4’-AJ-chi-hi, the name of a person from Pomoy who was captured on 9.17.18.13.9 2 Muluk 12 Ch’en (Julian July 13, AD 789). The name recurs on Tonina Monument 152 at A1-A2 as ‘SKY’-na-AJ chi-hi and in an unabbreviated spelling on Tonina Monument 20 at E8-F1 of U-‘SKY’-na AJ-chi-*hi (Figure 1). These forms make it clear that the captive was himself the captor of another figure known as Aj Chih.  Monument 159 itself dates to AD 799, Monument 20 to AD 790 (Monument 152 is undated).  See discussion in Martin and Grube (2008:188-189) (Endnote 2).

Fig. 1. Captor of Aj Chih from TNA Mons. 159, 152, and 20 (photograph by Stephen Houston, inkings by I. Graham and L. Henderson, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, Harvard Univ.).

2) An unprovenanced panel from the kingdom of Yaxchilan (at A4) gives ’4’-TAJ-MO’ (Stuart and Houston 1994:Fig.89). This text is dated to 9.16.18.0.19 1 Kawak 2 Wo (Julian Feb. 18, AD 769), although the date of carving may well be rather later. The same form is also found on El Kinel Monument 1 at A6 with ‘4’-TAJ-MO’ (Golden and Scherer 2006:fig. 13), this time placed to 9.18.0.0.0, Julian Oct. 7, AD 790 (the same date as Tonina Monument 20). Both refer to Shield Jaguar IV’s most notable captive Tajal Mo’, and can be contrasted with several texts at Yaxchilan and Bonampak where the name is rendered with the ergative pronoun—illustrated here by a fragment of Yaxchilan Stela 29 (Mathews 1997:Fig.7-12) (Figure 2).

Fig. 2. Captor of Tajal Mo’ on an unprovenanced panel, El Kinel Mon. 1 (drawings by S. Houston), and Yaxchilan St. 29 (drawing by P. Mathews).

3) Room 2, Bonampak, in a building dated to AD 791, Captions RM II-23, 26, 30; cf. a fuller version on a shield RM II-13 (Figure 3).  These can now be seen as abbreviated versions of “captor” expressions, as in the example of RM II-30, *U-‘4’ BAAH-AJAW. Most occur in Room 2 of the Murals Building, the chamber dedicated to martial exploits.

Fig. 3. Captions from Bonampak Structure 1 (Murals Building), II-13, 23, 30. (Infrared images by S. Houston and G. Ware, painting by H. Hurst after sketch by S. Houston, Bonampak Documentation Project, M. Miller, Director, Yale Univ.).

What is striking about this set of abbreviations, all seemingly restricted to displays of relations to captives, is their narrow chronology. Aside from the outlier on the unprovenanced panel from the area of Yaxchilan, all date to within a little more than a 10-year span.  For unknown reasons, the Maya sought concision in these cases, at this time, and let their glyphs be few.

NOTES:

Endnote 1. In an unpublished paper, still in progress, Daniel Law and others (n.d.) propose from glyphic and linguistic evidence that the shift from the velar stops k/k’ to the affricates ch/ch’ was fairly late, an areal diffusion rather than a shared inheritance. A more established model places the shift at the inception of “Greater Tzeltalan,” presumably many centuries prior to the Classic period (Kaufman and Norman 1984:83).

Endnote 2. David Stuart (personal communication, 2010) suggests that a similar construction with ‘4’ may occur at Tonina: ‘4’-ma-su, with a captive, perhaps from La Mar (Monument 72:A2 and Monument 84:G1, CMHI 6:114).  The agentive AJ, rabbit-head of the pe? sign, and the ‘e are quite clear in both spellings, although the TUUN is missing, likely because of breakage in the inscriptions. Monument 91 at Tonina also records a conflict with La Mar, in this case against a higher-ranking lord of the site, one NICH-TE’-MO’ (CMHI 6:119). Monuments 72 and 84 are probably from c. AD 700, decades prior to the other examples cited here.  Monument 91 is not securely dated.

REFERENCES:

Golden, Charles, and Andrew K. Scherer. 2006. Border Problems: Recent Archaeological Research along the Usumacinta River. The PARI Journal 7(2):1-16.

Houston, Stephen. 1984. An Example of Homophony in Mayan Script.  American Antiquity 49(4):790-805.

Kaufman, Terrence S., and William M. Norman. 1984 An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology, and Vocabulary. In John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, eds., Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, 77-166. Publication No. 9. Albany: Institution for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York at Albany.

Law, Daniel, John Robertson, Stephen Houston, David Stuart, and Marc Zender. N.d. Drift, Diffusion, or Genetic Inheritance? The Notorious Case of Velar Palatalization and Fronting in Certain Mayan Languages.  Unpublished ms. in revision.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. 2nd ed. Thames and Hudson, London.

Mathews, Peter. 1997. La escultura de Yaxchilán. Colección Cientifica 316. México City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Robertson, John S., Stephen D. Houston, Marc Zender, and David Stuart. 2007. Universals and the Logic of the Material Implication: A Case Study from Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, Number 62. http://www.utmesoamerica.org/pdf_meso/

Stuart, David, and Stephen Houston. 1994. Classic Maya Place Names. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 33. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Notes on an Inscription Fragment from the Southern Peten

David StuartLeave a comment
Inscription fragment. Photo by O. Chinchilla. (Adapted from Luin and Matteo, 2010)

A fragment of an interesting Late Classic inscription has recently been published and with a preliminary analysis of its content (Luin and Matteo 2010). Here I would like to offer a few observations on the significance of the text, featuring some slight revisions to the reading of its five historical dates.

The fragment consists of two joined pieces and presently is in a private collection in Guatemala. It was first documented by Oswaldo Chinchilla, whose photographs are reproduced here, and then published this year by Luin and Matteo in the proceedings of the 2009 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala. As those authors note, it is difficult to pin down the original find-site of this partial inscription. Based on the style of the glyphs, it seems likely that the text comes from the southern Peten (Luin and Matteo 2010:1237). In my subjective view, an origin not too distant from the area of Machaquila or the upper Río Pasion seems likely.

Luin and Matteo propose the following readings for the four Calendar Round dates of the text, only one of which (8 Kib 14 Pop, at pA4, pB4) is fully preserved:

9.16.6.9.1 3 Imix 4 Mak
9.16.6.15.16 8 Kib 14 Pop
9.16.6.15.19 11 Kawak 17 Pop
9.16.6.12.6 3 Kimi 9 Pax

I agree with the first two dates, but would like to suggest alternative readings of the last two as follows (with Distance Numbers indicated):

9.16.6.9.1 3 Imix 4 Mak
+ .6.15
9.16.6.15.16 8 Kib 14 Pop
+ .4
9.16.6.16.0 12 Ajaw 18 Pop
+ .3.13 (added to 8 Kib 14 Pop)
9.16.7.1.9 3 Muluk 7 Tzek

An Distance Number (DN) of 5.15 introduces the entire text, clearly suggesting we are picking up the story in mid-stream. The implied earlier date would be 9.16.5.3.6 9 Kimi 14 Yaxk’in.

The difference in our interpretations of the dates is based on the reading of certain visual details, including the short DN at pB5a, which Luin and Matteo interpret as 3-la-ta. The number prefix on this glyph is almost surely 4, however, with one of the dots broken away. I would therefore would place the resulting date at 9.16.6.16.0 12 Ajaw 18 Pop, a mere one day later than their reconstruction specifies, but in agreement with the “18 Pop” clearly indicated at pA6a.

Luin and Matteo read the following DN .3.13 at pA7a as leading to an earlier date 3 Kimi 9 Pax, reached by means of subtraction from their 11 Kawak 17 Pop. However, the I-u-ti written at pA7b (with the I playfully inserted in the u fish’s mouth) would most likely point to a forward reckoning. Moreover, the day sign at pB7a is certainly 3 Muluk, with the month missing in the adjacent glyph.

A somewhat unusual structure of the DN may have led to some confusion. I suggest that the short DN of 4 days (4-la-ta) was understood rhetorically to be a “parenthetical count” leading to a secondary passage, providing context to the more featured event that had occurred four days prior. Precedent exists for this in other inscriptions, where very short DNs of only a few days are excluded from the larger time-frame of a text’s narrative. In this way, I beleive that the DN .3.13 should be added to the earlier cited base 8 Kib 14 Pop. This then leads to 9.16.7.1.9 3 Muluk 7 Tzek, which is in full agreement with the day sign written at pB7a, “3 Muluk.”

Putting aside this very dry discussion of numbers and chronology, what does the inscription actually say?

The text is woefully incomplete, of course, but Luin and Matteo have teased out a number of interesting features, not the least of which is a new Emblem Glyph, previously unattested, written at pA3. This looks to be K’UH(UL)-jo-bo-AJAW. Luin and Matteo suggest, probably rightly, that the core elements of this Emblem Glyph may be a spelling of jobon, a Yukatekan noun root meaning “hole, pit.” I find the event associated with this title (pA2) difficult to analyze, but I’m not so certain it’s an episode of accession to rulership, as Luin and Matteo suggest.

The following passage is more clear. This is clearly an “arrival” event (HUL-li, at pB4a) on 8 Kib 14 Pop, as Luin and Matteo mention. Often such arrival verbs are followed directly by a place name, but here the missing portion of the block could have also held a personal reference of some sort. What comes next is a fascinating term tz’u-lu-KALOOM-TE’, for tz’ul Kaloomte’. Tz’ul is familiar from Yukatekan sources as a term often translated as “foreigner,” although its original, pre-Conquest meaning may have been more like “boss, master” (see Bolles 2001). Kaloomte’ is of course the title for very high-ranking rulers, often associated with one of the four cardinal directions. The sense here may be of a ruling “overlord” arriving from an outside location. Four days after this comes a conquest record, written as CH’AK-PET?-ne, perhaps ch’ahkaj peten, “peten was conquered.” This intriguing statement might conjure up an image of some foreign army entering the region we today call El Petén, but it’s important to stress that peten was a general term holding several meanings, including simply “island” or “province.” I hesitate to be too certain of this reading of the place name, however, for I may be off in seeing the PET logogram deciphered years ago by Nikolai Grube — inspection of the original stone could well reveal this sign to be something else entirely. However we might choose to analyze the statement, the general sense of this greater passage seems to concern an unknown “overlord” arriving in an area and within days conquering a town or region within it.

The final passage of the text, as Luin and Matteo note, records a second arrival 73 days later, written as HUL-li-TI ko-cho-TE’ (block pA8). This seems to indicate an arrival of someone — perhaps our same Kaloomte’ — at a place called Kochte’ or Tikochte’. Here it is interesting to see the preposition sign TI following directly after HUL-li, to specify “he arrives at…” The theme may again be one of war and conquest, for the subject of the verb at pB8 looks to carry the military title “He of Twenty Captives.”

There is certainly more to say about this beautiful text, but here I have only chosen to touch on my revisions of the text’s chronology, as well as to offer a few modest insights into the nature of the history it relates, building on Luin and Matteo’s initial work. Hopefully future investigations will reveal something about the original setting of the inscription, or at least lead to the recovery of additional fragments that can fill in the wide gaps of its story-line.

REFERENCES:

Luin, Camilo, and Sebastian Matteo. 2010. Notas sobre algunas textos jeroglíficos en colecciones privadas. In XXIII SImposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, pp. 1235-1250. Museo Nacional de Anrqueologia y Etnologia, Guatemala.

Bolles, David, 2001. Combined Dictionary – Concordance of the Yucatecan Maya Language. http://www.famsi.org/reports/96072/

The LAKAM Logogram

David StuartLeave a comment

Back in 1992 or so I proposed a reading for a “tree”-like sign (T767) as LAKAM, an adjective meaning “big, large, wide” and a noun meaning “banner.” Here’s a copy of my original informal note which I circulated to a few people back then, giving the basic flow of the argument. If memory serves, I wrote this as a fellow at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, NM.

By far the most common usage of the sign is in the widespread term for “stela,” lakam tuun, literally “big stone” or “wide stone” (Stuart 1996). Incidentally, this was also the ancient name of a kingdom or polity centered near the Río Lacantun in Chiapas, Mexico. Several inscriptions of the area refer to nobles with the “emblem” title Lakamtuun Ajaw, “Lakamtuun Lord.” Obviously, the modern geographical name preserves the very ancient one; in the colonial period, this in turn gave rise to the slightly corrupted form in Spanish “Lacandon,” used to label various groups of unconquered Maya in the very southern lowlands and Verapaz regions of Chiapas and Guatemala.

I should note that my colleague Alfonso Lacadena reached the very same reading of the sign a few years later, unaware of my obscure note on the subject. He later expanded his own analysis to show that the word Lakam served also as a rare but important title for junior members of royal courts (see Lacadena 2008).

“The LAKAM Sign” by David Stuart, 1992

References:

Lacadena García-Gallo, Alfonso. 2008. El titulo Lakam: Evidencia epigráfica sobre la organización tributaria y militar interna de los reinos mayas del clásico. Mayab no. 20, pp. 23-43.

Stuart, David. 1996. Stones of Kings: Stones of Kings: A Consideration of Stelae in Classic Maya Ritual and Representation. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, nos. 29/30, pp. 148-171.

Reunited?: Yaxha’s Stelae 1 and 2

David Stuart8 Comments
Maler's photographs of Yaxha Stelae 1 and 2, as presented in his 1908 report.

Years ago while perusing Teobert Maler’s 1908 report on the ruins of Yaxha, Petén, Guatemala, I took extra notice of his photographic plate showing Stela 1 and 2 (see above).  To me, Stela 1 looked like the top portion of a monument depicting an elaborate royal headdress. Stela 2, a taller stone similar in style, was missing much of its upper half. Naturally — and probably others have noticed this — it seemed a good possibility that these were one and the same monument. The two stones were found next to one another, and the relative scales of the two pieces as recorded by Maler would lend support to the idea (the photographs above were published at different scales).

Yaxha Stela 1 with reunited top

Maler indicated that Stela 1 was erected into an ancient floor slightly behind Stela 2 — no doubt the reason behind their separate numeration. He did not see the imagery on Stela 1 as a headdress, nor was he of course aware that the ancient Maya often re-erected old monuments or parts of them, sometimes centuries after they were originally carved. Yaxha Stela 1 (as the reunited pieces should now be called) is likely to be an example of a monument broken in ancient times, with its pieces later re-set into the plaza floor, perhaps in the Terminal Classic or Post-Classic. It must be said that I have no direct knowledge of any physical archaeological evidence that would support or reject this notion, so it might be interesting to someday confirm on-site with a minor excavation.

Stela 1 was originally paired with Stela 4, each monument flanking the main stairway of structure on the east side of Plaza C, a so-called “E Group.”

Stela 1 is an Early Classic monument, late fourth-century in style. It shows a ruler standing and facting to the right, cradling a ceremonial bar in one arm and holding a deity head or glyph in his upraised hand. His elaborate headdress (assuming these are parts of the same monument) incorporates glyphic elements, no doubt for a personal name. Prominent among these is the head of the rain deity Chahk. A small text caption next to the headdress has three incised glyphs: U-BAAH / YAX-a / AJAW, for u baah Yaxha’ Ajaw, “(it is) the image of the Yaxha’ Lord.” In the basal register we find a larger hieroglyphic text that seems to specify a location for the portrait. These three glyphs read: YAX-TI’-K’UK’-HA’ / YAX-a / CHAN-CH’E’N, “(at) Yaxti’ K’uk’ha’, (in) Yaxha’, (in) the mundo (literally ‘sky-and-cave’).” The first of these, Yaxti’ K’uk’ha’, may name a ritual space within the large Yaxha site — perhaps, one might suppose, Plaza C itself.

REFERENCE:

Maler, Teobert. 1908. Explorations in the Department of Peten, Guatemala, and Adjacent Regions: Topoxte, Yaxha, Benque Viejo, Naranjo. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. IV, No. 2. Peabody Museum, Cambridge.