Identifying Regional Place Names, Part I: Maayha’

David Stuart

by David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

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

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

Maya as a Place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A “Maya” Hieroglyph?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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Of Woodpeckers and Burrowing Bugs

mayoid

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Wood is, to some creatures, a toothsome meal. Its fibrous tissues go back to the beginnings of the Silurian Period (ca. 443–420 mya), when trees, newly stiff and sturdy, could ascend to greater heights and enhance their photosynthesis (A. Martin 2023:123–24). Plant roots, equally tough, could push deeper to absorb more water and nutrients. From this came new soil, churned from bedrock, and the first clear evidence of creatures with an appetite for plants. In fact, some wags have suggested that geological periods should be known by their dominant beetle: 40% of insects and a quarter of all known animals belong to that category, of which about 5,000 present-day species consume fibers from vegetation (A. Martin 2023:126, 131). In voracious competition, chewing away at wood, are many roaches, termites, bees, ants, and wasps.

But the consumers often become the consumed. Dinosaurs appear to have gorged on rotten wood for the tasty insects inside, just as woodpeckers, their far descendants, do today in a more fastidious way (Chin et al. 2017; A. Martin 2023:134–35). Seeking wood softened by fungi, teaming with morsels, such birds can be heard tap-tapping, staccato-like, often in dying or dead trees called “snags” (A. Martin 2023:136, 137, 137–39). They claw at bark with their feet, plucking and pinching insects with forked tongues and beaks. Where the birds forage, however, tends to vary by gender. In some species, but not all, males work high on trees, females on lower trunks and branches (A. Martin 2023:137–39). This division of labor offers real benefits to a bonded pair of woodpeckers, preventing squabbles over snags and reducing female exposure to raptors. Comity is preserved, future eggs will be laid. Yet, because of the effort, nest-making needs both genders, as part of the cooperative parenting common to the birds. The hollows take a few years to carve out, the oozing sap around them a deterrent to snakes (A. Martin 2023:136). By tapping on snags, woodpeckers can also communicate with others of their kind: “(for mates) come here soon, (for competitors) stay away, this tree is mine” (Imbau and Desrochers 2002:224–25).

The Maya region flutters with woodpeckers. For the southern Maya Lowlands, of species attested today, there are the Smoky-brown (Picoides fumigatus), Ladder-backed (Picoides scalaris), Yucatan (Melanerpes pygmaeus), Golden-fronted (Melanerpes aurifrons), Black-cheeked (Melanerpes pucherani), Acorn (Melanerpes formicivorus), Golden-olive (Colaptes rubiginosus), Chestnut-colored (Celeus castaneus), and the back-crested, red-headed Lineated (Dryocopus lineatus) and Pale-billed woodpeckers (Campephilus guatemalensis). At this point, the Lineated is found across wide regions and is probably the most abundant (Viallely and Dyer 2018:264, 266, 268, 272, 274).

Mayan languages have many names for woodpeckers. Sundry Highland languages speak of kule’ch, with variants of that word, piich‘, tuktuk, and the areally diffused ch’eje (Kaufman 2003:601, 602, 620). Ch’ol presents ch’ejku’, one of which lacks a head-crest, as well as tzelel, from a word for that distinctive feature, as well as xpi’, sounding much like a woodpecker’s cry (Hopkins et al. 2011:239; Hull and Fergus 2011:57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 76, 77, 78, 80). Ch’orti’ offers ch’aku-ch’aku and wek-wek (Hull 2016:116, 485 [the Golden-fronted]; Wisdom 1950:715). For its part, Tzeltal banks a lexical cornucupia. Speakers identify the k’ojk’ojte’, also the Golden-fronted woodpecker, from a word for “strike,” k’oj (Gómez López 2017:309, 310), but there are the ch’ekch’ek, h~jerketet, and xch’ejun ch’ijote, linked to a term for “peck” (Hunn 1977:170; Polian 219, 223, 253, 288, 561, 576, 589); then the k’orochoch, tuktuk mut, tuntsel, t’oromte’ mut, ts’ijtil, from a word for chipping or breaking off, usually applied to smaller birds. Crucially for Mayan glyphs, Tzeltal refers to some woodpeckers as ti’ or ti’ti’ mut, from mut, “bird.” That last descriptive, perhaps a loan, is further attested in Tojolabal, a distantly related language spoken nearby (Guerro Martínez 2017:186). Why so many words in Tzeltal? It is probably not from a local fixation on wood-boring birds. An ethnobiologist, Eugene Hunn, paid particular attention to that language, and it shows in the lexical bounty; similar troves probably exist in other Mayan tongues. Tzeltal’s precursor, Tzendal, refers to tuncelec [tunkelek] (Ara 1986:183), and its close kin Tzotzil attaches ti’, tunsarek, and bah-te’ to several sorts of woodpecker, the bah- arising from a term for “knocking,” the –te’ for anything woody or vegetal. To judge from dictionary entries, Tzotzil comments to close degree on how woodpeckers jump, creep, and shinny (Laughlin 1975:77, 216, 256, 536).

In a different group of languages, Yukatek employs ch’ahum, ch’ehot, ch’ohom, ch’uhut, ch’uhun or kolomte’, the first identifying a woodpecker with a “crest and red head” (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:122, 142, 334). In his celebrated Relación, Bishop Diego de Landa went on at length about the birds, “of many colors and great beauty” (de muchos colores y hermosura), and their feeding behavior and noise-making “heard a good way off” (se oye buena pieza, Landa 1978:133; Tozzer 1941:201, 201fn1108). His absorption is suprising, in that colorful woodpeckers occur throughout Iberia, in species he must have seen (Piacentini and Chiatante 2022:98). A language related to Yukatek, Lacandon, labels the Chestnut-colored woodpecker an Ajäj or jäjä, the Golden-fronted a ch’om, an obvious cognate with Yukatek ch’ohom; it also refers to the Pale-billed woodpecker as tunseh (Zalaquett Rock et al. 2024:tabla 1), as well as the ch’urum and tuunser, the latter for larger woodpeckers (Hofling 2014:127, 423).

The reduplication of sounds suggests a likely onomatopoeic origin for some of these words, echoing the repeated strikes of beaks on bark or rotten wood (see also Zalaquett Rock et al. 2024:240). For most Mayan languages, such precise, tireless blows and drumming characterize woodpeckers in general. One often hears the birds before they come into view. Indeed, their perceived calls led directly to some names: wek-wek in Ch’orti’ (Hull and Fergus 2017:616), but also Lacandon perceptions of woodpecker calls, ch’orr ch’orr ch’orr, or, when pecking, p’u p’u p’u (Hofling 2014:124, 279, 476). A sonic world opens up. The names of woodpeckers tend to begin with plosive and affricate consonants (ch’, t’, t, k’), alluding to the impact of remorseless beaks on rotten bark. The tun in Lacandon (tunseh), Tzeltal (tuntsel), and Tzendal (tunkelek) thuds with the hollow sound of struck wood, rather like the Yukatek word for a wooden “drum,” tunk’ul or t’unkul (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:823, 845).

With such birds came stories. To the Lacandon, at least by one report, woodpeckers were created when God threw a piece of sand against a tree (Zalaquett Rock et al. 2024:231). The grain lodged in the bark and sprouted the bird. Mostly, woodpeckers augured no good at all, regardless of language, from foretelling an accident to warning about the approach of evil (Hunn 1977:170; Villa Rojas 1990:321). The Ch’orti’ “particularly loathed” the Golden-fronted woodpecker, which committed the further offense of feasting voraciously on young corn (Hull and Fergus 2017:615). This is the bird of sorcerers among the Ch’orti’, Tzutujil, and probably other groups as well (Fergus and Hull 2010:10; Hull and Fergus 2017:616). If the bird were seen and heard on a road, the traveler might turn right around and head home, depending on which side the woodpecker had made his ruckus (Girard 1949:333–34; Fergus and Hull 2010:10fn6). For such a vile bird it seems strange, then, that Ch’orti’ Maya also consumed them in the first half of the 20th century (Wisdom 1940:74fn20). Among the Tzotzil too: “[h]airy woodpeckers and woodcreepers are thought to be the messengers of witches, but if they are killed they can be roasted and eaten” (Laughlin 1975:337). Ch’ol speakers appear to see the woodpecker as a mix of good and bad, a poor omen whose seasonal calls, ti’ti’ti’, nonetheless heralded the arrival of rain and future crops (Hull and Fergus 2011:47, 49). In an apparent confusion of prey with predator, the xch’ejun can, to some Tzeltal, turn into a snake, perhaps because serpents sometimes lurk in woodpecker nests. The transformation underscores the bird’s sinister mystique.

Such an abundance of words and fables would indicate some roots back in the Classic period. But images and glyphs of woodpeckers are rare. There are almost as many references, both visual and textual, to the great curassow, the “faisán” with flamboyantly curled crest (Crax rubra), sometimes seen on low branches and aggressive when cornered; when calling mates, the males boom out at almost subsonic register (Figure 1). They are said to make good eating, especially in stews, which partly accounts for their rarity today. Its names in Mayan languages, kox, k’anbul, ah tab (Yukatek, Barrera Vásquez 1980:340, 376, 749), káamb’ur and piich’ (Lacandon, Hofling 2014:204, 264), ah kox (Ch’orti’, Wisdom 1950:445; cf. canbul in Ch’olti’, Ringle n.d.:#466), ‘ub or j’is (Tzotzil, Laughlin 1988:157, 208), do not seem to match the syllabic prefix nu that prefixes their heads in two spellings, one on a carved bone in an apparent Emblem glyph (nu-‘Curassow’ AJAW), the other on Yaxchilan Stela 8 (AJ-nu-‘Curassow’). Curiously, it is the wing of this bird, a synecdoche for the creature itself, or an avian close to it, that is likely attested as a logograph KOOX?-xa (Hruby et al. 2022:159, fig. 10). A lone entry in Lacandon Maya hints that, for the curassow spellings in glyphs, a female bird was intended, nuu(k)-k’áamb’ur (Hofling 2014:242), from a common term in Lowland Mayan languages for “large,” nuk (see Ch’ol nuk~ñuj, Hopkins et al. 2010:161, 165). If this is correct, the bird head could have been read K’AM[~N?]BUL, and, on Yaxchilan Stela 8, aj-nu(k)-k’ambul, “he of the female curassow” or possibly it corresponded to a kind of k’ambul that was larger than most. By a common process in phonology, the k at the end of nuk assimilated to the initial k’ of k’ambul.

Figure 1. Probable great curassow (Crax rubra): a) female (above), male (below, Creative Commons); b) two curassow (a breeding pair?) on digging stick, K1247, northern Peten/southern Campeche (Kerr Photographic Archive, Dumbarton Oaks); c) spouted vase, Burial 2, Baking Pot, Belize (Reents-Budet et al. 2005:fig. 6f); d) heavily repainted vase, K1337, northern Peten/southern Campeche (Kerr Photographic Archive, Dumbarton Oaks); e) incised bone, unknown provenance (drawing provided by Simon Martin); and f) a probable caption for an ancestor, Stela 8, Yaxchilan (photograph by Ian Graham, Fash et al. 2022:231).

 

For woodpeckers, though, the record is lean. In the Gallery of the Monkeys, Initial Series Group at Chichen Itza, Mexico, the birds are shown jeweled, dancing with defecating monkeys (Figure 2, Taube et al. 2020:97, fig. 77). One interpretation is that the quintessential thieves of cacao pods, spider monkeys, have been assailed by guardians of (or competitors for?) such groves, inducing the monkeys to excrete processed, grindable seeds from their bottoms (Taube et al. 2020:99). In the absence of further examples, this stimulating idea remains open to further testing. What can be stressed is that, along with most “humanimals”—creatures wearing clothing and embedded within mythic time, story, and explanatory parable—the woodpecker is more than half-human: his crested and beaked head, tail and wing feathers alone mark him as a bird (for “humanimals,” see Houston and Scherer 2020).

 

Figure 2. Dancing woodpecker with defecating spider monkey, Gallery of the Monkeys, Initial Series Group, Chichen Itza, Yucatan (drawing by Karl Taube, Taube et al. 2020:fig. 77).

 

A similar set of quasi-birds/quasi-humans, occurs on a carved vase from the Chocholá area of Yucatan, doubtless part of the kingdom centered on Oxkintok (Figure 3; García Campillo 1992). It displays a woodpecker to the left, his body marked with short tandem lines that appear to cue the concept of “red” (Stone and Zender 2011:125): thus, a red woodpecker, his beak evidently pincering a grub or other morsel from bark. Note 1. As we shall see, that focus on food appears to be a key trait of the bird, as it is for avians like hummingbirds, whose thin beaks usually pierce stylized flowers. Other food (‘ib?, “bean”) and drink (ch’aj, “pinole”) are mentioned in the captions on the Chocholá vase, perhaps also cuing festivals or time of day (1-K’IN in each text). Note 2. The main figure to the left is probably a white heron, SAK-*’i-chi, the latter a word documented in Tzeltal and attested within a text from Temple XIX at Palenque, Mexico (Stuart 2005:115; see also Hunn 1977:140). The heron, his body dripping, perhaps, with water, appears to be doing most of the speaking…or chirping, as indicated by the che-he-na, “says,” expression in his caption. The social asymmetry of a human encounter maps onto birds. The woodpecker’s mouth is full in any case. The heron holds one piece of food in his hand, perhaps in exchange for a sip of pinole from the woodpecker. But this is not food one would think suitable for such birds, highlighting their anomaly here.

 

Figure 3. Exchange of food and drink between a red woodpecker and his social superior, a probable white heron; note the curved grub in the woodpecker’s beak (K4931, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks).

 

 

The earliest depiction of a woodpecker, from an Early Classic bowl at Caracol, Belize, takes us squarely to their behavior (Figure 4). It also accounts for the origin of a Maya syllable, ju, and confirms another term for woodpecker, ti’. Discovered in 2014, within a chamber in Structure C47, the bowl accompanied a multiple interment (Chase and Chase 2014:26–27; Chase and Chase 2018:8–9, fig. 5). The ceramic appears to have come from, or it refers to, a lord of the city of Bi(h?)tal, a place I identified some time ago in the inscriptions of Naranjo. Its precise location unknown, Bital probably lay somewhere between Caracol and Naranjo, and was the victim of a violent burning by Naranjo in AD 693 (S. Martin and Grube 2008:76). The drinking bowl predates all of that conflict by well over 150 years. The cartouche in question (there are several around the bowl) displays a back-crested woodpecker, no color markings visible, prefixed by a bi syllable and postfixed by a ka and probable la. Whatever is being spelled here remains opaque, but it presumably records either a drink recipe or the name of the person who owned the bowl.

 

Figure 4. Woodpecker plucking an insect from a cavity in a tree marked by both earlier (curvaceous) and later (rigid-lined) signs for TE’, “wood”; Special Deposit, C203B-16, Structure C47, Caracol, Belize; Lucha Incised bowl with red pigment applied to incisions, probably originating in the kingdom of Bital; note the early TI’ sign on the woodpecker’s beak (courtesy Arlen Chase, Caracol Archaeological Project).

 

But the imagery is clear enough. The bird with slight texturing around its eyes and a ti sign on its beak pecks and grips a stylized object that is identical to the ju syllable found across Maya writing (Figure 5). Usually found with vultures, the ti can be traced back by various iconographic steps to archaic versions of a stylized fly (Mora Marín and Glenn Mora 2022; and personal communication, David Stuart, 2024, who noted this independently). But its use here is not to emphasize the buzzing insects around vultures, tearing at carrion. Rather, it spells a well-known term for “woodpecker,” ti’. The image is saturated with encoded meaning and glyphic elaborations that may not actually have been read. The hollowed, voluted form to the right, with trilobate cavity, shows two variants of the TE’ or “wood” sign, one extending to far earlier images, the latter, with two thin lines and circles, carrying through to the Late Classic period. (They may also pin down cortex/bark or surface texture vs. heartwood.) The woodpecker appears to be either pecking for food or offering it, perhaps, to its young inside a nest. To striking extent, a primordial gourd tree on an Early Classic mirror back, unprovenanced but surely from northern Guatemala, presents plant growth with similar markings along with the trilobate hollow at its base and a sylized insect much like the ju syllable (cf. a glyph on K555, probably distinct from the ATIK logogram; S. Martin 2008:fig. 7b). The reason for the sign is not hard to find. Juk is a term in Ch’ol for “tick-like animal” or “mite,” with jukte’ refering to a “wood-boring beetle,” or merely a “kind of fly” in Tzeltal, perhaps going back to a “Central Mayan” (early and areal) label for “grub,” “worm” or “chigger,” *jut (Hopkins et al. 2011:89; Kaufman 2017:82; Polian 2018:311). Seemingly, the conflated ta sign reflects an original reading of jut, the syllable reinforcing the final /t/ in that word. In much the same way, the Maya YAX sign usually contains an infixed xa syllable to buttress its final consonant.

 

Figure 5. Bugs, tree hollows, and a phonetic syllable: a) Early Classic mirror back, unprovenanced (Sotheby’s 2025:lot 23); b) detail of Caracol bowl (photograph courtesy of Arlen Chase); and c) ju syllable (drawing by Simon Martin).

 

Almost all Maya syllables derive from words in which final consonants or semi-vowels are lopped off, leaving a consonant-vowel nucleus. This would appear to be another. The stylization, however, bears comment, for this is common with many bees or other bugs in Maya imagery, if contrasting with other depictions of insects (Houston, in press). Usually, those appear as multi-eyed bony creatures, probably as a gesture to their hard, exoskeletal exteriors (e.g., Rossi and Newman 2025:35, 37). The ju syllable stems from another view, of things too small to see, their details barely discernible, and thus inclined to graphic abstraction. How would the eye have imagined small life forms prior to van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope? Stylization might fill the gaps. As with many such glyphs, the insects are conceived, most likely, in terms of mythic prototypes (Houston and S. Martin 2012). Here, a primordial tree, on which the Principal Bird Deity sometimes perched, was riddled with bugs delectable to woodpeckers.

 

Note 1. On incised bones from Burial 116, Tikal, fish grasped by Chahk also display these lines. The striations may specify local red fish such as róbalo or blanco, a delicious cichlid (Petenia splendida), well worth taking. Some specimens from the area exhibit quite literal vertical stripes, hinting at a reference to both color and actual marks on fish scales. The doubled lines may also occur on some xib, “youth,” heads, with a possible nod to chak ch’ok or chak xib, “great youth” (Houston 2018:39–42). A rare example of the syllable lu, long held to come from a term for “catfish,” lu’ (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980:463), has two vertical stripes, perhaps a version with vivid coloring (Helmke et al. 2017:fig. 5b, as drawn below by Christophe Helmke). Alternatively, since the signs spell the word for atole, ul, it may refer to a colored gruel, perhaps flavored with annatto, an orange-red condiment.

Note 2. For the “bean” reading, see Tokovinine 2014, which offers a reasonable proposal that may still need further thought. The prefixes ya and seemingly hi are also found on this glyph in association with a mythic meal involving “God D” and a hummingbird; the context is a vessel from Tikal Burial 196, Miscellaneous Text 176, K8008 in the Kerr database of vase images. At least in these settings, the prefixes suggest a reading other than ‘ib or, as an alternative, a more complex spelling involving several morphemes, even ya-hi-‘IB.

 

Acknowledgments   Sarah Newman, always informative about creatures large and small, mentioned a useful reference that got me thinking about dinosaurs. Over several emails, Simon Martin discussed curassows, David Stuart encouraged me to work up the results here, and Arlen Chase allowed use of an image from Caracol, Belize, sending along the relevant field report as well. I would not have known of the Sotheby’s mirror back without Simon, who first alerted me to this spectacular sale of loot; Donald Hales identified the class of artifact. The present essay was composed during my appointment as the Inaugural Barbara Tedlock Fellow at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe. For other postings in the “Maya Creatures” series, see Maya Musk, Dragons, Mosquitoes, Teeth, Fox, and Dogs.

 

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Day Sign Notes: Ben / Aj

David Stuart

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

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

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

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

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

The Early Ben Sign

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

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

The Maya Trefoil

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

References Cited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frame and Ground in Maya Imagery

mayoid

Stephen Houston, Brown University

For the Late Classic Maya, imagery teased with reality. The space within a frame, the “inside,” flirted with the “outside,” the space from which viewers peered in. Visual clues hinted at the possibility of bridging the two. [1] Several carvings, most from the 8th century CE, showed an arm, scepter, headdress, smoke or fringe edging out beyond a bounded frame. That this feature was uncommon likely boosted its impact. A similar playfulness marked vases from a small group of painters, several named, in the kingdom around Motul de San José, Guatemala. Here and there a human hand or panache of feathers extended up to hide parts of glyphic text passing around the outer rims of vases (Figure 1). [2] But this was a coy game rather than a deep riddle. Informed readers could easily reconstruct the missing glyphs. The intent may have been to make rim texts resemble actual objects in space, obscured by people or things closer to the viewer. In a sense, human figures both impinged on glyphs and dominated them, in much the way that a flesh-and-blood person, vigorous and gesturing, acted in the world “outside.”

 

Figure 1. Rim band text partly obscured by elements from below, including royal costume and a feather panache. Late Classic, ca. 760–770 CE, excerpt from ceramic with polychrome slip, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1988.1177); photograph by Justin Kerr, K1439.

 

To some, thinking of non-Maya evidence, the frame could seem a near-irrelevance. Immanuel Kant argued that a frame enhanced the aesthetic appeal of things within it, but mostly, for him, the frame was little more than incidental or inessential ornament. [3] Modernists, if one can generalize, found value in removing it altogether, the better to integrate the viewer “outside” with the world “inside.” Yet the frame had a clear function. It divided the inside from the outside and, in a sportive way, expressed “self-awareness,” a subtle acknowledgement of its own existence. The feathers bursting out and smoke billowing forth implied a “limit transcended…extension rather than closure…release rather than confinement.”[4] As a simile, the frame had even broader use. Georg Simmel, interested in how individuals related to wholes, likened picture frames to acts of social separation and connection. [5] Viewers could go “inside,” and, in a few cases, perceive or construe an internal world seeping out. To Simmel, this recalled the vexed relation between individuals (entities within the frame) and society (those things or people outside it); indeed, he believed the process would be “wearing,” never easy or fully resolvable. Later, the simile would lead to other thoughts about the constitution of reality, from the “frames” of Erving Goffman to those of the Nobelists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. [6] But none of these authors conceived of works, apparently inert, that could spark with innate vitality and volition. [7] That idea always lurked behind Classic Maya imagery: the very term for “image” or “portrait” equated to that for “self,” a potential blurring of signifier and signified, of a depiction with its original. [8]

Frames further established, in theatrical and narrative terms, a mise-en-scène: setting, actors, action! Through visual editing, they sorted the world into information worth showing and that beneath notice, although the meanings of these selected views varied over European history. [9] Victorian photography singled out focal moments in plays, caught as though in the act, with self-conscious poses and explanatory captions. [10] Such displays would then influence stage productions. Perhaps the Maya also anticipated this reciprocal effect. On many Classic pots and some carvings, a defining frame coincided with the ceiling of a palace. Swagged cloth, sometimes gathered by rope or string, sagged down from above; vertical elements dividing a scene fused with palatial walls and pilasters. Frames might also house glyphic captions, where written signs could fit without cluttering the background. Looking in at these scenes, as must have been done habitually, led to expectations about how to behave outside of them. The framed images operated as small primers for elite society. The stylized gestures and poses may even reveal the conventions of Classic dance and sacred theater. [11]

The designer Edward Tufte believed that visual information needed an escape from “flatland.” [12] For him, that meant drawing close, in this or that diagram or display, to the “multivariate,” three-dimensional lushness of our “perceptual world.” Tufte’s aim was to improve communication, in graphic analogy, one presumes, to the spare prose favored by American writers: minimalist, edited to the bone, allergic to the distractions of what Tufte called “chartjunk.” [13] Those traits would have collided with the semantic density and complexity of Maya imagery, but they did accord with fully plastic carvings at places like Tonina, Mexico. Rulers “broke the fourth wall” by looking out, and usually down, towards flesh-and-blood interlocutors. [14] Like humans, the sculptures were said to “stand,” wa’laj, rooted firmly in a plastered floor or stone plinth by a butt or tenon invisible to viewers. [15]

Yet flatland had its purpose. Some figures floated, wreathed in clouds or as partly glimpsed ancestors and ethereal spirits from dreams. But they were an anomaly, and the extent to which they were thought tangible or material is unclear. A “groundline” is far more frequent, as flat and two-dimensional as it gets: a painted stroke of even width, sometimes doubled on a few ceramic scenes, perhaps to signal solidity, or a carved edge on which figures stand, sit or recline on backs or stomachs. Rulers can position themselves directly on the flesh of captives, as on Stelae 12 and 14 from Naranjo, Guatemala, or with bare feet on the uneven contours of a hill, an image from Stela 2 at Nim Li Punit, Belize. But it is the groundline that confirms the inescapability of gravity. In most Mayan languages, to be a child of a woman, a weighty burden for mothers, involved a word that was either a close homophone of “heavy” or cognate with it. [16] This was a condition of gravity-bound humans, from uterus to birth and beyond. Curiously, sky had weight, held aloft by Atlantean figures or humans impersonating them. [17] For gods and their consorts, enthroned kings too, the sky might appear to be kind of groundline, as solid, evidently, as any of earth or stone. Often shown as a band of bounded signs, it was less arching and ethereal than rectilinear and subject to right-angle jags.

Groundlines might be repeated. A Classic Maya vase, from ca. 750 CE, here shown rolled out, has a line at its base, with various crouching or seated supernaturals, including a bug spewing some flowing substance while interacting with an aged god (Figure 2). Above is another groundline. It meanders because it was painted after the figures. A straighter path across the surface would have obscured important details of costume. Figures pair or triple up interactively. A mosquito appears to bite another aged deity, a trope found in a few Maya images, and, as excess or excrement, blood squirts out in blobs from his rear, dribbling over a heedless deity below. [18] In Maya conventions, to appear in the upper part of an image is to be further back in space. To notional extent, the first row, to the bottom, lay closer to the viewer than the row above. One file of beings, some festooned with eyeballs, had no clear contact with the other, although both do eventually come to address a figure on a sky throne to the right. This pattern is found in other images with deities: one line above, another above, both facing the dominant god on his throne. [19]

 

Figure 2. Groundlines supporting mosquitoes, insects, aged gods, a bird, and spotted youthful deities. Late Classic, ca. 750 CE, excerpt from ceramic with polychrome slip, probably Department of Peten, Guatemala, current location unknown; photograph by Justin Kerr, K9255

 

The violation of groundlines is an earmark of deities or primordial events. In virtually all instances, a body rising from below occurs solely with supernaturals or with the first couple emerging from an underground cavity. [20] But, in ceramic scenes, there are no figures plunging from above, partly “off-camera” so to speak. Indeed, that would be a case of spatial illogic. The base of a vase sits on firm ground, accessible to ascending things, while its rim opens to a cavity, to nothing. Yet there is a visual paradox, one related to the supposed firmness of matter. In Maya imagery, interred people, signs for completed time, or deities or figures in conversation occur within a quatrefoil, a four-lobed outline that shows them underground, under the earth’s surface yet somehow visible (Figure 3). That space was linked to a “heart,” an ohl, the center of a body, one belonging to a cosmic turtle floating on a primordial sea. [21] Along with other flat surfaces, the carapace defined a groundline that appeared to be impenetrable or difficult to traverse. Through special sight, however, the viewer acquired that capacity. Concealed knowledge disclosed itself, and, by a god-like power, boundaries came to seem porous.

Figure 3. Deceased lord shown underground. Late Classic, possibly 774 CE, area of Lacanha, Mexico, Art Institute of Chicago (1971.895)

 

Notes

1 I thank Andrew Scherer for comments on a draft of this essay. For general points here: Paul Crowther, Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (Even the Frame) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 98; Glenn Peers, Sacred Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2004), 1; Rebecca Zorarch, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 152.

2 Bryan R. Just, Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum, 2012), figs. 75, 81, 86, 93, 103, 110, 120,121, 123, 126, 129, 140, 141, 148, 149.

3 Bente Kiilerich, “Savedoff, Frames, and Parergonality,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001), 320, 321.

4 Verity Platt and Michael Squire, “Framing the Visual in Greek and Roman Antiquity: An Introduction,” in Verity Platt and Michael Squire, ed., The Frame in Classic Art: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 41, 71. On “limited transcended”: Jeffrey Hurwit, “Image and Frame in Greek Art,” American Journal of Archaeology 81 (1977), 5.

5 Georg Simmel, “The Picture Frame: An Aesthetic Study,” Theory, Culture & Society 11 (1994), 16–17.

6 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 10, 11; implementing these concepts in practice, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” Science 211:30 (1981), 457.

7 Stephen Houston, The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 76–102

8 Stephen Houston, David Stuart, and Karl Taube, The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 58–61.

9 Christine Traber, “In Perfect Harmony? Escaping the Frame in the Early 20th Century,” in Eva Mendgen, ed., In Perfect Harmony: Picture + Frame, 1850–1920 (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1995), 221, 222.

10 Daniel A. Novak, “Caught in the Act: Photography on the Victorian Stage,” Victorian Studies 59:1 (2016), 36, fig. 4.

11 For an analogy: Stephen Houston, The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 1.

12 Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information (Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1990), 12.

13 Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1983), 107, 121.

14 Stephen Houston, “The Fourth Wall,” Maya Decipherment Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography – Boundary End Archaeological Research Center (2017), https://mayadecipherment.com/2017/06/28/the-fourth-wall-belief-and-alief/, accessed Aug. 18, 2025.

15 David Stuart, “Shining Stones: Observations on the Ritual Meaning of Early Maya Stelae,” in Julia Guernsey et al., eds., The Place of Stone Monuments: Context, Use and Meaning in Mesoamerica’s Preclassic Tradition (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 289–96. Conceptually, they might have been regarded as stone versions of wooden images erected or forced into the ground, as in yookte’l baah; see Tonina Monument 183, yookte’l baah, Ángel A. Sánchez Gamboa, Alejandro Sheseña and Guido Krempel, “Nuevos datos sobre Aj Ch’aaj Naah, Aj K’uhuun de Toniná,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 105: 2 (2019), fig. 2b. 16.

16 Terrence Kaufman and William Norman, “An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology and Vocabulary,” In John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, eds., Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication 9 (Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 1984), 115; Terrence Kaufman, with John Justeson, A Preliminary Maya Etymological Dictionary (2003),1403, http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf, accessed, Aug. 18, 2025.

17 Stephen Houston, Andrew Scherer, and Karl Taube, “A Sculptor at Work,” in Stephen Houston, ed., A Maya Universe in Stone (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2021), fig. 19.

18 Michael D. Coe, The Maya Scribe and His World (New York: The Grolier Club 1973), pl. 64.

19 Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston, The Maya, 10th edition (London: Thames & Hudson, 2022), figs. 5.40, 6.8.

20 Michael D. Coe, Lords of the Underworld: Masterpieces of Classic Maya Ceramics (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1978), pl. 16; see also K8540 in the Justin Kerr database housed at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. On an unpublished vessel in a private collection, a trumpeter rises up, only his torso visible, from the area near the base of mythic tree.

21 Houston et al., Memory of Bones, 36, 186, figs. 1.37, 5.5; Karl A. Taube, William A. Saturno, David Stuart, and Heather Hurst, The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 2: The West Wall, Ancient America 10 (Bernardsville, NC: Boundary End Archaeology Research Center, 2010), 72–75, figs. 46–74.

Day Sign Notes: Imix / Imox

David Stuart

David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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