Canonical Space and Maya Markets

Stephen Houston (Brown University)

In his account of the great Aztec market at Tlatelolco, Bernal Díaz del Castillo spoke of its varied merchandise. Among the wonders were gold, precious stones, rope, deer skin, wild animals, honey cake and tripe, pottery, pitch-pine, human excrement for salt and curing of skins, paper, timber, boards, metal axes, gourds, flint knives—Díaz almost grew weary of their description, “porque es para no acabar tan presto de contar por menudo todas las cosas” (Díaz del Castillo 2011:96–99). But there were also male and female slaves, many lashed to long poles across their necks. The slaves were brought and sold in such quantity as to recall, for Díaz, the Portuguese trade of Blacks in “Guinea” (Díaz del Castillo 2011:97–99). Free and enslaved people were so plentiful at Tlatelolco that they could be heard, he said, a league away.

A joint description in text and image comes Fray Diego de Durán, in a manuscript now in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (Figure 1). Probably written in his hand, albeit drawn from varying sources, this document of c. 1574–1581 drew on illustrations that were in part cut from another document and then glued on the page before relevant passages (Milne 1984:3; Robertson 1968:343). This is one of those images, as can be seen from the distinct color of its paper, slightly skewed placement, and overlap with previously written text. Puzzling out where Durán and his associates got their information is to grapple, perhaps fruitlessly, with the fusions, rejections, authorial complexity, and tumult of the era. Was the document and its kin informed by biblical history (Driggers 2020:184–185; Milne 1984:384), previous books or oral history (Milne 1984:381), pre-Columbian or early Colonial pictorials of assured skill and knowledge (Driggers 2020:189) or adorned with paintings taken from Franciscan workshops under the supervision of Bernardino de Sahagún (Milne 1984:393)? What can be assumed is that the preparation of this document was thoughtful. Mutual reinforcement took place between text and image.

Figure 1. Market, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme (Durán 1579:301v, http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000169486&page=1).

The written description is, at times, focused on physical attributes. “The markets of this land were all closed (off) by large (standing) walls and facing (opposite) the temples of the gods or to one side” (Durán 1880:217, my translation). Durán also emphasized the orderly timing and specialization of markets, so that, for example, dogs could be had in Acolman, slaves in Azcapotzalco and Izocan [Itzocan] (Durán 1880:219). Slaves, some taken in war, demonstrated grace of movement by being forced to dance or sing. (One can imagine the heaviness of heart.) Others had committed crimes, fallen into debt from gambling, disobeyed parents or become so hungry from want that slavery seemed the only recourse for their families. There would be fewer mouths to feed (Durán 1880:220–222). “Collars” of wood or metal kept the slaves symbolically marked, psychologically disadvantaged, and physically manageable. Grabbing a person’s arm or leg risked injury; grabbing a neck-stick kept the slave at safe distance (Durán 1880:220). [1] These sticks go far back in time, appearing in a Late Classic stucco of captives or slaves from the Maya city of Tonina, Chiapas (Houston et al. 2006:fig. 5.13). Presumably, sticks could double as garrotes, if not to execute then to control by restricting air and blood flow to the brain.

Payment for slaves was in textile mantles, gold jewelry, and greenstone (Durán 1880:224). The denial of liberty extended to cages or wooden chambers, evidently to house slaves or those castigated by law (Durán 1880:222). Relative freedom of movement may have accorded with the kind of slave. Enemy warriors or intended sacrifices for priestly “olocaustos” (Durán’s word) were let loose at peril. They might fight or flee. A child or debtor posed less risk. Colonial sources indicate that market stalls (“a house, a post”) could be personal property (Johnson 2018:100–101). Regulating the whole were ordinances and religious orientations, the latter of special disdain to Durán (1880:215-216; for “directors” of markets, see Sahagún 1979:67–69).

Durán’s focus on slaves may account for the image. Was this some glancing allusion to the Babylonian captivity of the Old Testament, or to the benighted state of the Aztecs? By the thinking of the day, they were, after all, a “lost tribe” of Israel, Christianity their redemption (Driggers 2020:184). Or was he placing emphasis on such trade because it was in fact a dominant concern? That emphasis can be overstated in view of the stupendous inventory of trade goods at Aztec markets. At the same time, by many accounts, human trafficking was undoubtedly present. Some comments on the scene identify three buyers and six sellers (Russo 2005:73). That is unlikely. Two of the latter, a male and a female, bear wooden staves at the neck, marking their status as slaves. This would mean that all the sellers—there are four, two of higher status to judge from their mats—happen to be women. This gendering contrasts strongly with slave merchants elsewhere in the world, especially the male slavers of ancient Rome or the horrors of Price, Birch, and Co. in Alexandria, Virginia (Harris 1980:129–132; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283193).

Durán highlights payment in mantles, gold, and greenstone. These occur throughout the scene, some in baskets. They could simply have been precious objects for sale (Driggers 2020:52). If the focus were on slaves, they might also have been payments from past transactions. The small squares resemble 1/5 tablets of gold (although their white color fails to fit that view) or, from a tablet superimposed on mantles in the Tribute Record of Tlapa, a unit of 400 textiles (Gutiérrez 2013:fig. 6.3). Perhaps the female slave is spinning for the vendor’s needs or displaying a valued skill to a buyer.

Durán (1880:215) also stressed “round stones worked as large as a round shield and in them sculpted a round figure as a figure of the sun with some paintings in the manner of roses around them with some round circles.” In Aztec writing, this corresponds to the sign for TIĀNQUIZ, “market” (Peñafiel 1895:pls. 79, 99). The buyers and sellers sit within the sign. Yet another emblem, perhaps a stone marker or altar (momoztli), appears dead center. That sign contains an inner, gold circle, a token of the sun, affirming a proposal that the celebrated Calendar Stone of the Aztecs was such an altar, albeit in Tenochtitlan rather than Tlaltelolco (Stuart 2018:214-215). In Durán’s words, it was “a figure of the sun” but ensconced within a market, its circular outline tied to both meanings.[2] A perceptive study of these carvings and their relation to markets has recognized several such “disks” in the corpus of Aztec sculpture (López Luján and Olmedo 2010).

Glyphs or stylized and condensed depictions of markets occur in several manuscripts of Colonial date (Figure 2). The sign itself has an almost flowery, jewel-like fringe and roseate glow but above all a circular outline (Mundy 1996:fig. 67). The visual overlap with the fans of merchants, pōchtēca, and the main disk in the place name of Pochtlan is probably no coincidence (Peñafiel 1895:pl. 59). Others point to a connection, common among the Aztecs, between war, trading, and similar insignia among high-ranking soldiers (López Luján and Olmedo 2010:18; a suspicion also gathers around the so-called La Ventanilla “Composite Stela” at Teotihuacan as a publicly mounted disk—of foreign merchants?—in the style of El Tajín, Veracruz [Cabrera Castro 2-17:108, fig. 14.2]). At times, the TIĀNQUIZ shows the dotted circumference of a formal “wall,” TENĀN/TENĀM (Figure 3b, c, d, e, cf. Codex Mendoza signs for the towns of Teotenanco [folio 10r] and Tenançinco [folio 10v]; Karttunen 1983:224). Some glyphs feature a confused welter of footprints, a sign of dense movement (Figure 3b, d); the “sand,” XĀL, in Xaltianquizco, may be both lexical and practical, a surface suited to shuffling feet (Figure 2b).

Figure 2. TIĀNQUIZ signs and depictions: (a) Codex Mendoza, c. 1541 (folio 67r, © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford); (b) Codex Mendoza, Xaltianquizco, c. 1541 (folio 16v, © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford); (c) Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, c. mid-16h-century (Museo Regional de Cholula [Museo Casa del Alfeñique]; Asselbergs 2008, https://upcolorado.com/component/k2/item/2884-the-lienzo-de-quauhquechollan, photograph by Bob Schalkwijk); (d) Matrícula de Huexotcinco, c. 1560 (folio 541r, National Library of France, https://www.wdl.org/en/item/15282/); (e) Relación Geográfica map of Tetlistaca, 1581 (JGI xxv-12, Benson Latin American Collection, The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin); and (f) Relación Geográfica map of Muchitlan, 1582 (JGI xxv-13, Benson Latin American Collection, The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, https://www.wdl.org/en/item/407/view/1/1/).

Echoing Durán, there is some pairing with temples, including Christian churches, or in many instances—depictions of Conquest-period Guatemala come to mind—walled precincts that contrast with cleared circular places (Figure 3c; Asselbergs 2008:figs. 24–27). As Durán notes, such areas were suitable for dance, and, in one source, lightened circles without walls denote markets: i.e., some were more formal than others (Figure 2c, Asselbergs 2008:fig. 12). The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, as in Codex Mendoza, show them pierced by roads or with routes passing nearby. A more daring idea is that the circularity was cosmic in intent, to fix markets “in the center of the universe” (Russo 2005:75). That might have been reflected in the walls and four-part entrances of an unusual, rectangular depiction of a market in the Relación Geográfica of Cempoala, Veracruz (Figure 3). The object or place in the center with scalloped edge is the target of movement, a focus within a broader precinct.

Figure 3. Market with four entrances, Cempoala, Veracruz, 1580 (JGI XXV-10, Benson Latin American Collection, The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, https://www.wdl.org/en/item/438/).

A vignette from the Codex Mendoza injects a certain pathos. Fathers instructed 6-year old boys to go to the market so that they might collect spilled maize or “beans and other miserable things that the traders left scattered” (Berdan and Anawalt 1997:120). The Codex is notorious for its austere model of parenting. Some punishments involved beating, jabbing with maguey spikes; dry chile was forced into the nostrils of immobilized children. A less literal view of the vignette is that it concerned “the disciplining of material and domestic space in order to achieve cosmic order” (Driggers 2020:119fn24). The raw nopal tuna gnawed by one child mirrors, in a symmetry of human and vegetal states, “their shared ‘rawness’ in Mexica thought” (Driggers 2020:119fn24). But I see a harsher reality. It is possible the scene reveals the depth of food insecurity in the Mexica metropolis—recall Duran’s mention of hunger and enslavement. Every bean or grain counted. Moreover, the scratching, plucking, and furtive chewing affect the archaeological study of markets. They might well have been intensively scavenged. What was dropped by vendors or buyers on the floor of the market did not necessarily stay put.

Figure 3. Scavenging in the market at age six, Codex Mendoza, 1541 (folio 58r, © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford).

A major concern in Mesoamerican studies is how later material, or that far away, relates to other reaches of its vast sprawl. This applies to markets. After much debate, most Mayanists concede the presence of such facilities during the Classic Period (e.g., Cap 2015; Dahlin et al. 2007; King 2015; Martin 2012). As one example of many, what had seemed to be unrelated features—a proposed water-conservation measure for agriculture at Ixtutz, Guatemala—can now be reinterpreted as market stalls (Chase and Chase 1983; cf. Chase et al. 2015:230; Jacobo 1993, who detected unusual concentrations of phosphate in this zone).

In 1984, equipped with a preliminary map from Ian Graham, I did a compass survey of Dos Pilas, Guatemala, a Classic Maya city with many inscriptions. Graham was a superlative mapper, a legend with limited resources yet boundless gumption. But he had not noticed that certain low walls on his plan went over masonry. They connected as a system of concentric walls, not just in its main plaza but around the pyramid of El Duende about 1 km to the east. Theodolite mapping in 1986 for my doctoral research laid these out in far greater detail (Figure 4; Houston 1987:Maps 3, 5; reproduced in Houston 1993:Site Maps 1, 3). In my dissertation, I interpreted the small, rectangular features marked in pale red as a “squatter” settlement and the walls, here in light blue, as “defensive bulwarks” of late date; these consisted of material obviously robbed from preexisting buildings (Houston 1987:383, 386).

Figure 4. Concentric walls at Dos Pilas, Guatemala (Houston 1987:Map 3).

There was always a problem. The walls went directly over buildings, in ways that did not make any practical defensive use of the elevated palace to the south. The layout seemed instead to be planar or geometric, designed to preserve a regular concentricity, a determined circularity. Nor, being chock-a-block, did the “squatter” settlement conform to any clear pattern of contemporary communities. I also had doubts the section to the north was ever finished. The builders appear to have piled up field stone at regular intervals, a standard practice for lengths of masonry, but they failed to connect them. Excavations by Joel Palka in these deposits, as part of a wider project by Vanderbilt University, later found abundant trade goods (Fine Grey) and confirmed the density of platforms (Palka 1980; Palka et al. 1991).[3] In 1984, guards at the site had shown me pieces of jade beads recovered from the “squatter” village. They had disturbed the alignments and low walls to make it easier to cut grass in the plaza. Loose stones dulled their machetes and were thus collected and piled up at the base of trees. The small platforms were probably far more numerous in the past.

My doubts grew when, decades later, I visited the site of Pueblito, Guatemala, with my former student, Sarah Newman. In important research that has yet to be followed up, Juan Pedro Laporte and his team discovered what appeared to be market stalls and identified them as such (Laporte and Chocon 2008). During my stay, I saw and walked the same sorts of concentric walls that I knew well from Dos Pilas, but here concentrated on the monumental plaza with plain stelae; the area with stalls lay a few meters away. Market stalls seem also be present at nearby Ixtutz, Guatemala (Chase and Chase 1983; Chase et al. 2015; Jacobo 1993). The pattern of relatively late, c. 8th-9th century walls occurs at a number of sites, a few with the concentric walls that baffled me at Dos Pilas (Figure 5). As at Dos Pilas, Xuenkal, Yucatan, excludes a major construction; a wall at Cuca, also in Yucatan, climbs over a substantial platform; and there have been suggestions that the walls at Ek Balam, Yucatan—their thickness is greater than elsewhere—tend to be more symbolic than defensive (Lundy 2016:100, citing William Ringle and George Bey, the original mappers and excavators of the ruin).

Figure 5. Walls, some concentric, at Ek Balam (Houck 2004:fig. 2, map provided to Houck by William Ringle), Cuca (Webster 1978:fig. 5), and Xuenkal (Manahan et al. 2012:fig. 2).

A lidar survey confirms that these concentric systems are found far beyond settlements in Yucatan, appearing also in southwestern Campeche (Figure 6; Ruhl et al. 2019). The discoverers believe that these settlements, which they identify as markets, are distinct from the “hastily erected defensive walls…or more carefully constructed fortifications” of sites such as Cuca or Dos Pilas (Ruhl et al. 2018:88). But perhaps the concentric arrangements are closer than first apparent: all have a post-hoc quality, look (at least superficially) to be Late Classic or Terminal Classic in date, abut or pass over preceding construction, and selectively exclude monumental architecture. At times, the estrangement from past dynastic rituals could be acute. At Dos Pilas, as I saw from mapping in 1984 and 1986, the rupture was blunt and brutal. Walls elsewhere were more seamlessly integrated with preexisting buildings.

Figure 6. Concentricity and probable markets, G-LiHT transects, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Ruhl et al. 2018:fig. 3, excerpt).

“Symbolic” is an expansive yet loose term. But, to come full circle (so to speak), these finds could reflect a particular moment in Classic and Terminal Classic history. Spaces and planar shapes deemed canonical—appropriate to this or that function—arose from pragmatic choices. If these were markets, a matter to be confirmed by close study on the ground, then they closed off access, protected stored goods (what vendor leaves a stall unsecured?), afforded a sense of security for economic transactions, and assisted regulation, monitoring, and even taxation. Goods moving in and out could be monitored. Nor is there reason to exclude defense, for marketing and warfare were known companions in Postclassic Mexico. But there was also a strong sense of signaling. As hinted by the TIĀNQUIZ sign, markets should, by broad understanding, be notionally circular: they are, as much as any square or rectangular plaza, a canonical space. Accordingly, a later emblem of centrality and orderly trade may have arisen from a Maya precedent in the final years of the Classic period, or at least from eastern Mesoamerica in general.[4] Links with the Aztec or speakers of Nahuatl are documented by several Maya gods that tie into central Mexican ones; reciprocally, the Dresden Codex, a Maya book, records several Mexican deities (Taube and Bade 1991; Whittaker 1986).

Possibly, the walls also kept people in. This is the most speculative and disquieting part of the argument: some of these facilities may have been pens, the corrals of people. The degree to which the Classic Maya slaved is unclear. The non-locals (11–16%) found by chemical studies of bone at Tikal—the samples are not large, however—could reflect this practice (Wright 2012). Aztec neck-sticks are almost copies of those on the much-afflicted, Late Classic captives at Tonina (see above). Pietro Martire d’Anghiera mentions that a native canoe encountered by Columbus was “drawn by naked slaves with ropes around their necks,” and Diego de Landa leaves no doubts about the abundance of slaving, often to trade for cacao, and attributed “this evil” to a particular group, the Cocom, i.e., he historicized it, fixed it as a development in time (Tozzer 1941:36, 36fn175, 94). For the Classic Maya, Mary Miller notes many ceramic figurines, including finely dressed women, with what appear to be slave-ropes around their necks (personal communication, 2019).

Was this, as Andrew Scherer suggests to me, the darker side of the Terminal Classic? Dynasties might raid, but they could also shield. Their unraveling, the evident movements of people, and the new ethnic presences documented by Simon Martin (2020:290–294, 296–297, fig. 73) led potentially to vigorous profit and a frayed social contract. This might have been especially the case for the “internationalization” of slaving, a trade highlighted by early Colonial sources. In Africa, according to a chilling appraisal by two economic historians, the “marginal value of people as captives [rose] above their marginal value as producers to be taxed…[with an] incentive to produce ‘outsiders’ who can be raided” (Whatley and Gillizeau 2010:573). For the Yoruba in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, war yielded slaves, slaving drove war, with no small capital outlay required to mount campaigns and to house slaves in enclosures known as ita (Ojo 2008:80–81). Brokers, chiefs, warriors—all profited from human misery. For a time, and perhaps among the Terminal Classic Maya, fluid trade could coexist with fragmenting societies.

[1] The term for “slave” in Nahuatl (TLĀCOH-TLI) is a near-homophone for “staff, pole” (TLACŌ-TL, David Stuart, personal communication, 2020; see Karttunen 1983:256). This may have been a metonym, an object standing for (and even depersonalizing) its referent or perhaps, because of the divergent vowels, the association was fortuitous.

[2] Durán refers to another altar that has yet to be discovered by urban excavation (Stuart 2018:23). The distant analogy of Maya altars suggests a logical dyad, the moon. Altars or ballcourt markers with moon deities include Caracol Altar 25, Tenam Rosario Altar 1, and Quirigua Altar Q.

[3] The broader mesh of trade in the region has since been emphasized to the south, in and around the upper and middle reaches of the Pasión River, Guatemala (Kovacevich 2006; Demarest et al. 2014).

[4] The operative concept is probably the pan-Mayan word pet, “circular” or “round” (Kaufman and Norman 1984:128). To my knowledge, the glyphic version of this, a circle within a circle, was first deciphered by Nikolai Grube. The graphic origin is doubtless that of a hard stone ear spool, an object of great value and patient manufacture. The sign is employed as a verb to indicate the creation of some rounded thing and, less literally, as the completion of a carving. See K1180, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (#1988.1182), in which a monkey-scribe holds up a rounded object near a verb PET-ta-ja, pehtaj, “it is rounded” (photograph courtesy of Justin Kerr). The insertion of the hand and rounded object into the vertical, glyphic passage is probably a self-conscious integration of text with image.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Charles Golden, Takeshi Inomata, Simon Martin, Mary Miller, Joel Palka, Andrew Scherer, David Stuart, and Karl Taube for useful discussion, and to Oswaldo Chinchilla and Nicholas Dunning for help with figures. Sarah Newman defrayed the costs of our productive visit to Pueblito and was, as ever, full of insight and energy. For Nahuatl words, including those spelling in hieroglyphs, I use the spellings with vowel length in the authoritative dictionary by Karttunen (1983). The online dictionary edited by Stephanie Wood is also a wide-ranging tool for scholars (https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/content/welcome-nahuatl-dictionary).

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A Parallel Long-Reckoning between the Chilam Balam of Chumayel and a Hieroglyphic Inscription from Yaxchilan

by Jorge L. Orejel (Infosys Limited)

Editor’s Note:

In 1990 Jorge Orejel, then a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, made an important contribution to Maya epigraphy with his decipherment of the “axe/comb” hieroglyph as ch’ak, “to chop” (Orejel 1990). This glyph appears in the Dresden Codex as well as in historical inscriptions where it represents a term for conquest and military defeat, as we have explored recently in the complex chronicles of warfare on Naranjo’s Stela 12. Jorge wrote his decipherment in the series Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, published by The Center for Maya Research and its later iteration, the Boundary End Archaeological Research Center. Several years ago he submitted another study on the fascinating text on Step VII of Yaxchilan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, where the same ch’ak verb occurs three times in a mythological context. My father George Stuart, the editor of the RRAMW since it inception, was ill around the time Jorge submitted his second contribution, and with my dad’s passing in 2014 the paper failed to appear as part of that long-lasting series. The Research Reports may yet be re-conceived as an ongoing publication, but in many ways its function has been supplanted by other outlets, including this Maya Decipherment blog. In that spirit we here present Jorge’s paper at long last in on-line form, without further delay, appearing many years after it was first written.

I would like to thank Jorge for his infinite patience, and to Jeff Splitstoser for his hard work in getting the article formatted.

– David Stuart

Reference:

Orejel, Jorge L. 1990. The “Axe/Comb” Glyph as ch’ak. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, number 31. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C.

Click here for A Parallel Long-Reckoning between the Chilam Balam of Chumayel and a Hieroglyphic Inscription from Yaxchilan, by Jorge L. Orejel.

YAX HS2 Bl7
Step VII of Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 (Drawing by Ian Graham, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program, Peabody Museum, Harvard University)

 

A Captive’s Story: Xub Chahk of Ucanal

by David Stuart (University of Texas at Austin)

The written history of the Classic Maya names many important war captives, most of whom are only vague to us as historical figures. Typically they appearin terse statements such as “so-and-so was captured,” with little if any historical context. For example, we know precious little about “Jeweled Skull,” the celebrated prisoner of Yaxuun Bahlam IV (Bird Jaguar IV) of Yaxchilan, nor do we know the backstory of K’awiil Mo’, the Palenque lord taken by the king of Tonina. This shouldn’t be too surprising, since many of these obscure characters were warriors or junior members of rival courts, not terribly prominent even in the records of their home communities. Exceptions come about when high kings are defeated and taken, such as the Copan ruler Waxaklajuun UBaah K’awiil, who was famously defeated in war by his Quirigua rival.

Here I point to another interesting exception, a prisoner who seems to have had an eventful life both before and after he was taken as a prisoner of war. His name was Xub Chahk (or perhaps Xuxub Chahk, “Whistling Chahk”), and he ruled at the present-day site of Ucanal during the late eighth century (Note 1). In 796 CE he was captured by the king of Yaxha, K’inich Lakamtuun, during a time of unusual political instability and warfare in the eastern Petén, spurred by the wars of an aggressive ruler of Naranjo named Itzamnaaj K’awiil. A handful of inscriptions of the period highlight these wars, especially Naranjo’s Stela 12 and the recently excavated “Komkom Vase” from Baking Pot, Belize. Xub Chahk (as we will call him) was on the losing end of the conflict with Yaxha, but from there his story continued and took on new complexity. As I will explore here, he was later displayed as a prisoner of Caracol’s king, years after his capture. Somehow he was “transferred” from one kingdom to another and perhaps even had a longer life than most war captives. Xuxub Chahk’s complex story consists of short, terse episodes of written history, and the means by which we can interpret them relies (as is usually the case) on circumstantial evidence and a good deal of reading between the lines. Nevertheless, his narrative seems unique in the annals of Classic Maya history, as a ruler of one realm who became a prisoner of two others.

Yaxha Stela 31 and the Capture of Xub Chaak

Figure 1. Front of Yaxha Stela 31. Drawing by I. Graham, Photo (replica) by D. Stuart

What we know of Xub Chahk’s story begins in 796 CE with Stela 31 of Yaxha, a Late Classic monument that was erected in that site’s Plaza E, just to the south of the impressive North Acropolis (Figure 1). The front of the stela displays a complex scene of what might be called “ritual capture,” with a richly dressed warrior-king – clearly a god-impersonator – standing above a diminutive captive who is stripped of nearly all clothing. The inscription of six glyph blocks (A1-B3) provides some key historical information about the scene (Figure 2).

The Calendar Round (CR) date is 13 Ix 2 Zac, followed by a playfully conflated spelling of the verb chuhkaj, “(he) was captured” (chu-ka-ja, with the first and third syllabic elements graphically combined). Using a date recorded on the left side of the stela (to be discussed momentarily) we can narrow down the CR date to 12 Ix 2 Zac CR date to 9.18.5.16.14, or August 11, 796 CE. The name of the captive comes in the following two blocks followed by what seems to be a title at B3, with a damaged glyph topped by AJAW.

Figure 2. Main caption from Yaxha’s Stela 13. Photo by D. Stuart

Inspection of the details on the original monument shows that the name is spelled xu-bu (B2) CHAHK-ki (A3), and the final glyph is surely K’AN-na-WITZ-NAL-AJAW(B3). This is the place or emblem glyph we know to be associated with the archaeological site of Ucanal, Guatemala, located approximately 22 kilometers to the south of Yaxha (first identified by Peter Mathews) (See Stuart 1987). The text on the stela’s front is therefore a simple and direct statement of a conflict with Ucanal and of Xub Chahk’s capture.

We also find two small glyphs within the scene, placed just above the head of the small captive (see Figure 1). The two glyphs are somewhat eroded but they clearly seem to constitute another Calendar Round date. Visible is the day 12 Ben and an eroded month sign that is surely one of the Sihoom months (Ch’en, Yax, Zac, and Ceh). I suspect that this msut be 12 Ben 1 Zac, exactly one day prior to the date recorded in the main caption, thus 9.18.5.16.13 12 Ben 1 Zac. Why would it be included here as a “secondary text”? We can speculate that the smaller date, more integral to the scene that the larger caption above, gives us the specific time of the defeat in battle, whereas his formal capture and tying-up came a day later. Whatever the case, it is interesting that the ancient historian and designer who composed this complex scene decided to differentiate the two events.

The inscribed sides of the monument begin with a Calendar Round for the Period Ending 9.18.7.0.0 9 Ahau 3 Ceh, which is most likely the stela’s dedication date. Some hieroglyphs are difficult to make out due to erosion and damage, but the last three on the left side, following the date, seem to record one or more ancient place names corresponding to the location of the stela. One of these locational glyphs reads hi-HIX-BIH-TUUN-ni, hix bihtuun, “Jaguar Causeway(?),” perhaps the proper name of the plaza or alternatively of the long sacbe feature running roughly north-south from Lake Yaxha towards the Maler Group. Stela 31 is located directly on this path, just to the east of the site’s massive E-Group. Several hieroglyphs on the right side of the stela are also damaged or missing, but clearly at the end we find mention of a scattering ceremony and the recognizable name of K’inich Lakamtuun, one of only a handful of historical names we can associate with Yaxha’s dynasty (Figure 3). This ruler, the last we know from Yaxha’s history, is otherwise known from his portrait on Yaxha Stela 13, dedicated a few years earlier on 9.18.3.0.0, and, as we will see, also through several mentions in historical texts from Naranjo and Baking Pot, Belize, where he appears as the victim of military attacks against Yaxha in the year 799 (Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe 2018:70-71). We can be sure that K’inich Lakamtuun is the victorious warrior depicted on Stela 13 a few years before this own defeat at the hands of Naranjo’s ruler.

Figure 3. The name K’inich Lakamtuun, from Yaxha Stela 13 (drawing by D. Stuart)

Stela 31 is an unusual sculpture. K’inich Lakamtuun wears a massive ornate headdress and he seems to move with a bit more dynamism than we usually see in a Maya king. His spear appears as a diagonal line running toward the prisoner, clearly indicating the moment of capture. Depictions of captives are common on stelae, of course, but such scenes of violence and defeat are exceedingly rare on the monuments of the central lowlands. Far more common are the standard portraits of kings or queens in their ritual attire, overseeing a Period Ending and from time to time accompanied by a depiction of a bound prisoner.

The scene is also highly unusual among other capture scenes in Maya art in being overtly mythologized. K’inich Lakamtuun is far more than an armed warrior; he displays the features of the Jaguar God of the Underworld, and his massive headdress looms above, replete with cosmological and ancestral imagery. The three large hieroglyphs at the very bottom of the scene emphasize the ruler’s divine attributes, stating that the capture “is the work of Chak ? Ik’ Chiwooj?,” a name that corresponds nicely with the jaguar attributes of the portrait. We can assume that this is the supernatural identity of K’inich Lakamtuun, given he is the protagonist of the stela and the side inscription.

Stela 31’s record of a war between the rulers of Yaxha and Ucanal is the first known historical connection between these two important centers of the eastern Peten. Their relationship must have been eventful over the course of the Classic period, however, given their close proximity, yet this history is largely missing due to the relative lack of legible texts at both sites, despite their importance, have very few legible inscriptions. Those of Yaxha are badly fragmented and date mostly to the Early Classic era. Of its Late Classic monuments, only Stela 13 and 31 have any legible contents and both date to the reign of our protagonist K’inich Lakamtuun. Ucunal’s surviving texts are small in number as well, and cluster more toward the Terminal Classic era, without a single identifiable mention of Yaxha. One of its prominent rulers of the Classic period was Itzamnaaj Bahlam, who would later be captured by K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Chahk of Naranjo in 701 CE; presumably he was Xub Chahk’s distant predecessor on the throne, and likely a royal ancestor.

K’inich Lakamtuun’s own personal history as a ruler of Yaxha provides a good case study of the political infighting among kingdoms in the region at the end of the eighth century. We have direct indications that he ruled at Yaxha in 793 (Stela 13) and in 796 (Stelae 31), but he was defeated by Naranjo’s king Itzamnaaj K’awiil only short time later, in 799, as recorded as part of a very complex historical narrative recounted on the back of Stela 12 of Naranjo (see Figure 6). In that inscription Yaxha is repeatedly cited as a target of attacks and conquests throughout the summer of that year, seemingly led by Itzamnaaj K’awill against his enemy K’inich Lakamtuun, who ultimately was captured on or before September 4, 799 (9.18.9.0.13 1 Ben 6 Ceh). K’inich Lakamtuun’s capture of Xub Chahk was only a short-lived victory, therefore, for he himself was forced to flee Yaxha on at least two occasions before being captured only three years later. But what was the fate of his own illustrious prisoner?

Caracol Altar 23 and the Display of Xub Chahk

Altar 23 of Caracol was dedicated on the Period Ending 9.18.10.0.0 10 Ahau 8 Zac (August 16, 800 CE), just shortly after the accession of the new local ruler K’inich Joy K’awiil (Figure 4). It was one of several monuments dedicated on this date, representing a time of significant political and artistic revival at the site after a number of years of relative quiet. The well-preserved sculpture presents two bound captives who each sit upon large table-like stones or “altars” in a bilateral composition, surrounded by text captions (Chase, Grube and Chase 1991:7-11). It is likely that Altar 23 itself was once such a pedestal monument, and that the carved image is self-referential, depicting two unfortunate prisoners who were separately displayed on Altar 23 as part of the celebration of the new king’s Period Ending.

Figure 4. Caracol Altar 23. Xub Chahk of Ucanal is depicted on the right. Drawing by N. Grube, A. Chase and D. Chase (from Chase, Grube and Chase 1991)

The main text of the altar is placed in a vertical band between the two prisoners, opening with a record of the 10 Ahau 8 Zac (A1-B1) or 9.18.10.0.0. The ensuing two glyphs note that the Peried Ending is u k’altuun, (U-K’AL-TUUN) “his stone-raising,” ti tahnlamaw, “at the half-diminishing” (a half-period). The name of the ruler K’inich Joy K’awiil comes next at C1 (K’INICH-JAY-K’AWIIL-li), followed by the standard Caracol emblem title at C2 (k’uhul k’antu[?] maak). The main passage continues with a second verbal statement directly related to the scene, opening with chuhkaj, “he is captured” and a non-specific subject, simply given as U-BAK-ka, u bak, “his prisoner(s).” The owner of the captives is then given with the following three blocks as a lord named Tum Yohl K’inich (C4: tu-mu-OHL-K’INICH), accompanied by the titles “three k’atun lord” (B4) and baahkab (B5: ba-ka-ba). It is noteworthy that Tum Yohl K’inich – no longer the king at this time — lacks the distinctive Caracol emblem glyph we found earlier with K’inich Joy K’awiil. The final glyphs of the main passage tell us that the capture episode was “overseen” by K’inich Joy K’awiil (D1), who does take the emblem (D2) and an additional bahkaab title (D3). Evidently we have a complex relationship to ponder here, between the current Caracol king and another person who bears a familiar name found with several other Caracol rulers. We will return to this question momentarily.

Each of the captives is identified by name and place of origin. The short glyph caption behind the figure at left reads LEM?-TI’-BAHLAM, probably for Lem Uti’ Bahlam, “Shining is the Mouth of the Jaguar.” He also has an emblem glyph title, labelled as the k’uhul ajaw or ruler of a dynasty or place bi-TAL or BIH-TAL. No archaeological site has been ideitified as yet with the name “Bital” (as I will provisionally refer to it) but we know of three other mentions of the site, two from war records at Naranjo (see Chase, Grube and Chase 1991:9), and another from an Early Classic vessel more recently excavated in a tomb at Caracol. The place named Bital presumably exists somewhere in the area of these two sites. The caption continues with ye-te, a relationship term perhaps based on et or eht (y-et, “his companion”[?]), and then with the name we have already seen, Tum Yohl K’inich or Tutum Yohl K’inich.

Turning to the portly captive shown at the right on Altar 23, his caption reads xu-bu-cha-ki (G1) and he carries the Ucanal emblem glyph (G2: K’UH-K’AN-WITZ-NAL-AJAW). This of course repeats the prisoner’s name on Yaxha Stela 31. He again is named as the y-eht, “the companion(?) of” Tum Yohl K’inich (G3, G4). Given the proximity of the dates, the two mentions of “Xub Chahk, the Holy Lord of K’anwitznal (Ucanal)” at Yaxha and Caracol must refer to the same individual. On Stela 31 his capture by K’inich Lakamtuun was given as August 11, 796, and on Caracol Altar 23 we see him presented — and also “captured” — nearly four years later to the day, on August 16, 800.

To my knowledge this this the first attested example of one captive being portrayed as a prisoner at two sites, and it naturally raises a number of interesting questions. These center not only on Xub Chahk’s unfortunate history, but to some extent on the nature of Maya warfare and history during this turbulent period at the beginning of the Terminal Classic.

The Wars of 799

How did Xub Chahk, captured by Yaxha’s king, end up four years later on display at Caracol? As with much of Maya history this is impossible to answer through direct evidence. Apart from Stela 31 and Altar 23, no historical sources at our disposal make reference to Xub Chahk, nor do any texts fill in the blanks about his apparent “transfer” or movement from one site to another. However, it is important that we view his story in the larger historical context of those times, and specifically within the setting of wider political instabilities at the very end of the eighth century.

As we have seen, this was an era of frequent conflict and strife in the region of the eastern Petén, as especially revealed by two important sources — Stela 12 of Naranjo and the extraordinary “Komkom” Vase recently excavated at Baking Pot, Belize (Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe 2018). Stela 12’s very long text (Figure 5) focuses on a series of military engagements waged by the Naranjo king Itzamnaaj K’awiil against Yaxha (Stuart 1993:414-5), leading up to the Period Ending 9.18.10.0.0 (Note 1). This important narrative has gained renewed attention based on fascinating parallels between it and the lengthy text on the Komkom vase, which Helmke has found to repeat much of the same historical informatiot with a slightly different “spin” and perspective (see Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe 2018:82-86). The vase was produced much later than the history its text recounts, in the early ninth century, as a record of retrospective history – perhaps as a gift or “momento” of wars in the recent past.

Figure 5. The back of Naranjo Stela 12, with two passages relating the “fleeing” of K’inich Lakamtuun. Photo by T. Maler, drawings by D. Stuart.

Stela 12’s long storyline contains a nine very closely grouped dates, beginning in February 15, 799 and leading up to the Period Ending 9.18.10.0.0 on August 16, 800 (the same date we saw recorded on Caracol’s Altar 23). A number of war-related events such as conquest and “fleeing” are mentioned over these eighteen or so months, several involving attacks on Yaxha. The first of these occurs on 9.18.8.8.16 12 Cib 9 Uo, or February 18, 799, when we read of a conquest of some unknown locale named Ux K’awiil, said to be “within Yaxha” (tahn ch’een yaxa’) (see Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe 2018:68) (Figure 5b). Part of the passage is damaged, but it continues with a verb reading ahn-i “he flees” (AN-ni, using an interesting logographic variant of the more common syllabic a-ni spelling also found in this text), suggesting an event of conquest or disruption (Note 2). The subject is effaced, but given patterns later in this same text and parallel metnions on the Komkom Vase, it was surely K’inich Lakamtun who “fled” on this day (Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe 2018:70-71). An accompanying verb of movement t’ab-iiy, “goes up (to)” appears next on Stela 12, with an unclear place name and subject. Again we find a parallel on the Komkom Vase, where the a place name is preserved, spelled u-su-la, possibly for Usu’l (ibid.:71). Even these ambiguities and unclear participants, it is clear that this passage on Stela 12 features an attack on Yaxha and the displacement K’inich Lakamtuun as a result. And it is the first of several such statements, each echoing the same general pattern.

Fifty-five days later, on 9.18.8.11.11 2 Chuen 4 Tzec, we read:

2-KAj?-yi K’INICH-LAKAM(TUUN) YAX-a-AJAW ?-?-?K’AWIIL?-li MUT-AJAW-wa
cha’ kahji k’inich lakamtuun yaxha’ ajaw u kabjiiy(?) k’awiil mutul ajaw
He settled(?) again, K’inich Lakamtuun, the Yaxha Lord, by the doing of ?, the Mutul Lord.

This statement (not illustrated here) is important in bringing Tikal into this complex political mix, as the overseer or patron of the K’inich Lakamtuun. The main verb at the beginning of the text refers to the establishment or “founding” of ruling centers, and perhaps reads KAJ, for kaj, “start, begin, settle,” as suggested by Dimitri Belaiev (personal communication 2015). Evidently K’inich Lakamtuun had been in exile from Yaxha, perhaps having fled at the time of the initial attack recorded against Yaxha, on 12 Cib 9 Uo. This new statements suggests that he may have returned from exile after a period of 55 days, or was otherwise somehow reinstated, under the watchful eye of Tikal’s own ruler. Tikal’s role here is fascinating, for the use of the term u kabjiiy implies a hierarchical relationship as the political superior of Yaxha – a relationship that resonates also in the archaeology and architectural layout of Yaxha, with its Twin Pyramid group. And it is worth noting that around 799 CE Tikal’s own dynastic record is largely invisible. No monuments of the time appear at Tikal, so that the royal name on Stela 12, while damaged and unreadable, would have filled an important gap in the later portions of Tikal’s dynastic sequence.

Stela 12 continues by noting that 91 days after K’inich Lakamtuun’s possible re-enstatement at Yaxha he was again attacked by Narnajo on 2 Ik 15 Ch’en (9.18.8.16.2)(Figure 5c). The verb has the numerical adverb cha’, “two,” or “again,” and his destination is different, though unclear. The first glyphs of the passage read:

2-CH’AK-ja YAX-a a-ni K’INICH-LAKAM(TUUN)-ni T’AB-yi ya-?-?
cha’ ch’ahkaj yaxha ahni k’inich lakamtuun
“Again Yaxha was attacked and K’inich Lakamtuun fled”

As Helmke, Hoggarth and Awe (2018:69) note, a parallel episode is recorded on the Komkom vase, coming four days later on 9.18.8.16.6 6 Ik 19 Ch’en. On this day K’inich Lakamtuun (with a misspelled name) was the victim of an attack. The common phrasing and circumstances suggests that this must refer to the same overall episode as recorded on Stela 12, although on a slightly different historical time-frame.

K’inich Lakamtuun’s fate gets worse, as we continue to read the account on Stela 12. On 9.18.9.0.13 1 Ben 6 Ceh he falls victim to yet another “axe” event, a defeat at an unknown locale when for a third time the Yaxha ruler must flee (ahn-i) to another place. Subsequent passages on Stela 12 go on to refer to the Naranjo’s sacking and taking of Yaxha’s wealth (in the final columns of the text we read y-ikaatz yaxa ajaw, “the load ([of jade] of the Yaxha lord”), an extraordinary statement regarding the material consequences of Maya warfare (Note 3).

The day 1 Ben 6 Ceh appears to represent the culmination of prolonged warfare by Naranjo against Yaxha.  In fact the same date is highlighted as a single, freestanding event in the fascinating inscription on Naranjo’s Stela 35, a monument dedicated on the same Period Ending as Stela 12, but couching the conflict in more mythological terms. There war is described as a like-in-kind recurrence of a primordial “burning” of a god, or group of gods, whose names look identical to those cited on Stela 31 of Yaxha as the supernatural identities of K’inch Lakamtuun. The attack on Yaxha’s king on 1 Ben 6 Ceh involves the “axing” of a temple and the defeat of K’inich Lakamtuun’s god, clearly a historical reflection of that earlier myth. Thus Stela 12 and Stela 35, both dedicated on the same day, serve complimentary roles as historical and mythic records of warfare.

These two Naranjo texts can be analyzed in far more detail, but I need not go over them here, especially given the excellent new comparative analysis of Stela 12 by Helmke and his colleagues. Suffice it to say that Xub Chahk’s capture and subsequent “transfer” must be understood in terms these unusually detailed records of conflict in the year 799, when his own captor was constantly on the run across the eastern Peten.

The attacks against Yaxha by Naranjo’s king in the 790s apparently involved some degree of inter-familial strife, given the close dynastic connections between the two centers. Several mentions of Itzamnaaj K’awiil’s mother in the texts of Naranjo refer to her with the royal title Ix Yaxa’ Ajaw, “The Noblewoman of Yaxha,” revealing that she was married into the Naranjo dynasty as the wife of Itzamnaaj K’awiil’s father, K’ahk’ Kalaw Chan Chahk. Itzamnaaj K’awiil’s wars were therefore against his mother’s home community, and presumably against some fairly close relatives, who might have included K’inich Lakamtuun himself. And the conflicted connections between these two neighboring centers appear to have run very deep. Earlier in Naranjo’s history we read of another conquest or defeat of Yaxha on 9.13.18.4.18 8 Etznab 16 Uo (March 20, 710), given as the Initial Series date on the side of Naranjo, Stela 23. The young king K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Chahk, the grandfather of Itzamnaaj K’awiil, was the agent of this war. That was a particularly destructive episode, involving the “burning” of the city of Yaxha (its “cave,” ch’een) and the opening and defilement of the tomb of its deceased king, Yax Bolon Chahk. Just a few years later another Yaxha lord participated in a dance performance by K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Chahk, in 714, as recorded in the opening passage of Stela 30. The wars against Yaxha at the end of the eighth century exhibit a rupture within a complex family network that existed throughout most of the previous decades.

Xub Chahk is nowhere to be found in Naranjo’s own detailed narratives of the Naranjo-Yaxha war. Was he taken by Naranjo’s court? Or was he set free by Naranjo’s king, as an enemy of an enemy? There is no satisfactory answer at present, but we should keep in mind that Ucanal had itself once been a long-standing enemy of Naranjo, conquered, as we have seen, by Itzamnaaj K’awiill’s grandfather earlier in the seventh century. This might suggest that Xub Chahk would not have met a friendly fate at the hand of the Naranjo king when he defeated K’inich Lakamtuun. By 820 CE Naranjo’s relationship with Ucanal seems to have warmed, as indicated by the ritual visit of a subsequent Naranjo king to that site as recorded on Stela 32. In short, we can’t know the nature of political relations between Naranjo and Ucanal in 799, whether they were amicable or not.

The immediate fate of Xub Chahk is unclear, at least until he reappears at Caracol. It is surely significant that Xub Chahk’s display occurred only a very short time after the accession of its new king K’inich Joy K’awiil on 9.18.9.5.9 6 Muluc 2 Kayab, or December 9, 799. This came after a noticeable gap or hiatus in Caracol’s own history, and within a short time K’inich Joy K’awiil erects a number of new and ambitious monuments, evidently reviving Caracol’s dynasty, at least for a time. We know little of his own family history or genealogical connections, but one possible key in our consideration of Xub Chahk is this new Caracol ruler’s relationship to the person named Tum Yohl K’inich, the “owner” of the captives mentioned three times on Altar 23. That altar says very little regarding Tum Yohl K’inich’s status, only that he was a “three K’atun Lord” and a baahkab. It might seem natural to assume that he was the predecessor of K’inich Joy K’awiil, as Martin and Grube (2000) suggest. Significantly, his name appears also on Caracol, Altar 12, perhaps in association with 9.17.10.0.0 12 Ahau 8 Pax (November 29, 780). The event there seems to refer to the “return” of someone at Ucanal, apparently in the wake of the latter’s defeat by Ixkun (Note 4).

Xub Chahk’s story, framed by these complex and vague interactions between Yaxha, Naranjo and Caracol, represent an especially belligerent moment in Classic Maya history when distinct conflicts, perhaps inter-related in some way, raged over much of the southern lowlands. The wars of the eastern Peten in 799 and 800 seem unusual in their character, at least rhetorically, compared to previous time periods (some earlier Naranjo narratives do anticipate it, however) . Naranjo’s Stela 12 and the Komkom Vase illustrate this interest in the presentation what might be called “concentrated warfare,” with its remarkably detailed narrative presentation, containing numerous dates and episodes of war spanning a remarkably short span of time. Of the ten dates recorded in Stela 12’s inscription, eight are concerned with the narrative of the Yaxha conflict and the ultimate victory over the desperate K’inich Lakamtuun. The similarly unfortunate Xub Chahk was an unwilling companion in the content movements of his captor.

Here it is also important to recall how Stela 31’s scene of violent, mythologized capture also falls well outside of the local traditions of stela design and thematic content. Before 800 or so, such overt images of war are virtually non-existent in Yaxha’s own monuments, nor are they very present in the overall artistic traditions of monument production in the central Petén. Such active depictions of capture simply don’t exist at Tikal, Uaxactun, Naranjo, and nearby centers. They are of course more standard in sculptures of the Usumacinata region, where reminiscent scenes of violent encounters occur at the centers of Dos Caobas (a regional vassal of Yaxchilan) and Moral-Reforma, also in the western region. Yaxha’s Stela 31 may possibly reflect some influences from western modes of sculpture, and at the very least represents an important departure in subject matter, much in the same way as the narrative presentation of war seems different and more intensified in the case of Stela 12, dating to just a few years later.

Conclusions

This lengthy note shines a spotlight on a curious group of events from Maya history when a prominent captive seems to have been kept and displayed at two different centers within the span of a few short years. The political context of Xub Chahk’s capture and transfer remains murky, despite the detailed war records references that come from his time. That his troubled captor was “on the run” during this time is surely part of that larger story, and may well account for Xub Chahk’s own curious movement and displacement. His situation was not unique, perhaps, but it represents a previously under-reported aspect of captives and prisoners in Maya history – that even as prisoners of war, they could have their own complex stories and biographies.

Notes

Note 1. Stela 12’s narrative has been studied by several epigraphers since my first notes on its connections to Yaxha in 1993. Most important are Helmke’s excellent consideration of its close parallels with the Komkom Vase, as well as the detailed reading of the texts presented in Beliaev and de Leon (2016:50-60). All of these studies have reached similar conclusions about the inscription’s historical content.

Note 2. The syllabic reading a-ni for ahn-i, “he ran, fled,” was first suggested to me by Stephen Houston in the late 1990s, in connection with its occurrence in the painted cave text of Yaleletsemen, Chiapas. The logographic form showing two legs and a lower torso was first identified by Alfonso Lacadena.

Note 3. In my previous brief study of Stela 12 (in Stuart 1993) I suggested that the mention of y-ikaatz on Stela 12 pertained to bundles of tribute paid by Yaxha as a consequence of its defeat. However, Dmitri Beliaev has shown me (personal communication 2019) that the verbal statement associated with the term is likely baak-w-aj, an alternate term for “capture” that indicates that the bundles were considered war booty.

Note 4. Ucanal’s own history during the Late Classic is extremely patchy, but it seems to have been regularly venerable to military attacks during the eighth century. According to the text on Ixkun, Stela 2, Ucanal (K’anwitznal) was “burned” on 9.17.9.3.4 2 Kan 12 Pop, or December 19, 779. This is probably a statement of military defeat, although the possibility ought to be considered that this also refers to a ceremonial fire of some sort being lit at K’anwitznal. This event came fifty days after Ixkun itself was burned by a ruler of Ucanal, probably indicating a military tit-for-tat between these centers (see Carter 2016). All of this came two decades before Ucanal’s defeat at the hands of Yaxha. The date of Ucanal’s possible defeat in 799 came less than a year before the 9.17.10.0.0 (780) Period Ending recorded as a retrospective date on Caracol, Altar 10, when Tum Yohl K’inich was involved in some sort of noteworthy ceremony at Ucanal. We must wonder therefore if Caracol was somehow indirectly involved in Ucanal’s “burning” in 779. We find no mention of Xub Chahk being present at Ucanal in connection with the events of 779 and 780, perhaps because he was not yet an adult actor.

Sources Cited

Beliaev, Dmitri, and Mónica de Leon. 2016. Informe Técnico de Piezas Arqueológicas del Museo Nacional de Arqueología e Etnología. Proyecto Atlas Epigráfico de Peten, Fase III. Centro de Estudios Yuri Knorosov, Guatemala.

Carter, Nicholas P. 2016. These are are Mountains Now: Statecraft and the Foundation of a Late Classic Maya Court. Ancient Mesoamerica 27: 233-253.

Chase, Arlen F., Nikolai Grube and Diane Z. Chase. 1991. Three Terminal Classic Monuments from Caracol, Belize. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, no. 36. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C.

Helmke, Christophe, Julie Hogarth and Jaime Awe. 2018. A Reading of the Komkom Vase Discovered at Baking Pot Belize. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press Monograph 3. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2000. The Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens. Thanks and Hudson, New York.

Stuart, David. 1993. Historical Inscriptions and the Maya Collapse. In Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century A.D., edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and John S. Henderson, pp. 321-354. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Reconstructing an early warrior scene at Palenque

Three similarly sized carved stones at Palenque are all that remain of an early mosaic relief dating to the long reign of K’inich Janab Pakal (see attached image). The original panel was demolished in ancient times, and all three stones were re-used by the Maya for construction blocks. Two of the carved stones can still be seen in the walls of Temple IV in the North Group (one upside down), and a third was found by archaeologist Alberto Ruz in the masonry of the aqueduct, just to the east of the Palace. The two Temple IV blocks (left and center in the accompanying drawing) have long been seen as probable fits, but I think the third can now be added, giving a hint of a larger figural scene. The image provided, using drawings by Linda Schele, shows the likely arrangement of all three blocks. I’m sure others have noticed this as well.

threeblocks.jpg

An inscription ran along the top of the figural scene, broken only by the large feathered headdress of a warrior between the sixth and seventh extant glyphs of the horizontal band. Smaller glyphs look to be name captions for one or two other figures, and two or three small vertical elements may be all that remain of their upright spears (Piedras Negras Panel 2 might offer a vague parallel).

The inscription records a military victory by K’inich Janab Pakal. Unfortunately all that remains of the date — the month position “17 Pop” — is not enough to provide a full reconstruction. The verb is ch’ahkaj, “was conquered,” but the placename for the defeated site, in the third glyph (tz’i?-sa-ti), is difficult to analyze. Interestingly, the text also includes references to two of Pakal’s important “lieutenants,” Aj Sul and Chak Chan.

It’s hard to make out much more from such paltry remains, but I find it extremely interesting that such an early sculpture appears on mosaic blocks — something we never find in Late Classic Palenque art. By the end of Pakal’s reign this mode of presentation for relief carving seems to have given way to the use of large thin slabs of limestone, first used perhaps inside the Temple of the Inscriptions.