by Simon Martin
The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

The inscriptions of Tikal have been scoured by epigraphers for many a year, but they still have the ability to surprise. I was leafing through the copy proofs of Hattula Moholy-Nagy’s new volume on Tikal artifacts (Tikal Report 27A) not so long ago when I saw a photograph of a text I’d previously seen only as a drawing. It was a close-up of a stucco-covered vessel found in Burial 195, the tomb of the sixth-century king dubbed Animal Skull.

As is widely known, this grave was flooded soon after its dedication and a slurry of mud deposited across its floor, burying many of its contents. A meticulous excavation by Rudy Larios and George Guillemin in 1965 revealed empty cavities in the now-hardened sediment, the remains of decayed wood and other perishable materials. Once filled with Plaster of Paris they could be recovered in whole or in part, in some cases revealing original stucco coatings with surviving color and painted designs. One of these objects was a small, covered bowl. The lid was almost complete and bore a 13-glyph Primary Standard Sequence in good preservation—perhaps bearing a woman’s name—a text now designated Miscellaneous Text 219. The style and coloring technique resembles those on the other stucco-covered pot in Burial 195, although it doesn’t appear to be in the same hand. The text on another stucco-coated item in the tomb, this time a ceramic plate, has a similar style but the artist is plainly different.

The body of the lidded vessel and the text it carried were in much poorer shape. Labeled Miscellaneous Text 277, it has only two surviving glyphs, the first no more than a fragment of border. The second is broken, yet unmistakably supplies the sequence K’UH-K’AN-tu-ma-ki for k’uhul k’antumaak—the emblem glyph of Caracol. With a blank section of stucco following, it falls at the end of a phrase, just where we might expect to find such a title.

Even today, when we have so many other ways of investigating Classic Maya politics, emblem glyphs remain a fundamental tool with which to examine relationships between sites. An isolated case such as this—damaged and lacking even the name of the person it refers to—can hardly carry the burden of great significance. We cannot even be sure that the vessel carrying it comes from Caracol. Nevertheless, it is interesting that such a title should appear in this particular grave at this particular time, and in this sense it does have a context in which it can be placed.

Animal Skull’s predecessor, Wak Chan K’awiil (formerly “Double Bird”) had close connections to Caracol and installed its king Yajaw Te’ K’inich II in 553. But relations soured rapidly and three years later, in 556, Wak Chan K’awiil attacked his former client. Six years after that, in 562, the Tikal king was defeated in a “star war” and disappears from history. The phrase describing the defeat on Caracol Altar 21 is badly damaged and the name of the victor unclear. Elsewhere I have argued that the Snake kingdom under its king Sky Witness is a better candidate than Caracol’s Yajaw Te’ K’inich, but we can only hope that some future find will make the matter clear. Certainly this marks the beginning of close ties between these two polities.

We don’t know how soon after 562 Animal Skull was inaugurated as Tikal’s 22nd king, and his rule is largely a historical blank. He has no known stelae and what little information we have comes from texts on unprovenanced ceramic vessels and those found within Burial 195. The tomb inscriptions appear on a set of four carved wooden boards (that survive today as plaster casts) and two polychrome plates. The first of the boards and one of the plates carry the same Long Count date, the 9.8.0.0.0 Period Ending of 593. This makes it very likely that his grave was dedicated before the next K’atun-ending in 613. Several ceramic vessels name his mother, a royal woman from the site of Bahlam “Jaguar,” while only one (from Burial 195) refers to his father, and this name is otherwise unknown and lacks any identifying title. As Christopher Jones first suggested, there are good grounds to doubt that Animal Skull descended from the existing royal patriline—although this is not to say that he was without some claim to legitimacy.

We are left to ask how and why a vessel carrying a royal Caracol name came to be in Burial 195. It is safe to assume that it had some symbolic purpose, but in the absence of any sure knowledge we can only guess what this might have been.

Just a generation earlier, Caracol was a sworn enemy of Tikal and at least partly responsible for a major military defeat—one of the more consequential in Tikal’s long history. Yet, by the time of Animal Skull’s death an object naming a Caracol lord was chosen to be among a relatively small number of goods in his last resting place—a special location by any standard.

One scenario might see Caracol as having fallen into the Tikal fold once more, with this vessel in some way signaling their renewed subordination. Because we lack a dedication date for Burial 195, we cannot know whether Yajaw Te’ K’inich II (553-593) or his son Knot Ajaw (599-613) was in power at the time. However, Yajaw Te’ K’inich and his younger son K’an II ( 618-658 ) were clear allies of the now-dominant Snake kingdom (the latter was affirmed in his kingship by the new Snake king Yuknoom Ti’ Chan) so any such ties to Tikal would realistically be restricted to the reign of Knot Ajaw, K’an II’s half-brother. The situation would need to have been dynamic indeed for relations to yo-yo quite so rapidly, and comes in the absence of any evidence for Animal Skull’s political strength. We would, I think, need to see new inscriptional evidence for this model for it to be persuasive. The same might be said of another possibility, that the vessel was booty seized in a successful new attack.

A further scenario sees greater stability following the war of 562. Here the evident disruption of the Tikal patriline is an especially important consideration. Animal Skull could have introduced a regime more to the liking of the victors, perhaps one politically beholden or subservient to them. Burial 195 was not very wealthy in terms of its jade and other valuables, and seems to reflect somewhat straitened times. Although Animal Skull seems to have some connection to distant Altar de Sacrificos—perhaps as the father to one of its kings—to date he lacks the credentials of his immediate successors as a true reviver of Tikal fortunes. Is the woman named on the lid the one with Caracol connections, could she have married into the Tikal line? We might never know. However, just like the serendipitous survival of this emblem, some unexpected piece of data might fall into our hands one day and bestow a clarity we currently lack.

**********

Further reading:

Martin, Simon. 2003. In Line of the Founder: A View of Dynastic Politics at Tikal. In Tikal: Dynasties, Foreigners, and Affairs of State, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff, pp. 3-45. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series, School of American Research Press and James Curry, Santa Fe and Oxford.

2005. Caracol Altar 21 Revisited: More Data on Double Bird and Tikal’s Wars of the Mid-Sixth Century. Precolumbian Art Research Institute (PARI) Journal 6(1):1-9.

Moholy-Nagy, Hattula. 2008. The Artifacts of Tikal: Ornamental and Ceremonial Artifacts and Unworked Material. Tikal Report No.27 Part A. University of Pennsylvania Museum Monograph 127. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.

The dates for the 2009 Maya Meetings in Austin have now been firmed-up for February 23- March 1, 2009. An earlier posting on our Maya Meetings website had announced it as coming a week later, but we’ve had to make the adjustment in order to secure a wonderful new space on campus, the AT&T Conference Center.

Our 2009 symposium (coming after the workshops) will focus on the History and Politics of the Snake Kingdom, highlighting on discoveries and decipherments at Calakmul and sites within its large geopolitical sphere. Simon Martin will co-host along with yours truly. Speakers for the symposium and all of the workshop leaders will be announced near the end of summer, so check the Maya Meetings website for updates. 

Few people visit the interesting ruins of Pajaral, El Petén, Guatemala, located, not far from Laguna San Diego, to the west of Lake Petén Itzá, and in the general vicinity of another important and related site, Zapote Bobal. Ian Graham paid a brief initial visit to Pajaral in the 1970s, and several archaeologists from IDAEH and the Proyecto La Joyanca surveyed briefly around the ruins staring about eight years ago. I had an opportunity to visit there over the course of two days in 2001, recording fragments of sculpture that had been revealed earlier by my colleagues Veronique Breuil and Salvador López, both then of the Proyecto La Joyanca, and they kindly provided me the chance to photograph and record a number of these new monuments, including this Early Classic stela (still un-numbered).

Only the base of the stela exists today, showing the feet of a standing ruler above a large rectangular panel, depicting the face of a witz, or mountain. The two hieroglyphs near the feet are surely the name of this local king, readable as Yajawte’ K’inich. Interestingly, this same name was used by a much later Pajaral king shown on another stela (dating to 9.16.0.0.0) we recorded that same season. The Yajawte’ K’inich name appears at other sites as well, including with at least one ruler at the neighboring Ik’ polity, centered at nearby Lake Peten Itzá.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this monument fragment is the witz design below, with its two snakes eminating from the mouth, and passing through the BIH earspools. This appears elsewhere in Early Classic iconography, and Karl Taube has rightly equated this with the och bih (”road-enter”) expression for death. I suspect that it reinforces the common notion in Mesoamerican thinking that hill and mountains are abodes of deceased ancestors. To me, the most striking detail of the witz mask are the jaguar ears seen above the earspools, marking this place — that is, Pajaral — as “Jaguar Hill,” or Hixwitz.

Before 2001 we had known of the Maya kingdom called Hixwitz from mentions at other sites (Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, Itzimte), but it was the discovery of this and two other monuments at Pajaral and nearby Zapote Bobal that finally nailed its location, once and for all. Pajaral and Zapote Bobal were evidently served as captitals of Hixwitz, perhaps at different times during the Classic period. The large isolated hill at Pajaral, with its huge staircase and acropolis on top, is very likely the original “Jaguar Hill.”

Looking recently at Frederick Catherwood’s 1839 rendering of the back of Copan’s Stela F (published in Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan), I was struck by the presence of three glyphs that I had never seen, now missing or damaged on the original monument. The first photograph of the stela, taken by Alfred Maudslay in 1884, shows that the glyphs were already missing over four decades after the Stephens and Catherwood visit. All modern studies of the inscription have passed over this wonderful old drawing, but it’s obviously worth a very close look.

The general gist of this inscription has long been known (Stuart 1986, Newsome 2001). The dedication date is 9.14.10.0.0 5 Ajaw 3 Mak, and the text refers to the placement of the stela (lakamtuun) of Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil (Ruler 13) on that day. The monument also seems to have had its own proper name, probably referencing Ruler 13’s own god impersonation on that ceremonial day.

Blocks A3 and A4 are now destroyed, but just enough can be seen in Catherwood’s drawing to propose their reconstruction. A3 looks to be the preposition TI- or TU- in front of a larger, murky glyph with a numerical superfix. As we will see, the context strongly suggests it is reconstructable as TI-4-AJAW, “In (K’atun) Four Ajaw,” given the mention of “15 K’atuns” (9.15.0.0.0) in the next block. A4 is half-effaced, but there is little doubt in Catherwood’s image that it is I-tz’a-[pa] or I-tz’a[(pa)-ja], for the verb i tz’ahpaj, “then it is erected…”. This makes perfect sense, given that the verb for the following dedicatory statement of the stela has been thought missing. Now we have it.

Like a number of Copan inscriptions, the Stela F text is unusual in some ways. The placement of repeating ti- and tu- propositions in front of the chronological glyphs (B1-B3) is noteworthy, after the “Initial Series Introducing Glyph” (A1) where no Initial Series exists. Reading from B1 through A4 we have:

ti Jo’ Ajaw Uxte’ Mak
ti tahnlam-il
ti Chan Ajaw
tu Jo’lajuun Winikhaab(?)
i tzahpaj…

On Five Ajaw, the Third of Mak,
At the half-diminishing
in Four Ajaw,
in the Fifteenth K’atun,
then it is erected, …

So, the dedication day 5 Ajaw 3 Mak (9.14.10.0.0) is halfway into 9.15.0.0.0 4 Ajaw (13 Yax, not recorded). This is short-hand method of recording a Long Count date, not unlike examples known from the inscriptions of northern Yucatan. The proper name of Stela F comes in blocks B4-A6, before u k’aba’ u lakamtuun, “it is the name of his large stone” (B6, A7). Interestingly, block A5 is also much clearer in Catherwood’s drawing, showing a very clear spelling U-CHOK-ko-K’ABA’-a (u chok k’aba’, “its young name”) as part of the complex name phrase for the monument. Later, after A6, we come to an extended name phrase for the king, continuing up to A9. The text closes with some sort of descriptive phrase involving a collection of “lords” (ajawtak), possibly royal ancestors who oversaw the ritual and the king’s impersonation.

Catherwood’s drawing was made with a camera lucida under very difficult conditions, and at a point when he had no familiarity with the intricacies of Maya art and writing (Copan was the first great ruin they investigated). His careful rendering confirms what we had suspected was missing in the Stela F inscription, and so there is no great surprise in this analysis. But it’s good to see that this first great artist in Maya archaeological research still provides valuable information for modern epigraphy.

by Stephen Houston

In the early 90s, I happened to be looking at one of Justin Kerr’s most beautiful rollouts, of a fragmentary stuccoed scene (K1524). In it, the Maize god (or some comely youth) sits on a throne, entreated by an aged god — this last is, of course, none other than the deity who helps paddle the Maize god on his watery journey. To the side, other youths dress (?) a dancer, who is, perhaps, a version of the figure on the throne. The loss of the text is regrettable, as it might have helped to explain the scene. There may well be a connection to the dressing and paddling of the Maize god on related images, such as the Museo Popol Vuh vase.

Despite its ruined state, the vessel is a masterwork. The pooled paint and gently blurred outlines impart a truly pulsing energy to the surface, a quality seen on few other vessels. It continues to be one of my favorites.

However, what really drew my attention were the glyphs in red outline that ran along the throne. The scribe had highlighted these with a dark blue wash, making the glyphs somewhat difficult to read. But I could make out the so-called alay (still a problematic reading, in my view), t’abayii (as we would now decipher it, thanks to Dave Stuart), then, [u te mu...]. A quick look at the relevant dictionaries showed that tem was a perfectly acceptable name-tag, and of rather broad distribution among lowland Mayan languages:

Yukatek (Barrera V., p. 783): “poyo o grada, altar o poyo”
Ch’olti’ (Moran source, #2711, 2712 in Bill Ringle’s reworking): “asiento, banco”
common Ch’olan (Kaufman/Norman list, #511): “seat” …with common Mayan *teem

The final term became interesting a few years later. This was because of our much reviled but–let it be said!–obviously correct publication on disharmony, done with fellow co-conspirators David Stuart and John Robertson. The vowel length was predictable, given the final, if somewhat unusual, -u in the spelling. (Our colleagues Alfonso Lacadena and Soren Wichmann have come to prefer a te’m spelling, but we are not yet convinced of it.) I then remembered another such name-tag, on a masonry throne excavated by Eric Thompson in the 30s, at San Jose, Belize (then British Honduras, see Thompson’s 1939 CIW monograph, pl. 9 in particular). Here, too, was a dedicatory context, including a clear indication that the “bat” glyph pertained to the working of stucco. One can just make out a probable u-te-*ma?/*mu. I have since seen paintings of a secure u-te-mu in a similar, if earlier, context from Calakmul, as photographed by Simon Martin. A similar spelling was probably on K5388. Unfortunately, the relevant parts of the text are in bad shape.

The finds on the pot and at San Jose were useful at the time, and continue to be so. They augmented our list of name-tags, contributed a probative, disharmonic spelling, as predicted by a prior linguistic reconstruction, and helped remove–for me anyway–any lingering doubts about Landa’s te as a sign with roots in the Classic period. (Whether the “tree/wood” TE’ ever functions syllabically is quite uncertain.) The question remains of how to read the stray “throne” logographs that appear in the inscriptions, as on the Temple XIX platform so nicely reported by DS (e.g., P4) or, for that matter, the so-called “palanquin” signs that pepper the inscriptions. Their readings are surely different. The palanquin attaches a final syllable that, I sense, triggers disharmony, thus: CVht, CVVt or CV’t — I recall that Dmitri Beliaev suggested pit or, perhaps more likely, pi’t, as the most viable reading.

In a few Classic Maya texts we find records of coming-of-age ceremonies involving royal children, where bloodleting seems a dominant theme. These ritual events haven’t yet been collectively discussed or analyzed in the literature (at least as far as I know) so I hope this brief post might help point the way for further thought, especially with regard to the interpretation of an important ealry Maya monument known as the Hauberg Stela (see the third and last image, scrolling below).

We can first turn to the vivid but damaged depiction of one such childhood rite on Panel 19 from Dos Pilas, shown here.

At center stage we see the young prince shedding drops of blood into a dish, standing before a kneeling priest who holds a stingray spine — the instrument of choice for genital bloodletting in much of ancient Mesomerica. The boy’s mother and father (Ruler 3 of Dos Pilas) look on from the left, as do also two attendants at right, one called the “guardian of the boy.” The main inscription is too damaged to read in full, unfortunately, but it does mention the ch’ok ajaw title (”prince”) as well as the fact that the ritual was witnessed by “the twenty-eight lords.” Evidently this sort of youth ceremony was a major political event in its own right.

Texts at other sites seem to describe very similar sorts of episodes. In a passage from Stela 3 of Caracol, show here, we read of a ceremony called yax ch’ab, involving the five-year old youngster named Sak Baah Witzil – he would would later reign as the important ruler Tum Yohl K’inich (also known as “Kan II,” in Martin and Grube’s Chronicles of Maya Kings and Queens). As others have noted, yax ch’ab is surely a bloodletting ceremony, literally meaning “first penance” or “first creation.” Ch’ab alone is a key term used for adult bloodletting ceremonies, as best seen on Yaxchilan, Lintel 24. According to the Caracol passage, the boy’s father oversaw the ritual according to the same passage, making for an even more precise parallel to the Dos Pilas scene.

(Another yax ch’ab ritual is recorded on the side of Tikal’s Stela 10, a much eroded monument, but the context is not so clear; it too could well refer to a childhood bloodletting ceremony.)

This brings us the remarkable Huaberg Stela, a key Early Classic sculpture dating to about 200-300 AD, now in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum. The miniature stela shows a standing figure in supernatural attire, cradling a long serpent that arches above his head. Images of conjured ancestral figures climb the body of the snake, and another likely ancestor image emerges from the gaping maw above. The main verb in the accompanying text is again yax ch’ab, “first penance,” leading me to consider the Hauberg Stela as a commemoration of a young boy’s first bloodletting, perhaps involving also a performance of deity impersonation. The unusual small size of the monument — it’s only about 80 cms in hieght — may be due to it being a “child-size” stela.

Published studies of the Hauberg Stela don’t mentioned this connection to youth ceremonies, so my take on it goes against established wisdom in some ways. For example, the entry in the Lords of Creation exhibit catalog (Fields and Reents-Budet 2005) repeats the long-held view first tentatively advanced by Linda Schele (1985) that the Hauberg Stela depicts a king named “Bak T’ul” in a bloodletting “vision quest” (a term, by the way, I strongly object to). Bloodletting it certainly is, but based on a closer reading of the glyphs and drawing key comparisons, I think a good case can be made that the Hauberg Stela instead celebrates a royal child’s auto-sacrifice, a “First Penance.”

(By the way, “Bak T’ul” is not the correct reading of the personal name in any case, whether it be a child or adult. It looks instead to be CHAK, “red,” before an undeciphered animal head sign erroneously analyzed before as a rabbit, t’ul.)

* * *

Further reading:

Fields, Virginia, and Dorie Reents-Budet. 2005. Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship. Los Angeles: LACMA

Schele, Linda. 1985. The Hauberg Stela. Bloodletting and the Mythos of Maya Rulership. In Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983, edited by M.G. Robertson and V. Fields, pp. 135-150. San Francisco: PARI

In late 2006 I circulated this brief proposal for the decipherment of Bonampak’s ancient place name as Us(ij) Witz, “Vulture Hill.” As one can see in the photo, the site’s acropolis is was built upon the face of a steep promontory, presumably once of the very same name.

Here’s the pdf of the short note: bonampak-place-glyph.pdf

Mark the calendars — David LeBrun’s magnificent new documentary Cracking the Maya Code is set for broadcast on PBS’s Nova series this coming April 8 at 8 PM EST. The film, produced by Night Fire Films, is based on Mike Coe’s vivid book on the history of Maya glyph decipherment, Breaking the Maya Code. David showed a two-hour version of the film at the recent Maya Meetings held in Austin, and received a much-deserved standing ovation.

Nova will broadcast an edited one-hour version, and is set to launch their full website on March 25. The preliminary website says…

“Cracking the Maya Code” is a definitive look back at how a handful of pioneers deciphered the intricate system of hieroglyphs developed by the Maya civilization. Based on the book Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe, this is one of the greatest detective stories in all of archeology, and it has never been told in depth on television before. With magnificent footage of Maya temples and art, this documentary has been many years in the making and culminates in the fascinating account of this once-magnificent ancient civilization’s ingenious method of communication.

UPDATE (3/27): The full Nova website is now up, though I haven’t looked it over closely yet.

Some years ago I came across an obscure publication on the shelf of my old office in the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, cataloging some of the holdings in storage at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City (Cardós de Méndez 1987). In it I was suprised to find a photo of an eroded limestone panel I had never known before, depicting two standing figures and a band of illegible glyphs at the top (at right in photo below). Despite the poor preservation, the large thin relief sculpture clearly had a Palenque look about it, especially in the distinctive proportions, poses and profiles of the two men. The photograph was subsequently reprinted by Mayer (1995: Pl. 21 who in his catalog also noted a likely Palenque attribution.

It struck me at the time that the panel could be related to a far more familiar Palenque sculpture, a similar sized panel now on display in the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. (in photo at left). There we see a young K’inich K’an Joy Chitam dancing “on the hill” as an impersonator of Chahk, the god of rain and storms (the king is not shown postumously, as was once widely beleived). The preservation of the Dumbarton Oaks carving is nearly perfect, but I’ve long wondered if it was part of some larger sculptural program. The feet of the seated figures (both proud parents) seem to be cut off at the edges of the stone, as of they continued on to adjacent sections. The inscription too might be considered incomplete; although it is self-contained in terms of content, describing the scene below, it seems to start rather abruptly, as if something came before. The last glyphs, recording a temple dedication, also seem somewhat short-winded.

Comparing the photographs again the other night, I was reminded how the two look similar enough to be partners, perhaps part of a larger sequence of relief carvings that graced the rear wall of a temple. The two standing figures on the Mexico City panel face away from each other, as if looking on to other scenes to each side. The photo posted here arbitrarily places the Dumbarton Oaks panel to the left, but the opposite arrangment is equally plausable. There is certainly not enough here to discern a true fit of sculptural details, but the band of glyphs above the two men does seem a good visual match. Perhaps, then, another still-missing component shows a layout like we see on the Dumbarton Oaks panel, providing a balance within the larger and complex composition of the monument, whatever it was.

Again, confirmation based on measurements and on a direct inspection of the Mexico City panel will be necessary to confirm the connection.

* * * *

The Mexico City panel has been published in:

Cardós de Méndez, Amalia. 1987. Estudio de la colleción de escultura maya del Museo Nacional de Antropología. Collecion Catálogos de Museos. Mexico D.F.: INAH

Mayer, Karl Herbert. 1995. Maya Monuments: Sculptures of Unknown Provenance, Supplement 4. Graz, Austria: Academic Publishers

For discussions of the Dumbarton Oaks panel from Palenque, see:

Coe, Michael D., and Elizabeth P. Benson. 1966. Three Maya Relief Panels and Dumbarton Oaks. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, Number 2. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks

Miller, Mary, and Simon Martin. 2004. Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya. Singapore: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Stuart, David. 2005. The Palenque Mythology: Sourcebook for the 3oth Maya Meetings. Austin: Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin

by Stephen Houston

Epigraphers have long puzzled over a title in Classic inscriptions. This is the ba-te’, usually spelled ba-TE’ but sometimes, as at Dos Pilas and Yaxchilan, BAAH-TE’. Historically minded readers of this blog will remember the late, great Heinrich Berlin. A person of great insight, he posited a similar reading for what we now know, thanks to Dave Stuart, to be the KALOOMTE’ title. (That title deserves far closer study, as do all the “tree” titles. Students take note!) Berlin had been intrigued by the TE’ at the end of KALOOMTE’, leading him to consider a set of words in Yukatek, including ba’te’el, “fight, war,” taken from “axe,” baat and “cacique,” batab. Knorosov, Joyce Marcus, and Chris Jones endorsed the reading or at least mentioned it in some of their publications. As with many good ideas, it had a strong run…and then died away under press of better evidence. Yet there is still the question: What are we to make of the ba-te’ and BAAH-te’ that do appear in the inscriptions? Are they related to the terms that interested Berlin?

The bate’/baahte’ is neither ubiquitous nor rare in Classic texts. One example occurs at Tonina, on Monument 145:C1, where it follows the name of K’inich Baaknal Chahk and serves as an adjective for a kind of ajaw. The ruler obviously felt that this was an important marker of royal identity. Farther afield is Chinaja St. 1, last seen in the von der Goltz collection, in Guatemala City, I believe. It records U-ba-TE’ between the names of a captive and a local ajaw. The syntax is a little opaque, as is the referent of U-ba-TE’. I can think of several options, some more likely that others: (1) the captive, X, is the “guarded one” of Y, who, in turn, served as the bate’ of Z, a local ruler; (2) the captive, X, is the bate’ of the local ruler, Y; or even (3) the guardian and bate’ expression appear in couplet form, “is captured, the guardian of X, the bate’ of Z.” The drawing of the text is adequate but perhaps insufficient to come to any firm conclusion. The panel probably had a mate—a common pattern in the Pasión region—with another captive facing right, in a sculpture placed on the opposite side of a stairway. At least it’s clear that, at Chinaja, bate’ had something to do with conflict.

In texts at Dos Pilas and other sites, the title tends to precede pitzil, “ballplayer” (Dos Pilas Hieroglyphic Stairway 4, Step V:M2-N2) or it appears with rulers in the act of ballplay (Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 2:G3). Then there are the titles with numbered katuns. Yaxchilan Hieroglyphic Stairway 3:F1-G2 refers to 5-‘k’atun’ ba-TE’ 5-‘k’atun’ pi-tzi-la, nicely combining the two labels. This alone might tempt the incautious to entertain some link to batey, a ceremonial ballgame of Taino in parts of the Greater Antilles—not to be discounted outright, given lithic evidence of contact, but probably not so compelling either. The instances of bate’ at Chichen Itza are more opaque, appearing in the Ak’ab Tz’ib lintel and the Temple of the IV Lintels. Clearly, bate’ was an epithet at some northern sites. The usual pattern is ‘AXE-OHL’ followed by the ba-TE’, once spelled ba-TE’-‘e, as on a sculpture from the Barbachano collection. The latter leaves little doubt that the term ended in a vowel. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of many spellings in which the TE’ (T89) sign functioned syllabically, as some have proposed. The ye-TE’ with captives remains just such a puzzle. In my view, it contains three morphemes, not two.

None of this would be particularly interesting, new or revealing save for the recent appearance of a probative context. This is a spelling of the name and titles of a figure in one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve seen of Maya gore and pain-making (see above). Exquisitely painted, it displays a presentation of captives and is now in a private collection in New York City (K6674). The main text records a “spearing,” ju-la-ja, and an arrival, hu-li, probably on the same day. I saw the vessel last summer, and the owner kindly made high-quality images available to me. Over to the left is a standing figure who looms over two captives, one the worse for wear, with eyes gouged out. Both captives have jagged wounds that ooze blood. (This must have been the “spearing” mentioned above, along with the “arrival” of the duo at court.) The standing figure holds a dark wooden staff in one hand, making it hard to avoid the impression that we are looking at a custodian of captives—rather like a bailiff at court or royal servants who held staffs as badges of authority in European courts. To this day, Black Rod summons the House of Commons to the Queen’s Speech in the House of Lords; Gold Stick and Silver Stick serve in the Queen’s bodyguard. And, of course, the lone “staff” of this blog, Dave Stuart, takes his role from a term for a physical support.

It is possible that the caption in front of the wooden staff applies to the captive immediately to the right. But I doubt it. The more likely referent is our bailiff, who was called: t’u-bu a-AJAW-WINIK-ki ba-TE’, t’ub ajaw winik bate’. Admittedly, the final TE’ fails to include the small superfix that usually appears with TE’. Yet I cannot imagine what other value it could have in this setting. In fact, the sign accords nicely with the TE’ icons to be seen in objects of wood, such as the canoes depicted on bones from Tikal Burial 116, and with a clear analogue, K’UK’-NAB-TE’ (with this form), as part of a name on Panel 3 at Piedras Negras. The reading also fits with a group of titles that link ba or BAAH, “head,” with objects related to war and objects at court. Bonampak alone has people, all non-royals, called ba-to-k’a, ba took’, “head flint” (the figure slicing at captive’s hands in Room 2, in a title also at Tonina), ba-pa-ka-la, ba pakal, “head shield,” for a “warrior,” and more courtly figures who appear to be called, ba-TZ’AM?-ma, ba tz’am, “head throne.” (Incidentally, some of us have suspected that the supposed po syllable in these spellings is a logogram. Dave has considered TZ’AM as a good bet, following a reading once proposed by Marc Zender, in part because of a substitution on a molded text in the Dieseldorff collection in the National Museum in Guatemala City. I’m sure he’s right.) There is a still a chance that the spellings are more than metonyms—namely, things that stand for larger wholes, such as “sweat” for “labor.” The spellings could embed an assimilated agentive a, so that ba-to-k’a > ba [a] took’, “head person of the flint.” The only reason to doubt this view is the presence, at Bonampak, of a ba-hi, which reduces the chances of an assimilated agentive. I’ve included here in the second figure some images that I took at Bonampak with Gene Ware, as part of Mary Miller’s Bonampak Documentation Project.

(Gene and I spent several weeks taking these images, under hot lights in May, perhaps not the most enjoyable way to experience the murals.) Piedras Negras St. 12 weighs in with the helpful ba-che-bu, ba(ah) chehb, “head quill,” first noted, I believe, by Nikolai Grube.

So, by this proposal, “head stick/wood” describes someone who wielded a stick or staff. It could have been a badge of office, an actual object for herding and abusing captives, perhaps even a role in the ballgame, either as a field position (a captain?) or as someone who played – this may be a stretch! — a stick game. These are attested in ancient America, if uncommon among the ancient Maya. Courtiers used the label, but kings too.

And, of course, bate’ had nothing to do with “axe” or related words.