Day Sign Notes: Men / Tz’ikin

by David Stuart 

The Classic-period names for the days of the tzolk’in  (cholq’ij) are often obscure to us. This is true even where we see clear semantic connections to the familiar names used in colonial Yucatan (the names we still use today in describing the ancient Maya calendar, by convention). Was the day “Kan” actually called K’an in Palenque in 750 CE, or was it something else? The problem comes down to the pervasive use of single logograms in writing the days, with only an occasional phonetic sign attached here and there to offer a partial clue about their pronunciations. An additional stumbling block involves the history of the day glyphs themselves. Their forms changed in sometimes surprising ways over nearly two thousand years, such that late variants bear little resemblance to how they were originally designed. Here and in subsequent studies of the Classic Maya days, I offer a few historical and paleographical observations, looking particularly at the origins and iconographic connections of certain signs. The day glyphs have a deep history, unsurprisingly, and even their earliest examples point to centuries of previous development, reaching far back into the Preclassic era. The recent suggestion that the 260-day calendar can be discerned from architectural plans and alignments dating to the Middle Preclassic (or Middle Formative) is a powerful testament to its antiquity (Šprajc et al. 2023). So here we will look at the “visual etymologies” of certain day signs to tease out clues about their origin, as well as about their important associations with Maya iconography. Even with new semantic clues in hand, the ancient names of the days will probably remain difficult to know, at least in many cases.

We begin our series of observations with the fifteenth day, named Men in ancient Yucatan. This was also the name of the fifteenth day in Ch’ol, as reported by Campbell (1988:375). The only plausible source for the name the root men, which in both Yukatekan and Cholan languages is “make, do,” and forms the basis of the Yukatek word hmeen (“a doer, maker”), best known as the title for a ritual specialist or curandero. When a possessed noun, men can form a phrase that signals causation, as is Yukatek u men, “por causa de” or tu menel, “porque.” The same appears in Ch’orti’ u mener, “por, de, a causa de” (Hull 2016: 278). In Ch’ol, the verb mel, “to do,” may be related. The co-occurrence of the day name Men and root men within both Yukatekan and Ch’olan might suggest that the day name was shared throughout much of the lowlands in ancient times, and perhaps during the Classic period. We will return to this point shortly.

In highland Mayan languages the corresponding name for the fifteenth day is Tz’ikin, equivalent to the proto-Mayan word *tz’ikin, “bird.” Here we see a link to the widespread names meaning “Eagle” in Nahuatl, Otomi, and other languages of highland Mexico (Caso 1967, Kaufman 1989). Based on these widespread name patterns, Kaufman suggested that Men was that of an “eagle god,” whose Mayan name associates “with ‘Bird’ in general, as though he were the protean bird.” I agree with his assessment and would add that the best evidence for an “eagle god” may come from the Men’s historical development as a hieroglyphic form.

Figure 1. Classic period variants of Men, (a-e) head variants arranged chronologically, (f0i) simplified forms possibly based on the eye of the head (compare b and f). Drawings by David Stuart.

Two Classic-period variants of Men, arranged over time, are illustrated in Figure 1. The head variants – what we must assume was its “original” form – appear in the upper row of Figure 1 (a-e). These have received little discussion in the epigraphic literature, and many drawings reproduced in various books and other publications look to be highly inaccurate (see, for example, Thompson 1950: Fig. 9, 36&39). These all show a profile head of what appears to be a supernatural bird, with a distinctive squared inner eye. The eye is one clear indication of its deified nature, as are the “shiner” markings we find on the forehead in Early Classic variants. An avian beak is sometimes hard to make out in these highly abstracted forms, but we see it clearly in a few late examples, as from Piedras Negras Panel 3 (example c). Even by the Early Classic the bird’s head was highly abstracted and conventionalized, probably due to calligraphic practice over time, going back to the Late Pre-Classic (examples a and b).

Figure 2. Principal Bird Deity and accompanying name from K4546. Note resemblance of the portrait head glyph to the Men day sign. Drawing by David Stuart

These head variants agree not only with Kaufman’s idea of a “bird god,” but they are identical to representations of the Principal Bird Deity (Bardawil 1979, Cortez 1986, Guernsey 2006, Martin 2015, Nielsen and Helmke 2015), possibly named Kokaj Muut or Yax Kokaj Muut (Boot 2008). The visual equivalence is demonstrated by the name glyph of an aspect of the Principal Bird Deity we find on a codex-style vessel, Kerr 4546, captioning the bird’s portrait nearby (Figure 2). This is a portrait name glyph, and other examples of the bird’s name show the Principal Bird Deity in a more familiar, less abstract way (Figure 2c, d). These are in turn equivalent to what we find in the codices as the name of the more anthropomorphic God D, the Principal Bird being his avian avatar. No other avian figure from Maya art or iconography displays such deified characteristics, so it is clear that the day sign Men originated in the Preclassic and Early Classic as the portrait of the Principal Bird Deity. It seems that the name of the fifteenth day in Postclassic Mesoamerica, whether “Eagle” or “Bird,” are generic reflection of this day’s more mythical origin and identity.

Figure 3. Names of the four bird deities in the four world quarters, from Tomb 12 at Rio Azul, Guatemala. Note visual equivalence to early Men day sign. Drawings by David Stuart.

 

Figure 4. Directional bird names from Tomb 12, Rio Azul, and incised obsidians from cache at Tikal.

In further support of this connection to the great mythic bird, we can turn to other examples of the Principal Bird Diety’s glyphic name. In Tomb 12 of Rio Azul, four similar deity names feature this same head sign, written on the tomb’s four walls and associated with one of the four quarters or world directions (Figure 3). As I and others have argued, these are names of the Principal Bird Deity, each with a different adjectival descriptor (day, night, moon, and star) (Taube, et al. 2010:52-56). Later examples of these same directional names confirm the visual connection to the Principal Bird Deity (Figure 4). This chronological evolution suggests that the Principal Bird Deity used as the Men Day sign often retained an “early look” throughout much of the Late Classic. There are examples of Men, however, that are more representative of the later bird deity heads we see in Figure 4 (see Naranjo, Stela 23 [F17] and Stela 28 [G18]).

A rarer and far simpler variant of the day Men also appears in Classic-era texts (Figure 1, f-i). I believe this to be an enlarged representation of the great bird’s eye, a pars pro toto form meant as a simplification of the head variant (compare examples b and f in Figure 1). It is also remotely possible that it originated as a highly abstracted form of the bird’s head in full (compare a and f). Other day signs show an eye as a simpler form of a complex head variant (Lamat, Chuen, and Ix, are three examples that come to mind, which we will discuss in later notes). The “eye” forms of Men show a squared inner “pupil,” identical to the eyes we see in early representations of celestial deities, such as K’inich Ajaw. Some Late Classic examples also display small dots in the upper portion of the sign (Figure 1, g-h). I suspect that this minor elaboration arose through the sign’s general resemblance to the distinct logogram TAHN (“within”) which displays the line of dots or a quincunx as a consistent feature.  That is to say, in writing the simplified Men day sign, scribes sometimes were inclined to incorporate the dots out of habit, not realizing the origin of the element as an eye. Here it is interesting to note that representations of deities’ eyes changed throughout the Classic period, with the squared pupil moving from the lower left to the upper left. Yet the reduced form of Men retained the early look, supporting the notion that some scribes used the reduced form of Men without realizing its true visual origin.

So, the visual origin of the Men bird was the Principal Bird Deity, the avian aspect of the old God D (and God N) who was perhaps named Kokaj or Yax Kokaj Mut (Boot 2008, Martin 2015). Here the word men may provide an interesting semantic connection, for as the root for the verb “to make” it resonates with the names of certain creator deities among the later contemporary Maya. (H)meen, the religious title of Yucatan, is also analyzable as “maker, creator,” apt descriptions for the celestial god who we otherwise know was a diviner, and scribe, aj tz’ihb. In one text at Xcalumkin, God D or his avian aspect is called an aj k’in, “day-keeper, diviner” — a clear indication of his role not unlike that of Cipactonal of central Mexico (see Martin 2015: 223-225). Whatever the case, the visual history tells us that the Principal Bird Deity was the core mythical basis for Men, not simply a bird or an eagle.

Figure 5. Expanded names of the avian solar god, Wuk Chapaht Men(?) K’inich Ajaw. (a) Tikal, T. IV, Lintel 2, (b) the Cuychen Vase, rim text, (c) Copan, Altar of Stela 13, (d) Terminal Classic vessel in LACMA collections. Drawings a and c by David Stuart, drawing b by Christophe Helmke.

Outside of the context of the day, the same avian head appears as a part of the expanded name phrase of the solar god, K’inich Ajaw (Figure 5). Clearly, the Principal Bird Deity, or an aspect of it, was considered a solar being, a precedent for the Postclassic Mexican idea of the solar eagle. The name phrase is introduced by Uuk Chapaht (“Seven Centipede”), followed by our Men bird (or its reduced form) and then K’inich Ajaw. Semantically we can interpret this as “Seven-Centipede-BIRD.DEITY-Sun Lord.” Whereas I had previously considered TZ’IKIN as a possible reading of the bird logogram, this now seems unlikely. Tellingly, the noun tz’ikin, “bird,” while very old and traceable to proto-Mayan, is nowhere to be found in lowland languages. The day name Tz’ikin is restricted to the highlands as well (in both Eastern and Western Mayan), where it may well have been borrowed across languages and communities.  To reiterate, the attested name in both Yucatec and Ch’ol was Men. We might therefore entertain MEN or some cognate form as an alternate reading, both as a day name and as a logogram. The -na suffix on the head would conceivably agree with this, appearing on examples from the altar of Copan Stela 13, and a Terminal Classic polychrome vessel in the collections of LACMA (M.2010.115.685) (Figure 5c, d). So, while tentative, I believe we can entertain an analysis of the solar god’s full name as Wuk Chapaht Men(?) K’inich Ajaw. I should emphasize that a MEN reading and still needs to be tested outside the context of the tzolk’in.

Figure 6. Postclassic example of Men, from the Dresden Codex, Madrid Codex, and the murals of Coba. Drawings by David Stuart

Finally, we should turn to the very late forms of Men found in the codices (Figure 6). These are consistent in presenting a profile face with a series of parallel lines behind its mouth.  All are derived from the earlier reduced Classic variant where the face is not present (see Figure 1, f-i). I suspect that the eye had already been in long use in manuscripts as a more calligraphic form of the day and that this carried over into the manuscript tradition of the Postclassic. By then, scribes had fully lost any sense of its true visual origin, misinterpreting the eye as a human-like face, taking the small square at the lower left as a mouth, and the small dots above as “eyes” (the dots, we will recall, may have arisen out of yet another mistaken evocation of the TAHN logogram). No attempt was ever made to make it resemble a bird. It seems that the original head variant representing the Principal Bird Deity did not survive at all past the collapse of the Classic period. A visual summary of this proposed development, covering over a thousand years, is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. The development of Men. First, a portrait of Principal Bird Deity (Classic), then reduced to its eye as a simplified variant (Classic), then reinterpreted as a head (Postclassic)

Ancient misinterpretations of the Men’s visuals have led to at least one erroneous interpretation of the day’s meaning. In his lengthy discussion of the day signs Thompson (1950:82-84) was confident that it was “the day of the aged patroness of weaving (and) the aged moon goddess.” He was surely mistaken in this, however, basing his ideas only on the late forms of Men as found in the codices. Thompson’s take reflected a common methodological bias of his time when relatively few early Maya inscriptions were known. The early variants were unknown to him, as was the Principal Bird Deity itself.

Spanning over two millennia, the histories of the day signs are full of similar evolutionary twists and visual turns. Late forms often bear little resemblance to their Preclassic originals, which perhaps isn’t too surprising. Indeed, the signs of the tzolk’in often seem as if they operated within their particular ecosystem, set apart somewhat from the many other elements of the script. Tracking of similar paleographical sign histories remains an under-appreciated aspect of Maya epigraphy, in my view, and we will explore similar sign histories in future “Day Sign Notes.” To anticipate where some of these analyses will go, I feel confident in saying that the mundane-sounding names found in later Mesoamerican calendars – such as “Bird” or “Monkey” – can often obscure older, far meanings that were rooted in Maya mythological identities. Likewise, Men was no generic “Eagle,” as the day was dubbed in Postclassic central Mexico. Being Maya in origin, it was first and foremost the Principal Bird Deity, a celestial and solar symbol par excellence. I suspect that each day of the tzolk’in had, in the Preclassic, its own specific iconographic identity as a deity. These are at times only dimly perceptible in later language and scribal usage, but they can still be accessed through the day signs’ visual histories, and the vestiges of meaning they convey.

References Cited

Bardawil, Laurence W. 1976. The Principal Bird Deity in Maya Art – An Iconogrpahic Study of Form and Meaning. In The Art, Iconography and Dynastic History of Palenque, Part III: Proceedings of the Segunda Mesa Redonda de Palenque, edited by Merle Greene Robertson, pp. 195-209. Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach.

Bassie-Sweet, Karen. 2008 Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Boot, Erik. 2008. At the Court of Itzam Nah Yax Kokaj Muut: Preliminary Iconographic and Epigraphic Analysis of a Late Classic Vessel. Online article. http://www.mayavase.com/God-D-Court-Vessel.pdf

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas, Mexico. New World Archaeological Foundation, Brigham Young University. Provo, UT.

Caso, Alfonso. 1967. Los Calendarios Prehispanicos. UNAM, Mexico.

Cortez, Constance. 1986. The Principal Cird Deity in Preclassic and Early Classic Maya Art. MA Thesis, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.

Guernsey, Julia. 2006. Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Hull, Kerry. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Kaufman, Terry. 1989. The Mesomerican Calendar: The Day Names. Unpublished manuscript in author’s possession.

Martin, Simon. 2015. The Old Man of the Maya Universe: A Unitary Dimension to Ancient Maya Religion. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by C. Golden, S. Houston and J. Skidmore, pp. 186-227. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Nielsen, Jesper, and Chrisophe Helmke. 2015. The Fall of the Great Celestial Bird: A Master Myth in Early Classic Central Mexico. Ancient America 13. Boundary End Archaeological Research Center and Mesoamerica Center, UT Austin. Barnardsivlle, NC.

Šprajc, Ivan, Takeshi Inomata, and Anthony Aveni. Origins of Mesoamerican astronomy and calendar: Evidence from the Olmec and Maya regions. Science Advances 9eabq7675(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abq7675

Taube, Karl, William Saturno, David Stuart, and Heather Hurst. 2010. The Murals of San Bartolo, El Peten, Guatemala. Part 2: The West Wall. Ancient America 10. Boundary End Archaeology Research Center, Barnardsville, NC.

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

The Devil’s Writing

Stephen Houston and Felipe Rojas (Brown University)

 

The Spaniards expressed a certain ambivalence about Maya glyphs. They called them letras, a neutral word suggesting an equivalence to their own writing system. But they could also describe the script in terms of caracteres. This implied, among other nuances, a cipher or emblem of magical import (Drucker 2022:61–62; Hanks 2010:3).[1] At the time, charaktêres, an obvious cognate with caracteres, were mystical signs created by adding circles or other embellishments to preexisting scripts (Gordon 2014:266–67). Devoid of grammar, often written for single use, they were thought to be “unutterable,” being visionary in origin and direct conduits to mystical meaning (Gordon 2014:263). John Dee, the Elizabethan-era occultist, even claimed to have received his own esoteric script from angels (Harkness 1999:166). Maya glyphs, by contrast, were understood to be legible if challenging to read. Like other writing, they recorded, among their quite varied content, “the deeds of each king’s ancestors” and reports of “years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, hungers” (Houston et al. 2001:26, 40).

But the Devil was seldom far away. Missionaries and colonial authorities recognized that glyphs served a role in enchantment and conjuring (Hanks 2010:8; Houston et al. 2001:36). The destruction and confiscation of books—the focus was not on the stone carvings from centuries before the Conquest—would, according to the Franciscan Bernardo de Lizana, writing in 1633, “cure and cauterize the pestilential cancer [of idolatry] that was eating away at the Christianity that [the friars] had planted with such great effort” (Chuchiak 2010:91). Diego de Landa had paved the way a few generations before: “[w]e found a great number of books of these letters of theirs, and because they had nothing but superstitions and falsities of the devil (demonio), we burned them all, which they felt amazingly and gave them great sorrow” (Landa 1959:105, translation ours, from scanned version by Christian Prager; see also Restall et al. 2023:164; Landa used demonio, “demon,” as a singular and collective noun, for it could apply both to Lucifer and individual Maya gods, including Hunhau [from Hun Ajaw, presumably], said to be the “prince” [príncipe] of them all [Landa 1959:60]). The shift to Latin script, even for esoteric works out of Spanish control, showed how obnoxious the glyphs had become to Spanish authorities and to local scribes wishing to employ a (by then) more prestigious script when integrating Maya and Christian beliefs (Chuchiak 2010:106). 

Thoughts about devilish writing bring to mind a text, from Europe but approximately the same time, said to have been written by the Devil himself (or, more precisely, an “archfiend” named Per Talion, Ansion et Amlion [Clark 1891:497–499]; see also Drucker 2022:105, fig. 4.9]). This appears in Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi’s Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas (original here), 1539, 212r (Figure 1). Ambrogio received a report of this document, supposedly in the demon’s own hand, after the fiend was conjured by one Lodovico de Spoletano. The demon was asked to respond to a money-grubbing query, suitable for the corruptor of venal souls… and in Italian no less, perhaps his notional language! The question: Sel Cavaliero Marchantonio figliolo de riccha donna da Piacenza ha ritrovati tutti li dinari che laso Antonio Maria, et se no in qual loco sono?; “has Cavaliero Marchantonio, son of a rich woman from Piacenza, found all the dinars that Antonio Maria left, and if not where are they?” (Hayden 1855:189).

Figure 1. Demonic writing, 1539. Introductio in Chaldaicam lingua[m], Syriaca[m], atq[ue] Armenica[m], & dece[m] alias linguas, 1539, 212r.

The demon obliged. He caused a pen to levitate over the page and left his script, which, mindful of his soul, Ambrogio declined to study (see the translation of his Latin text below, in Appendix 1). An anonymous poem about the Devil’s letter, from 1746, understands that reserve: “No more, ye critics, be your brains perplex’d T’elucidate the darkness of the text; No farther in the endless search proceed, The devil wrote it – let the devil read!” (Yeowell 1855:146). This book has been much gawked at, especially in a copy at the Queen’s College Library, Oxford. On September 29, 1663, it was viewed by no less a personage than King Charles II of England, along with his queen, Catherine of Braganza, his brother, James, the Duke of York, and Anne, the Duchess of York (Clark 1891:497). A compilation of English comments on the volume at Queen’s appears here.

 

The pitchfork script and swirling tails point to their purported maker. The way the tails transgress lines hints at some aggressive property of the “writer” and may also establish links between different parts of the text. Generally, a vertical and horizontal orientation guides the pitchforks, separated by the occasional dots, in sets of 1, 3, and 4, or jagged lines of 1, 2, 3 and 4, and a few signs shaped like Xs. The final sign with whiplashing tail, looks vaguely like the astrological sign of Taurus or the planet Mercury. If there is code here, it is seemingly written from left to right, like Latin script. That reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line, which fails to reach the right side. The lines contain respectively (and somewhat approximately, given the challenge of counting individual signs), 31, 28, 22, 25, 21, 24, and 16 signs, for 143 graphs in total, a wordy response to a question of some 118 letters. (The reading order is confirmed by the shorter, final line.) Out of the entire sequence, only one set of signs appears to repeat, the 10th and 11th from the left in the second row, but that may be from the imperfect application of ink in the block made for this illustration (see the smear of pigment to the upper left). A rough typology of signs, much affected by whether a missing tine is intended or not, or a flange or dot, reaches about 35 signs, the upper range of an alphabet; the inverted pitchfork without central tine may be among the most numerous, coming to some 10 examples. To an intriguing extent, the use of similar signs that find contrast by orienting right, left, up, down, resembles Sir Thomas More’s Utopian alphabet from 1518 (Figure 2). More’s shapes, likely devised by his printer and friend, Pieter Gillis of Antwerp, were influenced by geometrical concepts of the Humanist Renaissance, with a greater number of “closed” forms than evident in the Devil’s pitchforks (Houston and Rojas 2022:251; see also Campbell et al. 1978). 

Figure 2. Orientational scripts of the Humanist period: a, the Utopian alphabet, Thomas More, De optimo reip. statu deque nova insula Utopia (Basel: Johann Froben, 1518), 13 (photo, Folger Shakespeare Library [PR2321.U82 1518 Cage]); b, vignette of Ambrogio’s letter from the Devil.

This is not the only document said to have been written by the Devil. On the morning of August 11, 1676, a nun named Maria Crocifissa della Concezione claimed to have found a letter from the Dark One on the floor of her cell; her own face was covered in ink, hinting at more than some slight role in its production (Figure 3; Langeli 2020:560–561). The letter is claimed to have been translated in 2017 by Daniele Abate of the LUDUM Science Center, a children’s museum in Sicily, after, we are told, Abate had obtained software on the “Dark Web.” The wave of publicity, as here, does not seem to have been followed by any publication. Perhaps the “Dark Web” had a pleasing resonance with “Dark Lord.” Later, in his novel The Leopard, Guiseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, referred in light disguise to “the two famous and indecipherable letters framed on the wall of a cell, one to the Devil from Blessed Corbèra to convert him to virtue, and the other the Devil’s reply, expressing, it seems, his regret at not being able to comply with her request” (di Lampedusa 1960:82). This was no accident, for Sister Maria was born Isabella Tomasi, Lampedusa’s distant aunt by many generations. In looking at the letter, it is puzzling that the devil would use such a different script, and in the space of only 250 years or so! Most likely, of course, the Sister’s script was influenced by the books of Athanasius Kircher, such as his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–1654), or by various specimen charts that predated her own wild improvisation (Drucker 2022:figs. 6.4, 6.6). 

Figure 3. The Devil’s letter, given to Maria Crocifissa della Concezione, Monastero di Palma Montechiaro, Agrigento, Sicily.

 

Also the work of the Devil, at least by far later report, is the Bohemian Codex Gigas, now in the National Library of Sweden. In 1638, during the 30 Year’s War, it was seized by Swedish troops from the collections amassed in Prague by the Emperor Rudolf II. Eventually, it made its way to the royal library in Stockholm. This unusually large book, 89 x 49 cm, consisting of 310 parchment leaves, was made between AD 1200 and 1230 (Figure 4). A popular account insists that the image was painted in homage to the Devil, who assisted in its production, or that it might even have been made by his hand. This fable, emphatically denied by the National Library, is not quite the same as the stories from Ambrogio and Sister Maria, for the image of the Devil, unusual for its frontal position, sits across from an image of Jerusalem. When the book was open, he would squirm across from the city; when closed, his body would collapse into it. Fascination with the image has led to its over-exposure and fading, as can be seen by comparing the two images below.

Figure 4. The Codex Gigas, with signs of fading over time (ca AD 1210-1220), Latin (309) bl, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm, CC BY Per B. Adolphson, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

That the Devil was literate, assumed to be capable of polite missives and written colloquies, doubles back to Maya glyphs and Spanish views of them. Those works were just as impenetrable, just as unreadable, as the “characters” confronting Ambrogio and Sister Maria: the Maya books were best burned, or sent as idle curiosities to be viewed back in Europe with interest and, perhaps, trepidation.

Note 1. See the Oxford English Dictionary, with a citation from John Metham, 1449, writing in Middle English, “Anone he dyght hys sacrifyse..hys cerkyl gan dyuyse With carectyrs and fygurys, as longe to the dysposycion Off tho spyrytys.”; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “character (n.)”; Singer 1989:53; see also Hamann 2008:35, on these “abstract and esoteric and asonic” fantasies).

Appendix 1. Describing the Devils’ writing

Non tam cito pennam Magus deposuerat, quam cito qui aderant pennam eandem corripi, et in aera sustolli, et in eandem charta infra scriptos characteres velociter scribere viderunt scribentis vero manu nullus comprehendere potuerat Ut mihi aliquem retulit, qui cum multis presens fuer[at et] cum postmodum Papiam venisset, et factum ut fuerat enarraret. Rogatus archetypum mihi reliquit. Cuius verba adscripsi. Characteres vero tales erant. Quid vero characteres illi insinuarent, quam[ve] responsionem ad quaesita redderent scire o[mn]ino non curavi Quandoquidem vanas Magorum superstitiones, et somniis similia deliramenta, naturali quodam semper odio prosecutus fuerim. Nec mihi quispiam persuadere umquam potuerit, ut talia placerent. Non enim me latuit, huiusmodi nequam spiritus, suis semper cultoribus, laqueos tendere, ut irretintos in perniciem trahent. Exemplo nobis iamdudum esse potuit (ut multos praeteream) antiquus ille Simon Magus, qui Apostolroum temporibus misere interiit.Et in presentia hic, de quo loquimur, qui paulo ante, cum se rei militari totum dedisset, ac sub eius vexillo armatos tercetnos, sive quadrigentos duceret pedites, in rusticorum semel manus incidit. Qui tot illum ferris tridentibus (quot invocatus Amon, in suis characteribus effinxerat), appetentes, percusserunt, vulneraverunt, transfixerunt, Et tricipiti apud inferos Cerbero consignandum, mulits undique laeatalibus cribratum vulneribus, exanime tandem corpus ille reliquerunt. Verum cum in dignoscendis variarum linguarum characteribus, ac literarum figuris, propenso semper animo versarer, nolui etiam hoc scribendi genus, pratermittere intactum …

No sooner had Magus put down the quill than those who were present saw that same quill being grabbed and being borne in the air, and [they saw that quill] on the same sheet writing quickly writing the characters below. Yet the hand of the one writing no one could perceive. So he brought me someone, who had been present with many [others] and had just come to Papia. And he related how the deed had happened. Having been asked, he left me the archetype [i.e., the original manuscript], whose words I wrote down.— Such indeed were the signs: As to what those characters actually insinuated, and what response they gave to the questions asked I did not care to know at all, especially since with a certain natural hatred I have always chased away the empty superstitions of “Magicians” and their delirious visions similar to dreams. And no one has ever persuaded me that such things were acceptable. For it does not escape me that such evil spirits lay snares for those who worship them that they may drag them entangled into ruin. That famous Simon Magus, who died a miserable death in the days of the Apostles, can serve as an ancient example for us—I pass over many others [in silence]–this man of whom we speak, who a little before, had devoted himself entirely to military matters, and led three or four hundred footmen armed under his standard, once fell into the hands of peasants, who sought him, struck him, wounded him, and pierced him with as many tridents of iron (as the invoke Amon had represented in his characters). Having been consigned to the triple-headed Cerberus in the underworld, wounded on all sides by fatal wounds, they finally left his body lifeless. Since in distinguishing the characters of various languages, and the shapes of the letters, I ponder them with an ever attentive mind, I did not want to pass over this kind of writing undiscussed …

References

Campbell, Lorne, Margaret Mann Phillips, Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, and
J. B. Trapp. 1978. Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis, and
Thomas More. Burlington Magazine 120:716–25.

Chuchiak, John F., IV. 2010. Writing as Resistance: Maya Graphic Pluralism and Indigenous Elite Strategies for Survival in Colonial Yucatan, 1550–1750. Ethnohistory 57(1):87–116.

Clark, Andrew. 1891. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632-1695, Described by Himself, Volume 1, 1632-1633, pp. 497–99. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society.

di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. 1960. The Leopard, trans. by Archibald Calquhoun. London: Collins and Harvill.

Drucker, Johanna. 2022. Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gordon, Richard. 2014. Charaktêres Between Antiquity and Renaissance: Transmission and Re–Invention. In Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, edited by Véronique Dasen and Jean–Michel Spieser, pp. 253–300. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Hamann, Byron E. 2008. How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152(1):1–68.

Hanks, William F. 2010. Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harkness, Deborah E. 1999. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Houston, Stephen D., Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, and David Stuart, eds. 2001. The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

———–, and Felipe Rojas. 2022. Sourcing Novelty: On the “Secondary Invention” of Writing. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 77/78:250–66.

Hayden, Henry H. 1855. “Mysterious Scrawl” in Queen’s College, Library, Oxford. Notes and Queries 11:159.

Kircher, Athanasius. 1652–1654. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 3 vols. Rome: V. Mascardi. 

Landa, Diego de. 1959. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Biblioteca Porrúa 13. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Langeli, Attilio B. 2020. Scritture nascoste scritture invisibili, ovvero: Giochi di prestigio con l’alfabeto. La Bibliofilía 122(3):557–72.

Restall, Matthew, Amara Solari, John F. Chuchiak IV, and Traci Ardren. 2023. The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa and the Account of the Things of Yucatan. Denver: University Press of Colorado.

Singer, Thomas C. 1989. Hieroglyphs, Real Characters, and the Idea of Natural Language in English Seventeenth Century Thought. Journal of the History of Ideas 50:49-70.

Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941. Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán: A Translation. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology XVIII. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Yeowell, J. 1855. “Queen’s College, Oxford.” Notes and Queries 11:146.

The Solar Eclipse Record from Santa Elena Poco Uinic

by David Stuart

This entry is offered in anticipation of the solar eclipse visible over much of Mexico and the United States on April 8, 2024.

Only one record of a solar eclipse is known from Maya inscriptions of the Classic period. This appears on Stela 3 from Santa Elena Poco Uinic, a remote site in highland Chiapas, as part of a lengthy text relating several historical events of the late eighth century. This large monument was first recorded in 1926 by a team led by Enrique Juan Palacios, and it was shortly afterward that the great Mayanist John Teeple saw the published photographs and drawings (Palacios 1928), taking special note of a glyph showing a K’IN (sun) sign covered by two flanking elements (Figure 1b). Its strong resemblance to some “covered suns” represented within the eclipse tables of the Dresden Codex probably also caught Teeple’s eye.

Figure 1. (a) The lower portion of Stela 3 from Santa Elena Poco Uinic. (b) The eclipse glyph at the bottom of the central column. (Photograph by Miguel Othón de Mendizábal and Frank Tannenbaum; drawing by Nikolai Grube).

 

This “possible eclipse glyph,” as Teeple called it, follows a Calendar Round record of 5 Cib 14 Ch’en. Unlike other historical episodes recorded on the Poco Uinic stela, there is nothing more to the passage – no personal name, nor any other associated event or description. Rhetorically it serves as a simple calendrical statement, much like a Period Ending would be curtly described in a lengthy text, as a day of inherent noteworthiness, with no human actor. The day corresponds to the Long Count 9.17.19.13.16, firmly anchored by the larger narrative, including a Distance Number that connects it to the stela’s dedication date on the k’atun ending 9.18.0.0.0 11 Ahau 18 Mac, 84 days later. Teeple made the simple observation that “according to the Goodman correlation, which we have been using, this 5 Cib 14 Ch’en fell on July 16, 790, and on that day shortly after noon a total eclipse of the sun was visible from the spot where this monument was soon afterward erected” (Teeple 1931:115). Here we should remember that the correlation of ancient Maya and Gregorian calendars was still a matter of great debate when Teeple wrote these words. His masterful compilation of evidence from lunar records in the Classic inscriptions and other lines of evidence made him more comfortable in using a version of the Goodman (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson, or GMT) correlation, although he was still cautious in coming down too strongly in its favor.

Teeple’s eclipse was mentioned here and there in the epigraphic literature after 1931, but its importance was also strangely ignored. This changed in 2012, when Martin and Skidmore revisited the Poco Uinic text, featuring it in their elegant discussion of the correlation question. They made a clear case for its central importance in refining the match between Maya and Gregorian days (Martin and Skidmore 2012). The principal variants of the GMT correlation that most Mayanists used between 1931 and 2012 necessitated placements of the Poco Uinic date on July 13, 790 (using the 584283 Julian Day Number constant) or July 15, 790 (584285). In positing the Poco Uinic eclipse, Teeple had relied on a necessary one-day adjustment (584286), but this variation on the GMT had failed to gain wide acceptance in the years that followed. This was due in large measure to Thompson’s preference for the 584285, and his stubbornness to explore the issue only through postconquest documents of Yucatan (see Martin and Skidmore 2012:6, 9). Today, thanks to Teeple and, more recently, Martin and Skidmore, we can appreciate how a simple statement of a solar eclipse has allowed us to refine the correlation of Maya dates. My own work with new-moon records may offer some small support for it as well (Stuart 2020).

A recent astronomical study of the July 16, 790 eclipse by Hayakawa et al. (2021) noted how the path of totality passed 80 or so miles to the south of Santa Elena Poco Uinic. Still, its maximum magnitude was 0.946 at shortly after noon, and it surely would have been a noticeable event, as the authors note.

The eclipse record is part of a longer text on the Poco Uinic stela, the point of which was to celebrate the k’atun ending 9.18.0.0.0, which fell shortly later on October 8, 790. The inscription also features the accession of a local ruler named Yax Bahlam, which occurred on 9.17.11.14.16 5 Cib 14 Ceh, or September 16, 782. Significantly, the eclipse of 790 occurred on another 5 Cib (Martin and Skidmore 2012:6), as well as on a haab station that fell on the 14^th day of Ceh, a “color” month similar to Ch’en. The occurrence of the eclipse on a day so resonant with the accession eight years earlier, and so close to the k’atun ending to come, is striking. It must have been especially meaningful to the Maya of Santa Elena Poco Uinic.

Regarding the eclipse glyph, its reading remains difficult to know. Prager (2006) has suggested that the covering elements around the central K’IN might be read as NAM, but this will need further testing. These strongly resemble the arching element that is part of the K’ABA’, “name,” glyph (Love 2018). The visual form of these covering elements has a complex history of its own, as reflected in one variety of Glyph X from the lunar series, where a reference to darkened suns and moons seems to be included in the proper names of certain lunations (Grube 2018). Love (2018) offers a useful overview of the glyph from Poco Uinic and rightly suggests that many of the so-called “eclipse” glyphs we find in Maya texts and iconography might not all be the same, with some referring to sun-darkening in a more general way.

With a solar eclipse approaching in a few days, visible over much of the United States and Mexico, it seems a good moment to revisit the unique text from Poco Uinic. A century after its recognition by Teeple, it remains a singular record of an intensive “sun-darkening” from Maya history, from over twelve centuries ago.

References Cited

Grube, Nikolai. 2018. The Forms of Glyph X of the Lunar Series. Research Note 9, Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. Universität Bonn, Bonn.

Hayakawa, Hisashi, Mistturu Soma, and J. Hutch Kinsman. 2021. Analyses of a Datable Solar Eclipse Record in Maya Classic Period Monumental Inscriptions. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan. DOI: 10.1093/pasj/psab088

Love, Bruce. 2018. The “Eclipse Glyph” in Maya Text and Iconography: A Century of Misinterpretation. Ancient Mesoamerica 29(1):219-244.

Martin, Simon, and Joel Skidmore. 2012. Exploring the 584286 Correlation between the Maya and European Calendars. The PARI Journal 13(2):3-16. https://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/journal/1302/Correlation.pdf

Palacios, Enrique Juan. 1928. En los confines de la selva lacandona. Exploraciones en el estado de Chiapas, Mayo-Agosto 1926. Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, México.

Prager, Christian. 2006. Is T326 a Logograph for NA:M “hide, to go out of sight”? Unpublished Manuscript.

Stuart, David. 2020. Yesterday’s Moon: A Decipherment of the Classic Mayan Adverb ak’biiy. Maya Decipherment (www.mayadecipherment.com), posted August 1, 2020.

Teeple, John E. 1931. Maya Astronomy. Contributions of American Archaeology, No. 2, pp. 29-116. Publication 403. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D.C.

A New Drawing of the Inscription on the Cross Censer Stand from Palenque

by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)

In 1979 Linda Schele and Peter Mathews published their important catalog, The Bodega at Palenque, Chiapas Mexico, presenting various sculpture fragments and artifacts recovered over the course of many years of excavation from the 1930s to the 1960s. Of significant interest to epigraphers, among many pieces, was a badly damaged stone censer stand that had been found on the slope of the Temple of the Cross in 1945 (Schele and Mathews 1979:281).

The sculpture is representative of a particular type that is distinct to Palenque – an upright stone with a near life-size face on its front, two prominent side flanges showing ear ornaments, and other iconography, often with inscriptions on its side edges and back. These stones were inspired by the famous large ceramic censer stands that adorned many of the temples of Palenque (Cuevas 2008). As with their ceramic counterparts, small shallow bowls with copal were placed on the stands, visually atop the elaborate headdresses.

Other examples of such stones, far better preserved, include the stand representing the nobleman Aj Sul, a contemporary of K’inich Janab Pakal, now in the Museo Regional de Palenque. Another is a larger piece in the Museo Amparo in Puebla with a portrait of an Aj K’uhuun from the same period, carved during the reign of K’inich Janab Pakal. The inscriptions on all of these, including the Cross example, are biographical, recounting events in the lives of the figures portrayed. Their narratives close with records of death and burial. Clearly, these served as funerary small funerary altars, bearing the images of deceased ancestors. I have tentatively identified the name of this type as k’ohob’tuun, “image/mask stones” (Stuart 2019). In function and design, these bear a remarkable similarity to some funerary altars from the Roman world.

Unfortunately, the portrait on the front of Cross censer stand is broken and almost completely gone. A long incised inscription on its rear is also badly damaged (see drawing). Its first publication by Schele and Mathews was accompanied by Schele’s drawing and their tentative chronological analysis. The dates of the text were later revised and corrected in an outstanding study made by Ringle (1996), who also recognized strong overlaps between the texts and the contents of the Temple XVIII stucco inscription. In the late 1980s, I determined that a small stone fragment recovered in the western stairs of the Palace, now on display at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, was likely to be part of the same stone, bearing the opening Long Count date (see left side in drawing). The discovery of these pieces at a great distance from one another offers a fascinating instance of a monument’s intentional destruction and removal, probably after Palerque’s fall.

The fit of the side fragment prompted the drawing presented here, which will also be discussed as part of the upcoming workshop on the stucco glyphs from Temple XVIII, at Boundary End Archaeology Research Center (April 2024).

I agree with most Ringle’s revised chronology, differing only in a couple of dates from the middle of the text, given here only tentatively. The Gregorian dates are given using the Martin-Skidmore (584286) correlation.

9.10.15.6.8  4 Lamat 16 Pop   /   Mar 15, 648  / Birth of Tiwohl Chan Mat
9.11.5.0.0  5 Ahau 3 Zac   /   Sep 16, 657  /  Period Ending (PE)
9.11.6.16.17  13 Caban 10 Ch’en  /  Aug 14, 659  / Arrival of Nuun Ujol Chahk
9.11.7.0.0  10 Ahau 13 Yax  /   Sep 6, 659  /   PE
9.11.9.14.19  2 Cauac 17 Xul   /   Jul 11, 662  / Youth ritual?
9.11.10.0.0  11 Ahau 18 Ch’en  /   Aug 21, 662  /   PE
9.11.13.0.0  12 Ahau 3 Ch’en  /  Aug 5, 665  /  PE
9.11.15.10.7  3 Manik 0 Uayeb???  /  Feb 18, 668  /  Triad event
9.12.0.0.0  10 Ahau 8 Yaxkin  /  Jun 29, 672  / PE
9.12.0.6.18  5 Etz’nab 6 Kankin  / Nov 14, 672 / Death of Lady Tzakbu Ajaw
9.12.8.9.18  7 Etz’nab 6 Muan  /  Dec 2, 680  /  Death of Tiwohl Chan Mat
9.12.8.10.0  9 Ahau 8 Muan  /  Dec 4, 680  /  Burial
9.12.10.0.0  9 Ahau 18 Zotz’  /  May 8, 682  /  Dedication of stone

We see that the thirteen dates on the stone (an intentional number?) cover a thirty-five-year period, corresponding roughly to the life of the stone’s protagonist, Tiwol Chan Mat. As we find in other funerary texts on small stones, the inscription is biographical, recounting the major events of his life. The censer stand was dedicated at the half-k’atun on May 5, 682, 162 days after Tiwohl Chan Mat’s death. There is a poignance to the mention of Pakal overseeing the burial of his youngest son, only eight years after his wife passed away. In fact, The similarity in the death dates of the mother and the son – 5 Etznab 6 Kankin and 7 Etznab 6 Muan – may have given extra meaning to the narrative, linking the mother and her adult son. Pakal’s own death would come soon after.

The prominence of the 659 arrival of Nuun Ujol Chahk, probably the exiled ruler of the Mutul dynasty, is interesting.  This was a transformative event for Palenque’s court, featured prominently in Pakal’s own story as told in the Temple of the Inscriptions. The visit probably helped to advance Pakal’s own political and military power in the western region, and his conflicts against the great Kanul court and its allies. Tiwol Chan Maat was only eleven years old at the time of this royal visit, and it must have left quite a mark on the boy.

Lastly, the dedication of this funerary stone pre-dates the Temple of the Cross, where it was eventually found. This suggests that it was brought to the Cross a decade or more after it was carved. There it would have accompanied the many other ceramic censer stands found on the temple’s slope. The ancestral themes of the tablet in the Temple of the Cross may signal why it was brought there, adding Tiwohl Chan Mat’s story to his older brother’s greater dynastic narrative.

Sources Cited

Cuevas Garcia, Martha. 2008. Los incensarios efigie de Palenque: Diedades y rituales mayas. UNAM, Mexico.

Ringle, William M. 1996. Birds of a Feather: The Fallen Stucco Inscription of Temple XVIII, Palenque, Chiapas. In Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993, edited by M.G. Robertson, M. J. Macri, and J. McHargue, pp. 45-61. Pre-Columbian art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Schele, Linda, and Peter Mathews. 1979. The Bodega of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Stuart, David. 2019. A Possible Logogram for K’OJ or K’OJOB, “Mask, Image.” Unpublished talk (slides only) on academia.edu.

Tikal, Tecali, Teotihuacan

by Stephen Houston (Brown University)

Alabaster was a rarity among the Classic Maya, reserved for fine bowls in elite settings, especially tombs or palaces (Houston 2014:258; Kubler 1977:5n1). Known as xix, a spelling attested in at least two glyphic texts, it appeared to refer to rocks affected by water (Houston et al. 2018; Luin et al. 2022:907, fig. 4). Geologically, xix is a white sedimentary calcite (CaCO3) mined in, among other places, a source near Zinacantan, Chiapas (Berlin 1946:27; for other quarries, see Urcid 2010:fig. 56). A comparable term, tecali, named after a community of that name, was applied to banded stone of similar composition in Mexico (Diehl and Stroh 1978:74). The Maya evidently prized the translucency, crystalline texture, and hard, white surface of alabaster, the better to highlight delicate incisions that could be filled in with red pigment.

An unusual find of two alabaster effigies comes from Burial 195, under Structure 5D-32 in the North Acropolis at Tikal, Guatemala (Figure 1, Coe 1990:565-568, 920, figs. 198-199, 330; Coggins 1975:344; Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). The tomb almost certainly belonged to a ruler of Tikal, ‘Animal Skull’, who died around AD 600.[1] The product of a tumultuous phase in Tikal’s history, Animal Skull does not clearly descend from earlier rulers of the city. His reign took place after a “rupture [that] follows hard on the heels of a major military defeat” at Tikal, leading to a “130-year monument hiatus and an interruption to its dynastic line” (Martin 2020:104, 247, 345).

Figure 1. Burial 195 and its two animal effigies of alabaster, marked “22” (partial plan: Coe 1990:fig. 1998; effigies: Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 138).

 

Despite the gap in monuments, there is no textual hiatus at Tikal. A suprisingly large number of pots belonged to Animal Skull, a pattern seen also with his near-contemporary, “Aj Numsaaj/Aj Nunsaaj” at Naranjo (Zender 2019:35, for discussion of the ruler’s name; see also Houston 2018:71-74). Prestige ceramics must have flowed in special abundance at this time. Perhaps it was a way to reconstitute frayed relationships and build new ones by means of gifted pots. In Animal Skull’s tomb, there was also a quite literal flow of silt that washed into the tomb some years after its completion and sealing. Surrounding perishable objects, it left cavities when offerings in the tomb rotted away, preserving original shapes and coverings of painted stucco. Among the finds was a covered wooden bowl with a remnant text (Martin 2008). It referred to a ruler from the antagonistic kingdom of Caracol, Belize, from which the bowl may have arrived as a gift or as war booty. Apparently, Animal Skull had other broad connections, including ties to the dynasty of Altar de Sacrificios, a royal seat some 100 km southwest of Tikal (Martin 2020:412n16).

Said to be “somewhat eroded,” the alabaster effigies measure ca. 28 cm long, 12 cm wide, and 15 cm high (Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). They occur side-by-side but otherwise alone in a quadrant of Burial 195. One carving is blockier, less curved than the other. Poised on their front legs and haunches, almost ready to jump, they were intended, it seems, to stare eternally at the head of Animal Skull. He lay flat on his back nearby. What sort of animals were they? Some scholars see them as agoutis or sereques (Dasyprocta punctata), but the fuller, rather alert tails point to another identification (Coe 1990:566; Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 138): they are rabbits, perhaps cottontails in particular. The small ears cue that mammal rather than hares. Famously procreative as a genus, the rabbits were placed in the tomb as a pair, suggesting a buck and his doe.

It is highly likely these carvings were non-local, deriving instead from the metropolis of Teotihuacan, which was largely in ruins when these alabaster–tecali–pieces were placed in Burial 195. Excavations at the apartment compound of Oztoyahualco found just such a carving, also, probably, of a rabbit, in the center of courtyard (Figure 2a). The dimensions, style of carving, and disposition of limbs are quite close to those of the alabasters at Tikal. Other such finds include a piece in a photographic archive, head gone but with similar limbs (Figure 2b), and two very different creatures, felines both (Figure 2c), including a calcite or tecali example that entered the collection of the British Museum in 1926 (Figures 2d). Two appear to have receptables on their backs for offerings, and the evident dyad of predators (felines) and prey (rabbits) may not be a coincidence. The rabbit at Oztoyahualco dates to the Xolalpan phase, ca. AD 350-550), the shattered mammal (supposedly) to the subsequent Metepec period (AD 550-660), at the time of Teotihuacan’s decisive decline (Beramendi-Orosco 2009:106-107).

Figure 2. Animals at Teotihuacan, Mexico: (a) Oztoyahualco 15b apartment compound (Ortiz Díaz 1993:522, 387); (b) Metepec-period carving (exact provenance unknown, from photo supplied by Joshua Kwoka); (c) image of feline, ca. AD 250-550, 17 x 17.5 x 10 cm (Baez 2009:261, pl. 59); and (d) tecali-feline, Teotihuacan, British Museum Am1926-22, 33 x 21 x 16 cm.

 

Study of animal bones at Oztoyahualco reveal a notable preponderence of rabbit, with other evidence in the form of possible pens, hide-preparing tools, and osteological signs of butchering (Somerville et al. 2016:3; see also Somerville and Sugiyama 2021:63-64). This evidence indicates that these animals were a key resource for the apartment compound and for Teotihuacan in general. The rabbit effigy itself appears to have been placed on top of a small temple platform in the middle of a courtyard at Oztoyahualco (Figure 3a). Whether this was in homage to a succulent rabbit god is speculative, but it does suggest that such platforms displayed the effigies for local ritual, that these were central, if portable, votive carvings. Indeed, an example of a temple “maquette,” with the same portability as the carvings from Oztoyahualco–and marked by the distinctive talud-tablero (slope-panel) feature of Teotihuacan–has its own super-structure, with a chamber large enough to accommodate such effigies (Figure 3b). Courtyard temples of similar sort have been found at Tikal (Figure 3c), including, not far away, to the east, a recent find in Group 6C-XV (Román et al. 2023)–the latter being part of the city that was abandoned at the end of the Early Classic period, ca. AD 500-600.[2] Perhaps such a temple, with now missing chambers, contained the effigies, which might be switched out for votive need or removal and use in intermittent displays or processions.

Figure 3. (a) effigy atop miniature temple with talud-tablero, Xolalpan (Ortiz Díaz 1993:522); (b) miniature temple, Zacuala, Teotihuacan, 59.5 x 52 x 92.8 cm, likely Xolalpan (Jiménez Delgado 2009:213, pl. 3); and (c) courtyard temple, Structure 48, Group 6C-XVI-Sub, Tikal, Guatemala, AD 400-500 (Laporte and Fialko 1995:66, fig. 44, drawing by Paulino Morales).

 

The calcite rabbits in Burial 195 have not been linked before to Teotihuacan. Yet they correspond to a type of carving attested at that site, in a material employed for at least one animal effigy of comparable size. Calcite carvings of this nature and scale are not otherwise known in the Maya region. As tomb furniture, this may reflect the need of an upstart ruler, Animal Skull, to find roots in more distant pasts and places…or perhaps in ritual effigies taken from a part of his city abandoned prior to his death and burial.

Acknowledgement  I thank Joshua Kwoka for sharing the image in Figure 2b and Mary Miller for reminding me that we are, as of this writing, in the Year of the Rabbit!

[1] As an epithet, “Animal Skull” is an ersatz place-holder. The actual name remains a puzzle, for it includes a turtle head and, at times, a feline ear, along with a suite of other titles and affixes or infixes that come and go.

[2] Oztoyahualco does not only offer a parallel to Tikal (Taube and Zender 2009:188-189, fig. 7.15). A manopla or boxing cudgel from Caracol, Belize, bears a striking resemblance to an object found in the apartment complex (left below, Oztoyohualco Burial 13, Teotihuacan: Ortiz Díaz 1993:527, 533, 536, figs. 389, 391; right below, Caracol, Belize: Royal Ontario Museum, 971.466, Anderson 1959, mislabeled as a “monkey skull” but correctly noted to be Early Classic in date). Note the “dead” or discolored incisor on the skull, an idiosyncratic hint that it matches an actual person with this injury or decay.

 

References

Anderson, A. Hamilton. 1959. Actas del XXXIII Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, San José, 20-27 Julio 1958:211-218.

Baez, Miguel. 2009. Sculpture de Jaguar. In Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux, edited by Felipe Solís, 261. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Somogy Éditions d’Art.

Beramendi-Orosco, Laura E., Galia Gonzalez-Hernández, Ana Soler-Arechalde, Manzanilla LR. 2021. A High-Resolution Chronology for the Palatial Complex of Xalla in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Combining Radiocarbon and Archaeomagnetic Dates in a Bayesian Model. Radiocarbon 63(4):1073-1084.

Coe, William R. 1990. Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrace, and North Acropolis of Tikal. Philadephia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Coggins, Clemency C. 1975. Painting and Drawing Styles at Tikal: An Historical and Iconographic Reconstruction. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Diehl, Richard A., and Edward G. Stroh, Jr. 1978. Tecali Vessel Manufacturing Debris at Tollan, Mexico. American Antiquity 43(1):73–79.

Houston, Stephen D. 2014. Miscellaneous Texts. In Life and Politics at the Royal Court of Aguateca: Artifacts, Analytical Data, and Synthesis. Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase Monograph Series, Volume 3, edited by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, 258–269. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

—-. 2018. The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text. New Haven: Yale University Press.

—-, David Stuart, and Marc Zender. 2018. If…Alabaster Could Talk. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography, Boundary End Archaeological Research Center.

Jiménez Delgado, Jonathan E. 2009. Miniature d’un Temple et de son Soubassement. In Teotihuacan, Cité des Dieux, edited by Felipe Solís, 213. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Somogy Éditions d’Art.

Kubler, George. 1977. Aspects of Classic Maya Rulership on Two Inscribed Vessels. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology No. 18. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University.

Laporte, Juan Pedro, and Vilma Fialko. 1995. Un reencuentro con Mundo Perido, Tikal, Guatemala. Ancient Mesoamerica 6(1):41–94.

Luin, Camilo A., Dmitri Beliaev, and Sergei Vepretskii. 2022. La vasija de travertino del Museo Popol Vuh. In 34 simposio de investigaciones arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2021, tomo 2, edited by Bárbara Arroyo, Luis Méndez Salinas, and Gloria Ajú Álvarez, 903-912. Guatemala City: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Instituto de Antropología e Historia, Asociación Tikal.

Martin, Simon. 2008. A Caracol Emblem at Tikal. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Maya Writing and Iconography, Boundary End Archaeological Research Center

—-. 2020. Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moholy-Nagy, Hattula, with William R. Coe. 2008. The Artifacts of Tikal: Ornamental and Ceremonial Artifacts and Unworked Material. Tikal Reports 27A. Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.

Ortiz Díaz, Edith. 1993. Ideología y vida doméstica. In Anatomía de un conjunto residencial Teotihuacano en Oztoyahualco, 1: Excavaciones, edited by Linda Manzanilla, 519-547. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Román Ramírez, Edwin, Lorena Paiz Aragón, Angelyn Bass, Thomas Garrison, Stephen Houston, Heather Hurst, David Stuart, Alejandrina Corado Ochoa, Cristina García Leal, and Rony Estuardo Piedrasanta Castellanos. 2023. A Teotihuacan Altar at Tikal, Guatemala: Central Mexican Ritual and Elite Interaction in the Maya Lowlands, unpublished manuscript. 

Somerville, Andrew D., and Nawa Sugiyama. 2021. Why Were New World Rabbits Not Domesticated? Animal Frontiers 11(3):62–68.

—-, —-, Linda R. Manzanilla, and Margaret J. Schoeninger. 2016. Animal Management at the Ancient Metropolis of Teotihuacan, Mexico: Stable Isotope Analysis of Leporid (Cottontail and Jackrabbit) Bone Mineral. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0159982. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159982.

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