Function and Meaning Maya Architecture
Function and Meaning Maya Architecture
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Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Washington, D.C.
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Linda Schele
more rarely on the balustrades and substructural terraces. At Tikal, sculptors
favored the entablatures and especially emphasized the huge roof combs; they
more rarely used the terraces on the pyramidal substructures.Thanks to Barbara
Fashs excellent work with the disarticulated sculpture of Copan and to recent
excavations by the various projects in the Copan Acropolis Archaeological
Project, we can now identify its pattern as one incorporating pairs of small
window slits into sculptural sequences arranged on the vertical bearing wall.
Copan sculptors also modeled the corners of buildings and regularly used the
entablatures, roof combs, stairways, and speakers platforms projecting from the
stairs. Earlier buildings inside the acropolis have plaster mask sculptures on the
substructural terraces in the central Peten tradition, although this practice was
abandoned by the Late Classic period.The builders of Yaxchilan and Bonampak
concentrated on stairways, entablatures, and roof combs.
In the Chenes and Ro Bec regions, builders treated the entire front faade
of the building as a single sculptural sequence, with the image of a huge mask
f lowing from the vertical walls onto the entablature. Sculptors at Copan also
used this kind of masked faade on Temples 11 and 22, and at Uxmal it appears
on the upper temple on the west face of the Pyramid of the Magician. The
Puuc and Northern Yucatecan styles of architectural decoration used all of the
areas discussed above but tended to emphasize the balustrades of stairways instead of the substructural terraces. The prominent exception to this pattern is
the Osario at Chichen Itza. Peter Schmidt has found that the upper three of the
seven terraces on this building carried sculptural panels on all four sides of the
building.The tableros (panels) of the Temple of the Warriors hold relief panels, as
do most of the platforms and many of the benches at Chichen Itza.
These sculptural programs were rendered in one of two major techniques:
plaster modeled over stone armatures or relief mosaic sculpture covered with a
thin layer of plaster. Sculptors used two techniques in the second kind of sculpture: to sculpt the stones before they were set in the wall or to carve in the relief
after the stone was set in the wall. At Copan, it seems clear that some of the very
deep relief and three-dimensional forms were sculpted before the stones were
set in the wall, with the f ine detailing done after the wall was set. Copan offers
the only well-documented example of the sustained use of both techniques.
Most of the architectural sculpture on buildings buried inside the acropolis was
modeled in plaster, whereas the sculpture of later building (after approximately
a.d. 650) used stone relief. Most of the buildings at sites in the Peten, Chiapas,
and Belize have modeled stucco relief, whereas the use of stone mosaic relief is
characteristic of Copan, Quirigua, the Chenes and Puuc regions, and Northern
Yucatan.
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Linda Schele
Fig. 1 Restoration drawing of the panels from the north faade of the Palenque Palace
(restored areas are stippled).
one form of the Milky Way. The presence of either symbol in the contexts of
the mask faade located the contexts as that of the heavens. Many Early Classic
examples of the anthropomorphic heads are now known to represent one or
the other of the Hero Twins in their roles as planets, but representations of the
Principal Bird Deity, a jaguar god, mountain monsters, and many others also
occur.
The masked substructure that was particularly characteristic of the Late PreClassic and Early Classic architecture became less popular during the Late Classic
period. Instead, Late Classic buildings concentrated on using the mask on the
superstructures in new and imaginative ways. The most extraordinary development was in the Ro Bec, Chenes, and Puuc regions (Gendrop 1983). One of
the most impressive techniques was to treat the entire faade as a great monster
head with the door as its mouth, as on Homiguero Structure 5 and the Pyramid
of the Magician at Uxmal (Fig. 2a). People entering such buildings appeared to
be walking into the gullet of the monster. At Chicanna and Dzibilnocac, builders combined prof ile views of the eye and forehead on the side of the door
with a front view of the head above it. The effect was the same. Other styles,
such as at Xkickmook and Chicanna, limited the mask components to the
entablature so that the head did not have a lower jaw. Many of these faades
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Fig. 2 (a) West faade of the Magician at Uxmal, with a front view of monster head
(after Seler 1917); (b) faade at Tabascao, combined front and side view monsters;
(c) entablature of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque.
combine the main door mask with stacks of smaller masks, flanking the main
head or decorating corners. The most elaborate development occurred in the
Codz Pop at Kabah, where the entire northern faade of the building is covered with earf lare to earf lare stacks of mask heads.
Who Was That Masked Building?
The identity of the masks on these faades is the most misunderstood and
understudied problem in Late and Terminal Classic architecture. Since Seler
f irst associated the long-snouted faades of Uxmal with God B and God K,
these identif ications have been widely accepted (Kowalski 1987: 187202), with
a special place given to Chaak, the rain god. The evidence has rested primarily
on the resemblance of the snouts of the masks to representations of these gods
in the codices rather than to specif ic iconographic features of the masks. In my
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Linda Schele
own study, I have not identif ied Chaak unless the image contains either his
diagnostic shell earf lares or his shell diadem. By applying this limitation, I found
only a single stack of masks at Chicanna with the required identif ication feature. On the other hand, diagnostic features that I could recognize pointed to
other deities or to places in the sacred landscape.
Mountains
David Stuarts (1987) work with the Copan inscriptions identif ied the stack
of mask heads on the corner of Temple 22 as wits1 mountain personif ications.
The front faade of that temple also presented the door as the mouth of the
mouthor a cave (Schvelzon 1980). I suspect that most of the door monsters
in the northern styles are also mountain monsters, but the diagnostic traits that
marked mountain images of the south usually are not present in the north.
Some of these mountains can be identif ied directly with creation iconography
as the mountain that held the grain of maize that was used to create the f irst
human beings. Those masked faades that do not have distinctive identifying
traits depend on context for their identity.
Sky Dragons
However, not all of the masked faades represented mountains and caves, or,
if they are mountain faades, they incorporated other iconography. At Palenque
the Temple of the Cross (Fig. 2c) has a crocodilian monster model.The creature
has cauac markings and eyelids consistent with a mountain monster, but it has
water lilies and f ish surrounding its head. This combination of signs is distinctive of the front head of the Cosmic Monster at Copan and Quirigua.
The reconstruction of Kabah Structure 1A1 shows sky bands f lanking the
center door masks, and the corner masks are linked by entwined serpent bodies. The same sky band and twisted snakes characterize the western temple on
the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. Arthur Millers (1974) identif ication of
these twisted serpent cords as the kuxan sum or living cord that connected
Maya rulers to the heavens has been conf irmed by new interpretations of the
Classic period myth of creation (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 59122).
These twisted snakes also mark the creation location called Na Ho Kan, so that
faades with twisted snakes may very well represent this location or the kuxan
sum descending to earth. This category of monster faades may represent the
1
This paper was written using the unif ied alphabet of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas of
Guatemala, an orthography that also has been accepted in the latest publications of Yucatec
dictionaries by government and university organizations in Yucatan. The editor of this volume did not allow this decision and has imposed his own orthographic conventions.
484
c
a
Fig. 3 (a) Mask stack from the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza; (b) mask from
the West Building of the Nunnery Quadrangle; (c) its signs from the Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal (b and c, after Seler 1917).
front head of the Cosmic Monster in these cases, although this monster overlapped mountain imagery and could merge both concepts. There is good evidence that the Maya saw a complete landscape in the sky.
Itzamna
The masks on the Temple of the Warriors (Fig. 3) at Chichen Itza have
always been identif ied as Chaaks, but they have f lower headbands as their principal diagnostic marker (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 158). Schele (n.d.a;
Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 410412) identif ied this headband as the iconic
version of the its glyph. The headband is the characteristic marker for God D
(Taube 1992a: 3140), whose name has been deciphered as Itsamna, and of the
cosmic bird that sits on top of the world tree. Its name, Itsam Yeh, Itsam Kah, or
Mut Itsamnah,2 was written using the same f lower sign. Its is the word for
2
Schele (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 41412) based the name of the bird on an
occurrence on a pot that has the head of God D followed by what she took to be a ye sign.
Since then, Grube, Martin, Houston, and others have pointed out that the ye sign has a
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Linda Schele
f lower nectar but also for what David Freidel (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993:
210213) calls the cosmic sapthe sacred and magical substances that seep
from the objects of the world. Its is also sorcery and enchantment so that
itsam is one who enchants and does magic. Itsamna of the codices and Itsamhi
of the Classic inscriptions was the f irst sorcerer of this creation.
In the summer of 1994, Peter Mathews and I examined a great many of the
long-nosed gods at Chichen Itza. We did not look at every example, but we did
check most of the masks in the main group, the Osario, and around the Monjas.
Only the heads on the iglesia lack this f lower headband. The vast majority of
long-snouted heads in Chichen Itza represent the latched-beaked bird of Itsam
Yeh, the great bird that Taube (1992b: 80) identif ied as the nawal of Itsamna.
Nikolai Grube (personal communication, 1994) reminded me that the word
itsa very likely means water sorcerer. The ubiquitous presence of the Itsam
Yeh bird on Chichen architecture may have been more than a device to mark
the buildings as magic places: they also may have referred to the itsa who built
the site.
However, its signs and long-nosed gods with f lower headbands occur with
equal frequency at Uxmal. In fact, three of the four buildings in the Nunnery
Quadrangle3 have its signs distributed along the superior molding (Fig. 3b).
Furthermore, all of the mask stacks on the west, north, and east buildings have
the same f lower headband. Perhaps more telling are the house images on the
west buildingthey combine the itsam head with the image of a house to form
the iconic representation of the name Itsam Na, Sorcery House.4 The famous
god of Yucatan was not a crocodile or iguana house as Thompson (1970)
proposed, but it was a house for sorcery. The north building had its own way of
making this identity. Its house images have vision serpents emerging from their
hook in its interior. Grube and Martin (in Schele and Grube 1994: 18) identif ied the
second sign in the bird name as kah and suggested that the name was Itzam Kah, Town
Sorcerer. I have checked this sign in photographs but have not seen the original pot. If it is
their ka sign, then their reading of the name would be the better one. Because I have used
the Itsam Yeh name in several other publications, I will retain it until a general consensus is
achieved. David Stuart also pointed out two examples from Xcalumkin that have the birds
name as Mut Itsamnah. There were at least two names for this bird during the Classic
period.
3
All of the observations concerning the iconography of the Nunnery Quadrangle were
made in collaboration with Peter Mathews in preparation for a book we will be publishing.
4
This area of the entablature of the west building was reconstructed by Mexican archaeologists, but Jeff Kowalski, Peter Mathews, and I have examined records of the Instituto
Nacional de Antropologa e Historia on these restorations and feel that there was reasonably good evidence for the entablature as restored.
486
Recent insights (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 59122) into the creation
myth of the Classic period have provided a template that explains many architectural arrangements and imagery programs of the Classic period.The myth of
Creation describes the setting up of a series of structures by the principal actors, who include the Maize God, the Paddlers, Itsamna, and God L. The structures they created included three thrones that formed the f irst cosmic hearth, a
turtle or peccary that Chaak cracked open to allow the rebirth of the Maize
God, a house made up of four sides and four corners, a cosmic tree called
Wakah Chan, a maize tree called the Kan te Na, a ballcourt made of a cleft, and
finally a mountain. Most of the structures have analogs in the constellations and
other patterns of the sky. These actions took place at a series of supernatural locations including, among others, Na Ho Kan (House-Five-Sky), Matawil (???),
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Linda Schele
Kab Kun (Earth seat), Yax Hal Wits (First True Mountain), Ho Hanab Wits
(Five-Flower Mountain), Ek Nab (Black Sea), Ka5 Chan (Lying-down
or Closed Sky), Ka Nab (Lying-down or Closed Sea), Wak Chan (Six or
Raised-up Sky), Wak Nabnal (Six or Raised-up Sea), etc.
One of the major strategies of Late Classic buildersin fact, throughout
Maya historywas to create analogs of these objects and locations in their
architecture. One of the most central of these symbols was the three stones of
creation. According to Stela C at Quirigua, the three stones consisted of a
jaguar throne stone, a snake throne stone, and a shark (or xok) throne stone.
Like a hearth in a Maya house, these stones were typically arranged in a
triangle. This arrangement is a very ancient and familiar pattern in Maya architecture, and it continued to play a major role during the Classic period. The
Group of the Cross at Palenque created the three stones as a way of centering
the world and establishing the place of creation. I think the last remodeling of
the main plaza at Tikal by Ruler A created analogs of the three stones with
Temple 33 and the North Acropolis at one point of the triangle, and Temple I
and Temple II at the other two points. There are many other examples found at
many different sites. The imagery placed on or within these groups could ref lect the identities of the three stones or be independent of them.
The turtle and the trees appear less directly in the imagery, although they are
still there. At Uxmal, the House of the Turtles located above the ballcourt may
be a reference to the turtle of creation. At Copan, the west faade of Structure
26 depicts the history of the site emerging up the stairs from the inside of the
inverted head of a vision serpent. The top of the altar, which is also the roof of
the serpents mouth, has an image of the maize tree emerging from the crack in
the turtles back (Fig. 4). The trees of creation could be symbolized in poles and
images, but they were not made into buildingsat least not to my knowledge.
However, buildings were sometimes named for them. David Stuart (personal communication, 1987) was the f irst to realize that Temple 16 at Copan
and the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque have the same nameNa
Kan Te. The inscription on Tikal Stela 31 records another building of the same
namebut we do not know which one it was. Temple 16 is the most complete
of these: it had great Pawahtuns on the corners supporting a roof that had a sky
serpent arching across. Below on the front steps were a great maize plate, band
5
In Freidel, Schele, and Parker (1993), I used the value cha for T128. However, new
substitution patterns have shown that this sign was ka or kal (MacLeod n.d.; Schele and
Looper 1996). These two locations would have been Ka Kan, Lying-down Sky, (or Ka[l]
Kan, Closed sky) and Ka Nab or Kal Nab, Lying-down Sea or Closed Sea, with both
forms probably referring to the sky and sea before they were separated.
488
Fig. 4 The altar at the base of the hieroglyphic stairs at Copan. Drawing above appears
on the top surface of the altar.
with earth signs, and another with a zigzag band with le signs. This last image
marks the place of creation on many pots. Matthew Loopers (1995, n.d.) work
on nearby Quirigua has shown that the entire site reproduces the geography of
creation. He has identif ied Stelae A and C along with zoomorph B as the three
stones of creation. Earlier, Grube, Schele, and Fahsen (1991) had identif ied the
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Linda Schele
Fig. 5
490
the Milky Way. In the ritual of the Bacabs, the Maya called this location the
place of the four roads (Schele 1993). Maya painters left us a picture of Na Ho
Kan on a black-background pot (Fig. 6), where they recorded the location as
Na Ho Kan Wits Xaman, House-Five-Sky Mountain North. Entwined serpents representing the kuxan sum meander through the space and surround the
gods who are being born.
The Maya seem to have used these entwined serpents and sometimes entwined cords to mark buildings they meant to represent Na Ho Kan. These
cords mark the main pyramid at Xunantunich (Fig. 7) as this sacred location.
Deity representation of te, tree, and moon signs sit in the lower register amid
enframing runs of entwined cords. The second level has sky bands entwined
around Pawahtuns and a now-destroyed central f igure. The upper register is
nearly destroyed, but it appears to have stepped frames arranged side by side in
a row. Nikolai Grube (personal communication, 1995) and I believe that this
frieze represents Na Ho Kan and that the entire pyramid is the Na Ho Kan
Wits. The same Na Ho Kan mountain also may be represented at Hochob,
which has twisted snakes above its monster door, and at Payan, which has twisted
snakes emerging from the sides of its monster door.
The east faade of the Monjas at Chichen Itza (Fig. 8) is one of the most
interesting representations of the creation. Its lower zone and the area above
the medial molding has stacks of Itsam Yeh heads with the heads of gods emerging
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Linda Schele
Fig. 7 Twisted cord/snakes of Na Ho Kan at (a) the main pyramid at Xunantunich and
(b) Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal.
above their beaks. At least one of these gods is a paddler. The medial molding
has the twisted cords of the kuxam sum and the stepped frame from Xunantunich.
The door has the teeth of the cave monster set in the serrated contour of the
lip. A sky band with planetary signs that represent the signs on the ecliptic sits
about the door. Snakes with zigzag bodies surround a feathered opening. The
f igure inside the opening may represent the owner of the house, but Nikolai
Grube (personal communication, 1995) and I believe it also refers to the Maize
God who sits at the place of creation unfolding the path of the planets along
the ecliptic. The upper molding consists of corner snake heads joined by an
angular pattern with serrated edges.This pattern is particularly prevalent on the
west building of the Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal, where f lowers f ill the
spaces between the lattice.The upper side of this snake has the upper bands that
occur on the Venus bundles on the platforms in the Main Group and the Osario
Group. This symbol is part of the Tlaloc-Venus war complex. Thus, creation
unfolded here in association with war and politics.
The Creation Mountain
The most pervasive images from creation mythology is the creation mountain. It was represented in two ways: as the Yax Hal Witsnal and as the snake
mountain. The f irst of these two kinds of mountains appears in its most informative iconic form on the Tablet of the Foliated Cross at Palenque (Fig. 9a),
492
Fig. 8
Chichen Itza, the east faade of the Monjas. Drawing by John S. Bolles.
c
Fig. 9 Mountain monsters from (a) Palenque, Tablet of the Foliated Cross, Yax Hal Wits;
(b) Tikal Temple IV, Lintel 3; and (c) Bonampak Stela 1.
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Linda Schele
where its name, Yax Hal Witsnal (First True Mountain-place), occurs in its
eyes (Schele and Freidel 1991). Other forms appear on the base of Bonampak
Stela 1 (Fig. 9c) and Lintel 3 of Temple IV at Tikal (Fig. 9b). All three versions
have a stepped cleft in the forehead, out of which emerges maize in the form of
either the plant or the god. I think this mountain was portrayed on the roof
comb of the Temple of the Sun. The mountain is surrounded by sky bands and
Pawahtuns holding strange tubes extending from the mountain.This scene may
show the Maize God or some other deity sitting in the mountain cleft as he lays
out kuxan sum.7 I suspect the f igure sitting on top of the mountain as he holds
the double-headed serpent bar is Kan Balam in the role of the Maize God. The
creation mountain also occurs at Chicanna, where it has maize rising from its
cleft and a person sitting inside its maw.
This Yax Hal Witsnal appears in full architectural form at several sites. The
most impressive example of the Yax Hal Wits comes from Copan in the form of
Temple 22. Although its very complex iconography has yet to be put together,
some elements are well known. The front door was the mouth of a huge monster, and although we have recovered only a fraction of the pieces, we have
found the eyelids and the molars are marked with cauac signs (Schele 1986).
Both are signs of the wits monster. The stacks are corner masks that are clearly
mountain monsters, and the entablatures had Maize Gods emerging from other
symbols that included huge maize leaves, Venus glyphs, and portraits of the
king.
A related image appears on Temple 5D-33-2nd at Tikal. The lower mountain image has a person sitting inside the maw with snakes emerging from the
sides of the mountain.This is both the Yax Hal Witsnal and the snake mountain.
The middle level mountains also combine an emerging head and maize images
with snakes emerging from the mouth, and the top level on the bearing wall of
7
The Paris Codex, as well as several pots, such as the Acasaguastlan Vase, show deities,
usually the Maize God or the Sun God with snakes f lowing outward from the crooks of
their arms or extending outward from their navels or wounds in the torso. The Paris Codex
new years pages show the twisted cords of the Maize Gods umbilicus (and its analog in the
intestines of a sacrif icial victim) f lowing through several successive scenes of creation that
climaxes with the laying out of the ecliptic in the sky and all its constellations. Taube,
Grube, and I interpret this new years image as a replay of the unfolding of the sky order at
creation. In terms of the Classic period creation story, this action took place at the Orion
nexus where the Maize God was reborn. Orion sits near one of the two locations in the sky
where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way. The second location is also represented in Maya
art in images of the king holding the Double-headed Serpent Bar as he wears the costume
of the world tree. This image corresponds to the nexus at Scorpio. I take the snakes in all
these compositionswhether represented as a twisted umbilicus or a ceremonial barto
represent the ecliptic.
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Fig. 10 Stucco from Uaxactun Structure G-X-Sub 3. The lower head represents the Yax
Hal Wits sitting in the Primordial Sea. The upper head represents a human-made
mountain with a snake penetrating it from side to side. This is the earliest representation
of snake mountain in Mesoamerica.
Linda Schele
Chichen Itza. Most interpretations of this pyramid have identif ied the snakes
on the balustrades and in the doorway above as Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl. The
heads at the base of the pyramid (Fig. 11a) certainly are feathered, but I do not
think the main reference is to the Post-Classic god Quetzalcoatl. Feathered
serpents have a long and ancient history in Maya artand almost all of the
examples from both Early and Late Classic contexts are vision serpents. At
Chichen, feathered serpents are also war serpentsas Karl Taubes (1992b) work
has shown. In the image of snake mountain at Uaxactun, the serpent penetrates
the pyramid from side to side. At Chichen Itza, both balustrade and doorway
serpents appear head down in the position of descent, in contrast to vision
serpents that normally rear in head-up position. This contrast in position is a
critical difference.
The balustrades of the Osario and the Caracol and the moldings of buildings
throughout Chichen depict serpents entwined in a twisted pattern. Sometimes
they are feathered serpents twisting around f lowers or eyes as in the Great
Ballcourt. At other times they are marked with feathers, f lowers, clouds, jade
disks, and other jewels. All but the f lowered snakes have a long history in Maya
art, but the twisting of these snakes into cords (Fig. 11b) marks them as the
kuxan sum. They are the umbilicus that descends to connect the sacred space of
Chichen to the Milky Way and the heavens. This theme was particularly favored in the north.
The Cleft
One of the most prominent characteristics of the creation mountain is the
cleft in its head. In the Popol Vuh and at Yaxchilan, the word for ballcourt is
hom, which is also the word for abyss, chasm, hole. Moreover, the stepped
sides of the ballcourt match the shape of the cleft in the mountain top (Schele
and Freidel 1991: 308; Gutierrez 1994). Ballcourts were programmed to ref lect
this identity.
At Copan, the ballcourt carries images of the prideful bird of the last creation in his full glory as the red macaw (Kowalski and Fash 1991). He is shown
before the Hero Twins defeated him (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993: 362
372). The markers in the f loor of the Ballcourt IIb show the Hero Twins engaged in the ball game of the Popol Vuh myth. At Chichen, the imagery of
creation was presented with a slightly different twist (Freidel, Schele, and Parker
1993: 374385), but it was creation nevertheless. The ball-game scenes show
the teams playing with a skull ball as in the creation myth and the sacrif ice of
the loser generates a gourd vine. This vine is found throughout Chichen, but
on the upper register of the piers of the Lower Temple of the Jaguar, the vine
496
a
Fig. 11 (a) Feathered snake head at the base of the stairs of the Castillo;
(b) twisted snakes from the Caracol (after Marquina 1950: f ig. 273).
emerges from the head of old gods who sit in the ends of the creation turtle as
the Maize God is reborn. In the north building this vine makes a lattice around
poles represented on the center piers. The Maize God lies in the lower register
with feathered serpents emerging from his belly like an umbilicus. The inner
scenes depict the transfer of political power within the context of the ball
game. Other ballcourts emphasized the role of the ball game in war, alliance
making, and as a portal that allows communication with the ancestral dead.
Tonina and Yaxchilan both show the ancestral dead on the ballcourt markers.
The cleft had other manifestations in the faades of buildings, especially in
the north. The double-stepped cleft represents the mountain cleft in its most
reduced form. It is used on an interior wall of House B in the Palenque Palace
(Fig. 12). At Tonina, the mountain cleft was built into one of the lower terraces
to mark the whole mountain as a place of creation. The cleft signs are placed
base-to-base as if one is the ref lection of the other. This sign also became a
prominent theme in the mosaic faades of the north. It is part of the entablature design on the Palace of the Governors at Uxmal and on Structure 1 at
Xlabpak, among many other buildings.
The stepped frame I have already pointed out in northern architecture may
also represent a mountain. This frame also occurs with some frequency in
497
Fig. 12 (a) Mountain cleft from House B at Palenque; (b) mirrored clefts from Tonina;
(c) cleft symbol from Xlabpak Structure 1; (d) cleft from Structure 1A2 at Kabah (c and
d, after Pollock 1980).
498
Barbara Fash (Fash et al. 1992) brought to our attention the existence of
Popol Nah or mat house in Classic period architecture. Mat houses were
places where the councils of nobles and other leaders met. Similar houses discussed in the ethnohistorical and ethnological literature (Fash et al. 1992: 434
436) describe various kinds of functions, including feasting, dancing, and the
meeting of councils. Mat signs distributed across its faade mark Structure 22a
(Fig. 13) as a Popol Nah. Its symbolism includes 9 Ahaw glyphs, and it may
display images of the lords constituting the council. According to Barbara Fashs
restoration drawing, there was a roof comb with a lord sitting on a doubleheaded jaguar throne.
Stephen Houston (personal communication, 1992) also pointed out that the
Cordemex dictionary of Yucatec Maya equates nikteil nah or f lower house
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Linda Schele
b
Fig. 13 Mat and f lower houses: (a) Copan Temple 22 and (b) detail from the Codz Pop
at Kabah (after Pollock 1980).
with popol nah.The most amazing of these f lower houses is House E at Palenque.
It is the only building within the palace that had no evidence of a roof comb,
and, at least in its f inal version, it had rows of f lowers painted in rows on the
west faade. Texts and images inside the building belong to the reign of Pakal,
Akul Anab III, and Balam Kuk. These images included the accession of Pakal
on the Oval Palace Tablet, its throne with references to Pakal, Kan Balam, Kan
Hok Chitam, and Akul Anab III. Other sculptures and paintings depict the
Cosmic Monster, the White-Bone Snake, and a procession of lords moving
toward the Oval Palace Tablet. The proximity of steambaths suggests that the
Southwest Court, which borders on the f lower faade, was used for vision rites
and contacting ancestors.
The Tablet of the 96 Glyphs dates Pakals dedication of House C to 9.11.2.1.11
9 Chuen 9 Mac (Nov. 1, 654). The dedication phrase calls the building the Sak
Nuk Nah, White Grand House. Quiche friends in Guatemala have told me
500
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Linda Schele
b
Fig. 14 (a) Flower lattice and muyal symbol from the north building of the Nunnery
Quadrangle and (b) detail of the f lower lattice.
nent in Yucatecan ritual today. However, it also marks these houses as nikteil nah.
This f lower lattice is also prominent on the Monjas at Chichen Itza, which may
be another f lower house.
Most importantly, the Codz Pop of Kabah is covered on one side with stacks
of masks. I suspect they are Itsam Yeh birds for many have f lower headbands, but
the medial moldings have serpents made of the same zigzag lattice. Twisted
cords ride above the serpent bodies, and a row of f lowers is below it. The
f lowers continue onto the other side of the building, where the entablature had
a row of standing f igures. I suspect these may be the equivalent of the precinct
lords shown on Structure 22a of Copan.
Finally, Structure 1 of Labna interweaves many of these themes into a tapestry of symbolism def ining the many functions of the council house. The south
faade of the center wing has pop, mat, signs on its lower walls. The south
faade has the double-stepped frets that identify the mountain cleft, but here
with stacks of f lowers and its signs f illing the empty spaces.The west faade also
has its signs on it. This building is marked as an itsam nah, a nikteil nah, and the
cleft in the mountain of creation.
WAR IMAGERY
The Nunnery Quadrangle and the Temple of the Warriors discussed above
have direct war imagery included within the symbolism of the f lower council
house. At Chichen, it consists of the warriors and captives included in the
procession colonnade on the west side. The terraces on the south side also have
images of reclining warriors wearing mosaic headdress and goggle eyes. They
carry smoking staffs with a mirror attached as jaguars and eagles sit between
502
Fig. 15 (a and b) Detail of the west building of the Nunnery Quadrangle. Photographs
by MacDuff Everton; (c) detail of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Teotihuacan; (d) War
Serpent with goggle-eyed headress and emerging founder from Yaxchilan Lintel 25;
(e) person emerging from the Uxmal serpent; (f ) captive from the rear of the north
building of the Nunnery Quadrangle.
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Linda Schele
them chewing on sacrif icial hearts. Exactly this combination of imagery recurs
on the platform of jaguars and eagles.
In the Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal, the war imagery occurs in two forms.
On top of the Itsam Yeh stacks on the north building sit goggle-eyed Tlaloc
(Fig. 15a) bundles associated with war and sacrif icial imagery in the southern
lowlands as early as the TikalUaxactun war of a.d. 378. The nude f igures on
the rear of this building are also bound as captives. The west building is even
more extraordinary. There are two feathered serpents (Fig. 15b) that loop across
the faade with their bodies intertwining. Only one head survives, but it has a
human wearing a xok f ish mask emerging from its open maw. Peter Mathews
(personal communications, 199597) and I assume the other head was similar.
Both tails are complete with rattles, but a feathered object rides on the tail
above the rattles. Upon close examination of this object, Mathews and I realized it is the Uxmal version of the drum major headdress associated with war
and accession at Palenque (Schele and Villela 1992). More importantly, this
combination of feathered serpent and headdress is the exact image (Fig. 15c)
on the Temple of Quetzalcoatlthe primary war monument at Teotihuacan
(Taube 1992b; Parsons 1985). That feathered serpent of war f loats in the primordial sea, whereas at Uxmal it f loats among clouds and f lowers, but the effect
is the samethe war serpent is sanctioned by supernatural space.
Closely related imagery occurs on the Venus Platform in the Main Plaza at
Chichen. There the upper molding of the platform has an undulating rattlesnake body attached to a three-dimensional head emerging from the top of the
balustrade in an image (Fig. 15e) that is even closer to the Teotihuacan original.
Instead of shells, the Chichen artists depicted f ish around the body to show it is
in the primordial sea. The temptation is to suggest that the artists of Uxmal and
Chichen Itza copied the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan, but by the
time the Maya constructed their buildings, Teotihuacan was long-abandoned.
Moreover, even before the abandonment of Teotihuacan, the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl had been encased in a later temple that did not carry this symbolism. The image of the snake bearing the headdress of war had to be a much
more widely distributed and understood symbol than its representation at
Teotihuacan.
War iconography is also associated with the Upper Temple of the Jaguars at
Chichen. Freidel, Schele, and Parker (1993: 374384) identif ied its imagery as
associated with ox ahal places that celebrated victory in war.They proposed that
the inner murals represented the founding wars of the Itsa and the exterior
showed intertwined war serpents, shields, and jaguars surmounted by tok pakal,
the symbol of war for the Classic Maya. Recent examinations of the east faade
504
505
Linda Schele
507
Linda Schele
Fig. 16
and scaffolding and banner rituals. The stairway at the base of Temple 11 was
long ago identif ied by Miller (1988) as a false ballcourt with Chaak emerging
from the sea. Grube and Schele (1990) also identif ied it as a Wak Ebnal, a SixStair-Place, of the kind associated with ball-game sacrif ice. Its dedication text
names it as both the yol, the portal of, and the ballcourt of Yax Pasah.
The ritual shows Yax Pasah and his companion dancing on the sign of a
plaza or a mountain. The dancers wear trophy heads and one has a stuffed body
hanging on his back. All are festooned with ropes and three of them carry
shields and spears. The fourth dances with skull rattles. This feature is very
important because it associates this ritual with that on a pot.
The pottery scene (Fig. 17b) centers on a small itsam nah that holds a bundle,
a censer with a baby sacrif ice, and two headdresses. Six naked f igures dance
before the bundle with their penises perforated and bound with paper.Three of
them hold serpent bars with f lints in the mouths of the snakes. Two of them
hold the skull rattles and bundles. The sixth holds a bundle, and the seventh
508
b
Fig. 17 Narrative themes: Dance of the Skull Rattle, (a) Copan
Temple 18. Drawing by Ann Dowd; (b) scene showing
supernaturals dancing with the rattle.
509
Linda Schele
b
Fig. 18 (a) Tonina, stucco panel, and (b) pottery painting depicting the Tonina ritual.
Photograph by Justin Kerr.
explain the piers of House D on the Palace at Palenque. Pier B depicts a decapitation scene that may be the sacrif ice of one twin by another. Freidel, Schele,
and Parker (1993: 273274, 280281) have identif ied Pier C as the redressing
of the Maize God after his resurrection. He holds the Wakah Chan, the tree he
will soon erect at the center of the world.They also identif ied the scene on Pier
D as a snake dance performed by First Father and First Mother after his redressing. He wears a Tlaloc around as he dances. Pier E is too damaged to be read,
but Pier F shows another decapitation scene in which the Maize God is the
510
In a relatively short study such as this, it was not possible to include a complete survey of all the strategies of decoration used by the Maya during the Late
Classic period. For example, I did comment on the programs that have been
documented on the residential architecture for both royal and elite households
in the Copan Valley, at Tikal, at Palenque, and elsewhere. At Copan, at least, the
imagery used in elite households shares the imagery and compositional pattern
with royal households. A detailed comparison between the two sets of imagery
might distinguish motifs and symbols that were restricted to royal versus elite
context, but to my knowledge nothing of this sort has so far been identif ied by
any researcher. Distinctions in rank or status seem to have been signaled by
scale, quality of craftsmanship, materials, and quantity but not by restrictions of
imagery or composition.
Gathering material for this paper also yielded surprises. For example, I did
not anticipate that so many buildings in Yucatan would have f lower, mat, and its
symbols to mark them as community and conjuring houses. The unexpected
prevalence of this symbolism may ref lect the prominence of the multepal form
of government in the north (Schele and Freidel 1990: 356376; Grube 1994).
And although I knew that the long-nosed heads on the Temple of the Warriors
at Chichen Itza represented Itsam Yeh, I did not expect this image to be so
ubiquitous in the architecture of the north. The symbolism of many northern
buildings marks them as itsam nah. The architecture of the southern lowlands
511
Linda Schele
did not use Itsam Yeh in mask stacks but placed the full-bodied bird on various
parts of the building.
Finally, one of the most pervasive strategies used by Late Classic builders was
to construct analogs of locations and landscape features associated with the
creation of the fourth world. Many architectural programs functioned to center
the world in the time and space of creation (Freidel, Schele, and Parker, 1993:
123172, 362372). This strategy was not unique to the Maya; it can be documented throughout Mesoamerican history. Reilly (1994, n.d.) has identif ied
much of the same symbolism in architecture at La Venta, and Bernal-Garcia
(n.d.) has traced the imagery of creation through the art and architecture of
major cultural traditions of Mesoamerica. Garca Zambrano (1994) has documented the cosmology of Pre-Columbian rituals of foundation and their associated cosmology as they survived into the early colonial period.
Perhaps the best documented example of creation symbolism in public architecture is the Templo Mayor and the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan.Townsend
(1979, 1992: 108154) has discussed the use of cosmology in Aztec art and
architecture with great detail and subtlety. The Templo Mayor is a replica of
snake mountain where the patron god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was born
from his mother Coatlicue (Matos Moctezuma 1987; Broda, Carrasco, and Matos
Moctezuma 1987) and materializes the great foundation myth at the heart of
the Aztec state (Len-Portilla 1987). The caches (Broda 1987) around its base
helped identify its location as the primordial sea at one level and as the swampy
lake around Coatepec on the other. Other offerings ref lect its meaning as the
sustenance mountain (Taube 1986). Finally, Koontz (n.d.) has shown that the
people of El Tajin materialized the same cosmology of mountain, ballcourt,
water source, and founding in the architecture of their city. For Mesoamericans,
the city and the architectural sequences in it were the earthly manifestation of
creation and founding throughout their history. Like a great cultural fugue, the
many different traditions replayed these themes with variation and changing
emphasis. Maya builders constructed their buildings within that tradition.
512
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