K'Uk'Ulkan at Mayapán: Venus and Postclassic Maya Statecraft

The account here is summarized from Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatan and Tozzer's copious annotations in Alfred Tozzer , Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatan: A translation (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, XVIII; New York, 1975).

cenote is the Spanish appropriation of the Maya Word tz'onot (also ch'en) referring to the natural wells that are abundant in Yucatán.

This question was posed recently by William Ringle Gallareta Tomás Negrón George Bey III , “The return of Quetzalcoatl: Evidence for the spread of a world religion during the Epiclassic period”', Ancient Mesoamerica , ix (1998), 183–232.

See chap. 1 of Gerardo Aldana , “Oracular science: Uncertainty in the history of Maya astronomy”, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2001.

Ralph Roys , “Literary sources for the history of Mayapan”, Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico , ed. by Harry Pollack Evelyn Dorr (Carnegie Publication 619; Washington D.C., 1962), 24–86; see also Tozzer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 23.

Roys , op. cit. (ref. 5), 60–61, from Tozzer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 19–40.

Aldana , op. cit. (ref. 4); also, see David Stuart , “The arrival of strangers: Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya history”, Mesoamerica's classic heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs , ed. by David Carrasco Lindsay Jones Scott Sessions (Boulder, Colo., 2000). See also Peter Harrison , The lords of Tikal: Rulers of an ancient Maya city (New York, 1999). For an early interpretation that has been rejected on the basis of updated hieroglyphic decipherments, see Linda Scheie David Freidel , A forest of kings: The untold story of the ancient Maya (New York, 1990).

Aldana , op. cit. (ref. 4).

This summary mainly follows Stuart , op. cit. (ref. 7).

The identification follows William Fash , “Dynastic architectural programs: Intention and design in Classic Maya buildings at Copan and other sites”, in Function and meaning in Classic Maya architecture , ed. by Stephen D. Houston (Washington D.C., 1998), 223–70.

One interesting parallel between the cases at Copán and Mutul and that at Mayapán is, of course, that all foreigners came from the Valley of Mexico. Accepting the chronology of the GMT, this had led some scholars (e.g. Clemency Coggins , “The Age of Teotihuacan and its mission abroad”, Teotihuacan: Art from the city of the gods (New York, 1993), 141–55) to posit that Yax K'uk‘ Mo’ and Siyaj K'ak' were the pochteca of Teotihuacan. That is, just as the Mexica had merchants who doubled as warriors and spies in foreign lands, so might Teotihuacan have had people in this office at the height of its power.

Alfred M. Tozzer , Chichen Itza and its Cenote of Sacrifice: A comparative study of contemporaneous Maya and Toltec (Cambridge, 1957); Linda Scheie Peter Mathews , The code of kings: The language of seven sacred Maya temples and tombs (New York, 1998), 197–206.

For parallels between Quetzalcoatl and K'uk'ulkan, see Karl Taube , Aztec and Maya myths (Austin, TX, 1993).

The original reads: “… et [Queçalcoatl] tirat un coup de fleche … ung arbre, et se mit de dans le partuis de la fleche, et ainsi mourut, et ses serviteurs le prindrent et le bruslèrent, et de là demeura la coustume de brusler les corps morts. De la fumée que sortit de son corps, dissent avoyr esté faicte une grande estoyle que se appelle Hesper.” Edouardde Jonghe , “Histoire de Mechique”, Journal de la Société des Américanistes , ii (1905), 38.

Tozzer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 157.

Anthony Aveni , Skywatchers of ancient Mexico (Austin, TX, 1980), 260–9.

Aldana , op. cit. (ref. 4).

Aveni , Skywatchers (ref. 16), 2nd edn (Austin, 2001), 283–8.

Aveni ( op. cit. (ref. 16), 275) argues that they are Venus glyphs, but I have shown in Aldana , op. cit. (ref. 4) that they are best considered star icons.

Floyd Lounsbury , “The identities of the mythological figures in the cross group inscriptions of Palenque”, Fourth Palenque Round Table (San Francisco, 1980), 45–58; Aldana , op. cit. (ref. 4); Dennis Tedlock , “The sowing and dawning of all the Sky-Earth: Astronomy in the Popol Vuh”, draft of the article intended to appear in Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous astronomical and cosmological traditions of the world , ed. by John Carlson Von Del Chamberlain (forthcoming).

Ernst Förstemann , Commentary on the Maya manuscript in the Royal Public Library of Dresden , translated by Selma Wesselhoeft Parker A. M. (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, iv/2; Cambridge, 1906); Thompson J. E. S. , A commentary on the Dresden Codex (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 93; Philadelphia, 1972); Floyd Lounsbury , “Maya numeration, computation, and calendrical astronomy”, Dictionary of scientific biography , xv, 759–818.

See ref. 20.

Dresden Codex , pages 46 and 48.

David Stuart , “Blood symbolism in Maya iconography”, in Maya iconography , ed. by Elizabeth P. Benson Gillett G. Griffin (Princeton, 1988), 175–221.

Scheie Freidel , op. cit. (ref. 7), 360–3.

Tozzer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 30, fn 161.

Scheie Mathews , op. cit. (ref. 12), 258–59.

See ref. 1.

Aveni ( op. cit. (ref. 16), Appendix A) puts the Castillo at Chich'en Itza at 21°12′, and that of Mayapán at 4°35′.

This was accomplished using an astronomical fix. See Aveni , op. cit. (ref. 16), 128–32 for the method. I used the JPL ephemeris generator available on the internet for solar positions (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.html). Data recovered: Azimuth: 18.40°; standard deviation of measurement: 0.57°; width of temple at horizon: 0.53°.

That this Venus event was not confined to a short time span is confirmed by Aveni's study, “The real Venus-Kukulcan in the Maya inscriptions and alignments”, Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986 (Norman, 1991), 309–21. In the plots he provides for the visibility of Venus, the azimuths noted here again allow for the visibility of the same phenomenon four hundred years earlier.

Robert Eliot Smith (“The Real Venus-Kukulcan in the Maya inscriptions and alignments”, Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986 (Norman, 1991), 309–21, shows that the ceramics at Mayapán display very little pre-Postclassic occupation.

Arthur G. Miller , On the edge of the sea: Mural painting at Tancah-Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico (Washington D.C., 1982).

Diane Chase , “Between earth and sky: Idols, images, and Postclassic cosmology”, Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983 , ed. by Virginia M. Fields (San Francisco, 1985), 223–33.

Tozzer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 157–8.

That is, using 12 Kan 4 Pop as 1553 July 16.

Notice that the description of the ceremony records that it was performed in the month Xul, but it does not state that it occurred every month Xul. This, of course, is important since the observation of Venus entering the Temple of K'uk'ulkan could have been made only once every eight years. Why, then, would Landa have implied that the ceremony was typical of the month Xul? If, for example, he asked an informant to describe the ceremonies that occurred the year before, then he might have assumed that they occurred annually — European rituals timed, as it were, by the solar calendar. It probably would not have occurred to Landa that some ceremonies were not performed on an annual basis. Further, Landa was not attempting to record in meticulous detail the meaning of the ceremonies, only to give a sampling of what they were. The meanings, after all, were irrelevant, since in his mind they amounted only to the worshipping of demons.

Gerardo Aldana , “Solar stelae and a Venus window: Science and royal personality in Late Classic Copán”, Archaeoastronomy , no. 27 (2002), S1–22.

Ringle , op. cit. (ref. 3), 188: “Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan figures prominently as a founder of cities elsewhere, as well. Landa states that Kukulcan founded both Chichen Itza and Mayapan, whereas, according to Francisco Hernandez's confused account, a ‘Cocolcan’ brought the faith to Cozumel in ancient times. In the north, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was of course the central figure of Tula, sometimes as founder and sometimes as later ruler who left the city for the east. Described as a wandering pilgrim or holy man much like Quetzalcoatl-Huemac of Cholula, previous scholars have argued that the various Quetzalcoatls may simply have been priests of that deity. This is not unlikely; as mentioned, several of the ancestral figures associated with town foundings and conquests were named ‘Wind’. However, we would argue that the wandering city-founder Quetzalcoatl is better viewed as a later etiological attempt to explain the spread of his cult, uniting in a single figure several historical episodes probably separated by centuries.”.