Maya maize god

Last updated
Fig. 1: Tonsured Maize God depiction as a patron of the scribal arts, Classic period. Maya maize god.jpg
Fig. 1: Tonsured Maize God depiction as a patron of the scribal arts, Classic period.

Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the traditional Maya recognize in their staple crop, maize, a vital force with which they strongly identify. This is clearly shown by their mythological traditions. According to the 16th-century Popol Vuh, the Hero Twins have maize plants for alter egos and man himself is created from maize. The discovery and opening of the Maize Mountain – the place where the corn seeds are hidden – is still one of the most popular of Maya tales. In the Classic period (200-900 AD), the maize deity shows aspects of a culture hero.

Contents

Female and male deities

In Maya oral tradition, maize is usually personified as a woman [1] — like rice in Southeast Asia, or wheat in ancient Greece and Rome. The acquisition of this woman through bridal capture constitutes one of the basic Maya myths. [2] In contrast to this, the pre-Spanish Maya aristocracy appears to have primarily conceived of maize as male. The classic period distinguished two male forms: a foliated (leafy) maize god and a tonsured one. [3] The foliated god is present in the so-called maize tree (Temple of the Foliated Cross, Palenque), its cobs being shaped like the deity's head. A male maize deity representing the foliated type and labeled God E is present in the three extant Maya hieroglyphic books.

Whereas the foliated maize god is a one-dimensional vegetation spirit, the tonsured maize god's functions are much more diverse. When performing ritually, the latter typically wears a netted jade skirt and a belt with a large spondylus shell covering the loins. On stelae, it is a queen rather than a king that tends to represent the tonsured maize god. The queen thus appears as a maize goddess, in accordance with the Maya narrative traditions mentioned above.

Late Preclassic and Classic Maya mythology

Fig. 3: San Francisco Capstone depicting the Tonsured Maize God residing in a well. SAN FRAN-1.jpg
Fig. 3: San Francisco Capstone depicting the Tonsured Maize God residing in a well.
Fig. 2: Double depiction of the Tonsured Maize God, free and captive, within an open structure. Jun Ixiim.png
Fig. 2: Double depiction of the Tonsured Maize God, free and captive, within an open structure.

Many classic Maya paintings, particularly those on cacao drink vessels, testify to the existence of a rich mythology centered on the tonsured maize god. The late preclassic murals of San Bartolo demonstrate its great antiquity. [4] [5] Several theories, with varying degrees of ethnographic support, have been formulated to account for episodes such as the maize deity's resurrection from a turtle, his canoe voyage, and his transformation into a cacao tree.

Popol Vuh twin myth extension

The tonsured maize god is often accompanied by the hero twins. Following Karl Taube, many scholars (such as Michael D. Coe) believe that the resurrected tonsured maize god of the classic period corresponds to the father of the hero twins in the Popol Vuh called Hun-Hunahpu. [3] However, this once generally accepted identification has also been contested. [6] [7]

Cosmological creation myth

Linda Schele's emphasis on creation has led to a series of interconnected hypotheses all involving the cosmological centrality of the tonsured maize god (or "first father"), to wit: his establishment of the so-called "three-stone hearth" (assumed to represent a constellation); [8] [9] his raising of the world tree; [8] his "dance of creation"; [8] [10] [11] and his stance as an acrobat, which (more or less coinciding with representations of a crocodile tree) seems to evoke the central world tree. [12] The maize god's presence in the San Bartolo arrangement of five world trees has been interpreted as his establishment of the world. [13]

Seasonal myth

Another theory, formulated by Simon Martin, [14] focuses on the tonsured maize god's interaction with an aged jaguar deity of trade, God L. This interaction is related to the hero's transformation into a cacao tree conceived as a "trophy tree." God L is assumed to have presided over the dry season dedicated to long-distance trade, warfare, and the cacao harvest, and the Tonsured Maize God over the wet season and the growth of the maize. The onset of the two seasons is thought to be symbolized by the defeat of the maize deity and of God L, respectively.

Gulf Coast maize myth

In many scenes, an aquatic environment strongly comes to the fore (see fig. 2), most famously in the maize deity's resurrection from the carapace of a turtle that is floating on the waters. Braakhuis pointed out [6] that such an environment also characterizes an important maize myth shared by many ethnic groups (such as Huaxtecs, Totonacs, Nahuas and Zoques) inhabiting Mexico's Gulf Coast. The fact that this myth focuses on a male, rather than a female maize deity, while at the same time establishing an intimate connection between the maize god and the turtle, is adduced in support of the idea that the Classic Maya once formed part of the same narrative tradition. More in particular, the Pre-Classic San Bartolo Maya maize deity dancing with a turtle drum amidst aquatic deities may have a connection with a Zoque (Popoluca) version of the Gulf Coast maize myth. [6] [10] [15]

Names and calendar functions

Several designations for the pre-Spanish maize god occur in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. They include ah mun (tender green shoot) [16] and zac uac nal (white six new corn) or uac chuaac nal (six tall new corn). [2] In the wake of Schele, the tonsured maize god (hypothetically equated with Hun-Hunahpu) has often been nicknamed "first father." The classic name of the tonsured maize god, which usually includes the numeral "One", is not known with certainty. Schele's "Hun-Nal-Ye" used to be popular; more recently, "Ixim" (maize grains) and "Nal" (wet ear of corn) are being considered. [17]

In a general sense, maize relates to the day Qʼan (ripe or ripeness). The appearance of the tonsured maize god is connected to the base date of the Long Count, 4 Ahau 8 Cumku. The head of the tonsured maize god serves to denote the number 1, that of the foliated maize god the number 8. [17] The tonsured maize god is sometimes found associated with the lunar crescent and may therefore have played a role in the divisions of the lunar count; his head seems to occur in glyph C of the Lunar Series (see also Maya moon goddess).

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya mythology</span> Mythology of the Maya people of Mesoamerica

Mayan or Maya mythology is part in of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The legends of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition are not considered here.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kʼawiil</span> Maya deity

Kʼawiil, in the Post-Classic codices corresponding to God K, is a Maya deity identified with lightning, serpents, fertility and maize. He is characterized by a zoomorphic head, with large eyes, long, upturned snout and attenuated serpent foot. A torch, stone celt, or cigar, normally emitting smoke, comes out of his forehead, while a serpent leg represents a lightning bolt. In this way, Kʼawiil personifies the lightning axe both of the rain deity and of the king as depicted on his stelae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Itzamna</span> God of Time, God D

Itzamná is, in Maya mythology, an upper god and creator deity thought to reside in the sky. Itzamná is one of the most important gods in the Classic and Postclassic Maya pantheon. Although little is known about him, scattered references are present in early-colonial Spanish reports (relaciones) and dictionaries. Twentieth-century Lacandon lore includes tales about a creator god who may be a late successor to him. In the pre-Spanish period, Itzamná was often depicted in books and in ceramic scenes derived from them. Before the names of the Maya deities were deciphered, Itzamná was known as "god D", and is still sometimes referred to as "god D" by archeologists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Goddess of Teotihuacan</span> Possible goddess of the Teotihuacan civilization

The Great Goddess of Teotihuacan is a proposed goddess of the pre-Columbian Teotihuacan civilization, in what is now Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya Hero Twins</span> Mythological protagonists of the Popol Vuh

The Maya Hero Twins are the central figures of a narrative included within the colonial Kʼicheʼ document called Popol Vuh, and constituting the oldest Maya myth to have been preserved in its entirety. Called Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the Kʼicheʼ language, the Twins have also been identified in the art of the Classic Mayas. The twins are often portrayed as complementary forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Bartolo (Maya site)</span>

San Bartolo is a small pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site located in the Department of Petén in northern Guatemala, northeast of Tikal and roughly fifty miles from the nearest settlement. San Bartolo's fame derives from its splendid Late-Preclassic mural paintings still heavily influenced by Olmec tradition and from examples of early and as yet undecipherable Maya script.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesoamerican world tree</span> Arepa

World trees are a prevalent motif occurring in the mythical cosmologies, creation accounts, and iconographies of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. In the Mesoamerican context, world trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which also serve to represent the fourfold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi that connects the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial realm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya religion</span> Beliefs of the ancient Maya people

The traditional Maya or Mayan religion of the extant Maya peoples of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and the Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán states of Mexico is part of the wider frame of Mesoamerican religion. As is the case with many other contemporary Mesoamerican religions, it results from centuries of symbiosis with Roman Catholicism. When its pre-Hispanic antecedents are taken into account, however, traditional Maya religion has already existed for more than two and a half millennia as a recognizably distinct phenomenon. Before the advent of Christianity, it was spread over many indigenous kingdoms, all with their own local traditions. Today, it coexists and interacts with pan-Mayan syncretism, the 're-invention of tradition' by the Pan-Maya movement, and Christianity in its various denominations.

Ancient Maya art comprises the visual arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture made up of a great number of small kingdoms in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions existed side by side, usually coinciding with the changing boundaries of Maya polities. This civilization took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period, when the first cities and monumental architecture started to develop and the hieroglyphic script came into being. Its greatest artistic flowering occurred during the seven centuries of the Classic Period.

Hun Hunahpu, or 'Head-Apu I' is a figure in Maya mythology. According to Popol Vuh he was the father of the Maya Hero Twins, Head-Apu and Xbalanque. As their shared calendrical day name suggests, Head-Apu I was the father of Head-Apu. He is believed to be the father of the twins' half-brothers and the patrons of artisans and writers, Hun-Chowen and Hun-Batz. Head-Apu I is paired with his brother, Vucub-Hunahpu, Head-Apu VII. The brothers were tricked in the Dark House by the lords of the Underworld (Xibalba) and sacrificed. Head-Apu I's head was suspended in a trophy tree and changed to a calabash. Its saliva impregnated Xquic, a daughter of one of the lords of Xibalba. She fled the Underworld and conceived the Twins. After defeating the Underworld lords, the twins recovered the remains of their father and their father's brother, but could not resuscitate them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Taube</span> American ethnohistorian (born 1957)

Karl Andreas Taube is an American Mesoamericanist, Mayanist, iconographer and ethnohistorian, known for his publications and research into the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. He is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside. In 2008 he was named the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences distinguished lecturer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya moon goddess</span> Mesoamerican moon goddess

The traditional Mayas generally assume the Moon to be female, and the Moon's perceived phases are accordingly conceived as the stages of a woman's life. The Maya moon goddess wields great influence in many areas. Being in the image of a woman, she is associated with sexuality and procreation, fertility and growth, not only of human beings, but also of the vegetation and the crops. Since growth can also cause all sorts of ailments, the moon goddess is also a goddess of disease. Everywhere in Mesoamerica, including the Mayan area, she is specifically associated with water, be it wells, rainfall, or the rainy season. In the codices, she has a terrestrial counterpart in goddess I.

William Andrew "Bill" Saturno is an American archaeologist and Mayanist scholar who has made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. Saturno is a former director of the Proyecto San Bartolo-Xultun at the Instito de Antropologia e Historia in Guatemala, a former national space research scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and a research associate at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Saturno has previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Boston University and MIT and as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire.

Flower Mountain is a term from Classic Maya iconography referring to stylized lateral or frontal depictions of an animate mountain, or mountain cave, characterized by the presence of one or more flower symbols at the mountain's 'brow'. This Flower Mountain is repeatedly found associated with solar symbols and depictions of terrestrial water. The earliest representation of a Flower Mountain is found in the Late Preclassic murals of San Bartolo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">God L</span>

God L of the Schellhas-Zimmermann-Taube classification of codical gods is one of the major pre-Spanish Maya deities, specifically associated with trade. Characterized by high age, he is one of the Mam ('Grandfather') deities. More specifically, he evinces jaguar traits, a broad feathery hat topped by an owl, and a jaguar mantle or a cape with a pattern somewhat resembling that of an armadillo shell. The best-known monumental representation is on a doorjamb of the inner sanctuary of Palenque's Temple of the Cross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eccentric flint</span> Mayan archaeological artifact

An eccentric flint is an elite chipped artifact of an often irregular ('eccentric') shape produced by the Classic Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. Although generally referred to as "flints", they were typically fashioned from chert, chalcedony and obsidian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human sacrifice in Maya culture</span>

During the pre-Columbian era, human sacrifice in Maya culture was the ritual offering of nourishment to the gods and goddesses. Blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering. By extension, the sacrifice of human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice. Generally, only high-status prisoners of war were sacrificed, and lower status captives were used for labor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ek Chuaj</span>

Ek Chuaj, also known as Ek Chuah, Ekchuah, God M according to the Schellhas-Zimmermann-Taube classification of codical gods, is a Postclassic Maya merchant deity as well as a patron of cacao. Ek Chuaj is part of a pantheon of Maya deities that have been depicted in hieroglyphs and artwork of various Maya sites and has been interpreted as a significant part of Maya religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yopaat</span>

Yopaat was an important Maya storm god in the southern Maya area that included the cities of Copán and Quiriguá during the Classic period of Mesoamerican chronology. Yopaat was closely related to Chaac, the Maya rain god. Yopaat is depicted as bearing a flint weapon that represents a thunderbolt. Yopaat was held responsible for especially violent lightning storms, that were believed to cause earthquakes. He was often represented with a snake in place of one leg, demonstrating a close relationship with Kʼawiil, another Maya deity with similar attributes.

References

  1. Bassie, Karen (2002). "Corn Deities and the Complementary Male/Female Principle". In Lowell S. Gustafson; Amelia N. Trevelyan (eds.). Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations. Westport, Conn. and London: Bergin&Garvey. pp. 169–190. Archived from the original on 2009-07-10. Retrieved 2007-12-05.
  2. 1 2 Thompson, J. Eric S. (1970). Maya History and Religion . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN   9780806108841.
  3. 1 2 Taube, Karl A. (1985). "The Classic Maya Maize God: A Reappraisal" (PDF). In Virginia M. Fields (volume) (ed.). Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983. Proceedings of the Fifth Palenque Round Table Conference, June 12–18, 1983, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Merle Greene Robertson (general ed.) (PARI Online publication (November 2003) ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute. OCLC   12111843. Archived from the original on 2020-01-29. Retrieved 2007-12-06.
  4. Saturno, William; David Stuart; Karl Taube (2005). The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part I: The North Wall. Ancient America 7.
  5. Taube, Karl; William A. Saturno; David Stuart; Heather Hurst (2010). The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 2: The West Wall. Ancient America 10.
  6. 1 2 3 Braakhuis, H.E.M. (2009). "The Tonsured Maize God and Chicome-Xochitl as Maize Bringers and Culture Heroes: A Gulf Coast Perspective" (PDF). Wayeb Notes No. 32. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2009-11-30.
  7. Chinchilla Mazariegos, Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya, Yale UP 2017: 227
  8. 1 2 3 Freidel, David, Linda Schele, Joy Parker (1993). Maya Cosmos. New York: William Morrow and Company.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Taube, Karl (1998). "The Jade Hearth: Centrality, Rulership, and the Classic Maya Temple". In Stephen Houston (ed.). Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture . Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. pp.  427–478. ISBN   9780884022541.
  10. 1 2 Taube, Karl (2009). "The Maya Maize God and the Mythic Origins of Dance". In Geneviève Le Fort; et al. (eds.). The Maya and their Sacred Narratives: Text and Context in Maya Mythologies (Acta Mesoamericana 20). pp. 41–52.
  11. Looper, Matthew G. (2009). To Be Like Gods: Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN   978-0-292-70988-1.
  12. Taube, Karl (2005). "The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion". Ancient Mesoamerica. 16: 23–50. doi:10.1017/s0956536105050017. S2CID   161573832.
  13. Saturno, William; David Stuart; Karl Taube (2004). "Identification of the West Wall Figures At Pinturas Sub-1, San Bartolo, Petén". In Juan Pedro de la Porte, Bárbara Arroyo and Héctor E. Mejía (ed.). XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala (PDF). Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología e Etnología. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-06-16. Retrieved 2010-02-08.
  14. Martin, Simon (2006). "Cacao in Ancient Maya Religion: First Fruit from the Maize Tree and other Tales from the Underworld". In Cameron L. McNeil (ed.). Chocolate in Mesoamerica. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 154–183.
  15. Braakhuis, H.E.M. (2014). "Challenging the Lightnings: San Bartolo's West Wall Mural and the Maize Hero Myth" (PDF). Wayeb Notes No. 46. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-02-14. Retrieved 2015-02-14.
  16. Roys, Ralph L. (trans.) (1967). The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
  17. 1 2 Zender, Marc (2014). "On the Reading of Three Classic Maya Portrait Glyphs". The PARI Journal. 15: 1–14.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Maize god at Wikimedia Commons