Royal Cities of the anCient Maya

t e x t b y M I C H A E L D . C O E p h o t o g r a p h s b y B A R R Y B R U K O F F

ROYAL CItIEs OF tHE AnCIEnt Mayatext by M I C H A E L D. C O Ephotographs by B A R R Y B R U K O F F

The Maya are of enormous and abiding fascination to anybody interested in archaeology, ancient history, astronomy, or the visual arts.

from the 3rd to the 13th century aD, while europe was deep in the Dark ages, the Maya were producing astonishing sculpture, stelae, and wall murals and erecting magnificent temples, tombs, and ball courts. now, in this extraordinary volume pairing the leading Maya scholar and one of the world’s finest photographers of ancient sites, the rich cultural heritage of the Maya is brought vividly and authoritatively to life.

author Michael Coe traces the rise and fall of Maya civilization through its great royal cities, from el Mirador, the largest and oldest, in what is now Guatemala, to the two giant rival city-states tikal and Calakmul in the lowlands, to yaxchilán along the Usumacinta River, to Palenque and toniná in the west, to Copán and Quiriguá in the east, to the cities of the Maya Renaissance in the northern lowlands—Uxmal, Kabah, labna, sayil, and edzná—and finally to Chichén itzá in the yucatán, where the 700-year flowering of the Maya came to a halt with the military and cultural takeover by the toltecs. through convincing analysis of archaeological evidence, new readings of artifacts, reliefs, and murals, Professor Coe untangles the complex sequence of internecine ritual warfare that fatally weakened the late Maya era.

illustrating Coe’s riveting history of these remarkable polities, the powerful dynasties that led them, and the political intrigues and armed conflicts that threatened their existence, are the exceptionally evocative photographs of Barry Brukoff, who was granted unprecedented access to certain sites never photographed before. Documented with a specially commissioned map, Royal Cities of the Ancient Maya will be irresistible to everyone from the casual visitor to Pre-Columbian experts.

About the AuthorMichael D. Coe is Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of anthropology, emeritus, at yale University, and Curator emeritus in yale’s Peabody Museum of natural history. for many years he was advisor to the Center for Pre-Columbian studies at Dumbarton oaks, Washington, D.C. he has conducted field research in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and new york. a member of the national academy of sciences, he is the author of eighteen books and monographs, including The Maya, 8th edition, Breaking the Maya Code, and The True History of Chocolate.

About the PhotogrAPherbarry brukoff is an award-winning photographer whose books include The Enigma of Stonehenge, text by John fowles; Morocco, text by Paul Bowles; Greece: Land of Light, text by nicholas Gage; Machu Picchu, text by Pablo neruda in a new translation; and Temples of Cambodia: Heart of Angkor, text by helen ibbiston Jessup.

140 color and sepia illustrations 236 pages, 27.9 x 23.2 cm (11 x 9 1/8 in.)Map . 2 gatefoldsHardcover with jacket

IsBn: 978-0-86565-284-2Us $50.00 . CAn $57.50 . UK £35

Pub month: October 2012

Distributed in north America byAbrams Booksto place an orderPlease call your sales representative or Hachette Book Group at 800.759.0190or fax 800.286.9471

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Maya Blad cvr.indd 1 5/9/12 11:41 AM

R o y a l C i t i e s o f t h e a n C i e n t M a y a

Royal Cities of the anCient Maya

t e x t b y M I C H A E L D . C O E p h o t o g r a p h s b y B A R R Y B R U K O F F

T h e V e n d o m e P r e s s n e w Y o r k

C o n t e n t s

6 Photographer’s note

9 m aYa G e n e s i s

27 r i Va l G i a n T s o f t h e C l a s s i C P e r i o d

63 C i T i e s o f t h e r i V e r

85 C i T i e s o f t h e w e s T

107 C i T i e s o f t h e e a s T

125 m aYa r e n a i s s a n C e i n t h e n o r T h e r n l o w l a n d s

195 T w i l i G h T o f t h e a n C i e n T m aYa

220 Glossary 220 selected Bibliography 222 index 224 acknowledgments

6 r o Y a l C i T i e s o f t h e a n C i e n T m a Y a6

PhotoGRaPheR’s noteWhen Mike Coe and i discussed the general direction to take in creating Royal Cities of the Ancient Maya, we agreed that i should attempt to provide a photographic equivalent of english artist frederick Catherwood’s renowned drawings and lithographs of the Maya world in the 1850s. he traveled on mule back and carried a

camera lucida, which allowed him to accurately trace the complex forms of Maya architecture for his meticulously detailed works. Digital-era advancements have enabled me to composite many of the photographs in a way that would have been impossible in an earlier age.

there are a number of images in the book that present views of sites that cannot be seen even by visitors to those sites. the stucco frieze at el Mirador (pages 24–25), for instance, was photographed under extremely difficult conditions, as the upper and lower rows of the frieze were separated by workmen’s scaffolding. i had to shoot many individual images and meticulously piece them together, absent the scaffolding. the 56-foot-long Balamk’u frieze (gatefold front between pages 56 and 57) is composited from ten photographs. it is impossible to photograph the entire frieze in a single shot, because one can stand no more than 8 feet away from it. the white stucco frieze on the acropolis summit at ek’ Balam (pages 186–87) is also a composite, as many wooden columns support the thatched roof, precluding a clear shot. and each of the photos that form the composite had to be taken at an odd angle; then their frontal perspectives had to be aligned and composited to create the finished image. no archaeologist has ever seen this frieze as it appears in this book. the photo of the three pyramids at the summit of the la Danta temple-pyramid, glimpsed through thick tropical foliage (pages 18–19), is, in fact, three separate photographs blended into a panorama to convey the feeling of the pyramids emerging from the dense jungle. the actual jungle vegetation was too thick to capture this sensation in one photograph. the other panoramic images in the book were created in a similar fashion.

almost all ancient cultures were in awe of the sun and the moon and created rituals and made sacrifices to ensure the continued existence of those potent and incomprehensible forces of nature. i arranged my trips through the Maya empire to coincide with the full moon, which appears in a number of images, to acknowledge the extraordinary power that these elemental forces had on the Maya people.

What i hope this book will impart to the reader is a sense of how it feels to wander among the Maya ruins, to walk through the thick jungle and come upon these marvelous edifices. it is that sense of wonder that i have strived to capture in my photographs, presenting the ruins in a manner that emphasizes their beauty and the uniqueness of their architecture.

—Barry Brukoff

I dedicate this book to my granddaughter, Lea Marina Brukoff, who at her tender age is already an inveterate traveler.

m a Y a G e n e s i s 7

Guatemala City

Tegucigalpa

San Pedro Sula

Belize City

Chetumal

Cancún

Mérida

Valladolid

Campeche

Ciudaddel Carmen

Villahermosa

Veracruz

TuxtlaGutiérrez

Flores

PuertoBarrios

Belmopan

EscárcegaBalamk’u

Bonampak

XpuhilHormiguero

Chicanná

Río Bec

Dzibanché

Kohunlich

Tabasqueño

Hochob

Edzná

Muyil

Ek’ Balam

LabnáSayil

Kabah

Copán

Quiriguá

Piedras Negras

Yaxchilán

Palenque

El Mirador

Calakmul

Becán

Tulum

Cobá

Chichén Itzá

Uxmal

Mayapán

Tikal

H O N D U R A S

G U AT E M A L A

B E L I Z EM E X I C O

E LS A LVA D O R

Lagode Izabal Motagua

Belize

Usumacinta

Salin

as

Pasión

Cabo Catoche

Isla Cozumel

BancoChinchorro

Turne�eIslands

Bay Islands

Ambergris Cay

YUCATÁN

VERACRUZ

O A X A C A

TABASCO

C H I A P A S

CAMPECHE

Q U I N TA N AR O O

Toniná

Nakbé

San Bartolo

60 R o y a l C i t i e s o f t h e a n C i e n t M a y a

above: Twisting roots of a strangler fig. The inner bark of this parasite was used by the Maya to produce paper for their folding-screen books.

opposite: Temple II at Dzibanché, one of two temple-pyramids facing each other across a plaza.

201

opposite Muyil is strategically located only 12 kms (7.5 mi) inland from the Caribbean coast, and was connected by a canal-lagoon system with the intense coastwise trade of late pre-Conquest times. The city had a long occupation, and this temple-pyramid dates from the Classic period.

t W I L I G H t of the A n C I e n t M A Y A

The Maya renaissance in the north came to an end in the tenth century, when Yucatán became the target of a major military and cultural takeover by a foreign people. These invaders were the Toltec, Nahua speakers from the central Mexican altiplano, a people remembered and revered by the later Aztecs. The Toltec story begins with their capital, Tollan, “Place of the Reeds,” now known

to be the ruined city of Tula in the state of Hidalgo, northwest of Mexico City. Founded sometime after AD 900, according to native accounts Tollan was ruled by a man known to his people as Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (Our Honored Ruler the Feathered Serpent). In 987, following a power struggle within the city, Quetzalcoatl was forced to leave Tollan with his followers, eventually setting off in a raft from the Gulf Coast for a land to the east.

The Maya of Yucatán informed Diego de Landa, Yucatán’s first bishop, that in a k’atun that ended in AD 987, a great leader called K’uk’ulkan, “Feathered Serpent” in Mayan, arrived from the west, conquered Yucatán, seized the already established city of Chichén Itzá, and made it his new capital. This Toltec diaspora finished off the Puuc and other Terminal Classic cities, and so began the Postclassic era.

There are various native chronicles and Spanish commentaries from the Colonial period that deal with the northern lowlands during the Postclassic era, but these are often self-contradictory. The main problem lies with Maya chronology. By the close of the Terminal Classic, the Maya Long Count was no longer in use, replaced by the so-called Short Count: a period of about 256¼ years representing 13 k’atuns of slightly under 20 years each, with each successive k’atun being expressed by the day on which it ended (which was always the day Ajaw, prefixed by a number between 1 and 13). So, if something was said to occur in a K’atun 6 Ajaw, which particular K’atun 6 Ajaw was it? For this reason, late Maya history is filled with more ambiguities than the earlier part of the Maya story.

146 R o y a l C i t i e s o f t h e a n C i e n t M a y a

B e C á n

Becán lies in the midst of this cluster of Río Bec sites. Its somewhat more complex history begins in the Late Preclassic and flourishes in the Early Classic, during the Teotihuacán imperium, when its center was enclosed by an enormous moat and palisaded rampart. As there are no inscriptions at Becán (nor at any other Río Bec site), we have no idea who the enemy might have been to warrant such defensive works. By the Terminal Classic, Río Bec–style buildings were being put up, and the city managed to survive until the Late Postclassic period.

All of the Río Bec sites are in such close proximity to Calakmul that it seems inconceivable that they were not within Calakmul’s political grasp, which exerted its power more widely than any other Maya city-state.

Right In the distance lies Structure IX, the principal temple-pyramid at Becán.

overleaf Copán stelae. Second from left, Stela 2, with an inscription from the reign of Smoke Imix, the long-lasting seventh-century king. The other three are portraits of Waxaklahun Ubaah K’awiil, erected before he was captured and beheaded in AD 738.