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FAMSI © 2004: Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo |
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The Glyphic Corpus from Ek’ Balam, Yucatán, México Hieroglyphic Mural Paintings
Mural A, Room 29-sub (Mural of the 96 Glyphs)
Location: Northern inner wall, Room 29-sub, Structure 1 (Acropolis)
Comments: This very singular text (in every sense) presents a peculiar reading format in horizontal lines. It displays exactly 96 glyphic tablets, like the famous panel in Palenque, arranged in three lines with 32 glyphic blocks each. Still, the text poses several problems regarding transcription and translation, so I won't be conveying them here. However, I shall offer below a partial transcription and translation of several passages, as also a comprehensive comment on its contents (vid. infra "Comments on the Mural A from Room 29-sub, or Mural of the 96 Glyphs"). For a discussion about the datings in the Mural, vid. infra "Datings from Ek’ Balam". Mural B from Room 29-sub
Location: Northern inner wall, Room 29-sub, Structure 1 (Acropolis), below and left of Mural A (Mural of the 96 Glyphs)
Comments: The heavily fragmented mural does not allow for any coherent transcription and translation. From the contents, the date may be read as 1 Ajaw 3 Wayeb (the month being written as u-WAY-HAB’, Uwayaab’), corresponding to 9.18.15.9.0 (January 16, A.D. 806) (vid. infra "Datings from Ek’ Balam"). The Ballcourt logogram in D1 and the preceeding block presenting a final syllable b’u, perhaps originally a part of the sequence ye-b’u or either e-b’u, suggest that the subject commemorated in the Mural had something to do with the celebration of a Ballgame at the site. Block E1 shows the sequence IX-TZ’AK-AJAW-wa, which I’m not taking as a reference of kings but of the deity B’olon Tz’ak Ajaw or B’olon Tz’ak[ab’] Ajaw. The date in Wayeb’ would support this extreme, provided it was associated to ceremonies for the New Year.
Mural C, Room 29-sub
Location: Northern wall, Room 29-sub, below Mural A (Mural of the 96 Glyphs), right side of Mural B
Comments: Like the Mural of the 96 Glyphs from above, Mural C also presents a reading arrangement in horizontal lines. In fact, Mural C attempts to mimic the format and the writing of the first Mural painted in Room 29-sub. This text would require too many additional comments and poses abundant reading problems, so it is not possible at this time to offer any coherent transcription and translation. In any case, I shall elaborate on its general contents: The text begins with the Calendar Round 3 Hix 17 Kumk’u (A-B), which corresponds to 9.19.3.10.14 (January 8, A.D. 814). The event associated to the date is hu-li, huli "he arrived" (C), like in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs. I believe blocks D and E include the reference to the place where this arrival took place, in whose name the word b’ahlam could be found. In D there's a clear sign of ta, possibly representing the preposition ta. The explicit mention to Ek’ B’ahlam in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs would support this reading. In E, the sequence CHAN-na-#-na, is present, with a structure identical to the chan ch’e’n diphrase known from other Classic texts as an expression referred to places. Thus, the sign represented as # should be a syllable ch’e or alternatively a variant of the logogram CH’EN. Then, in the F-I tablets, the name of the verb subject huli "he arrived" appears, named as B’aak B’ahlam K’an B’o[h]b’ Tok’, followed by … Chak[a]l K’ik’ or Ch’ich’, possibly a title. In J, the expression u-b’a-tz’a-ma, is seen, an expression that had already appeared in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs and which I think that stands for ub’a[ah] tz’am "his head/first throne". The meaning of that "head/first throne" remains unclear, but it might be the site of Ek’ Balam itself. In K-M we find the possessor of that b’a[ah] tz’am, and maybe also another one corresponding to another new comer. It is CHAK-ju-tu-wi CHAN-EK’, Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’, b’a-ka-b’a, B’a[ah] Kab’ "Head/Prince of the Earth", the foreign king who had arrived in Ek’ Balam forty-four years before, like the Mural of the 96 Glyphs accounts for. Alike that mural painting, the text once again reiterates in N that Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ is u-RABBIT-ka-yi from Ukit Kan Le’k, whose name is written in O-P. The name of Ukit Kan Le’k is followed by several of the titles he already displayed in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs: K’ahk’ Okxo’m, Sayaw Chan K’uh, STRING-i-tz’i and I? -b’a--227 (Q-S). This lengthy phrase ends up here. Finally, a stative phrase reads (T-U) K’AN-b’o2-TOK’ TAL-lo-AJAW-wa, K’an B’o[h]b’ Tok’ Tal[o]l ajaw "K’an B’ohb’ is the king of Talol". This K’an B’ohb’ Tok’ is the same character mentioned at the beginning of the text. The text continues in the second line with a Tzolk’in days sequence, which starts at 3 Hix. The sequence is interrupted in 6 Ok, and the mural is clearly left unfinished. Mural D, Room 29-sub (Grafitti)
Location: Northern inner wall, Room 29-sub from the Acropolis, in the empty space left by Mural C
Comment: Mural 1 D, a series of grafitti, has not a scripturist sense. Although the author attempt was to reproduce scripture signs, he was probably an illiterate person (vid. infra). General comment on Murals A, B, C, and D from Room 29-sub: reconstruction of the execution sequence From the arrangement of the different murals and the dates recorded, the sequence in which the murals were painted may be reconstructed. A first event corresponds to the creation of Mural A. This is the most amazing of the murals placed against the northern inner wall of Room 29-sub (probably still accessible, at the time, from the outside) due to the excellency of its calligraphy. It was demarcated on its four sides by a wide red band. The upper and lower red bands provide the Mural with an aspect of ceramic, codex-style roll-out. The scribe used polychromy in the mural, by using a black ink for the spripture signs, an orange-red for the background of the signs and the numeral coefficients of the Tzolk’in, and blue for the background of the tzolk’in days represented. The final effect is magnificent, the masterpiece of a calligrapher artist. A second event which took place thirty-six years after the Mural of the 96 Glyphs was painted, when probably the room was no longer accessible from the outside, someone entered Room 29-sub and painted, below and at the left of the existing Mural, a second hieroglyphic mural (Mural B). The callygraphy is clearly different from the earlier one, with no calligraphic virtuosities, with general thinner traces than those from Mural A, and without using color fills for the signs. Eight years later of the second entrance–and around forty-four years after the Mural of the 96 Glyphs was painted–the structure was once again accessed, and a third hierogyphic mural was painted on the northern wall of the room, below the Mural A of the 96 Glyphs, and at the right of Mural B. This time the scribe, with a different hand than those of the scribes of Murals A and B and thicker traces, attempted to reproduce the format of the Mural of the 96 Glyphs, by imitating its arrangement and structure. The first thing he did, as may still be appreciated on the wall, was the linear tracing of the writing case and the space for the glyphic blocks, delineating squares of regular dimensions. He wrote the first horizontal line imitating in full the Mural of the 96 Glyphs: the text began with a Calendar Round, followed by the verb hu-li "he arrived (in here)". Once the first horizontal line of blocks was completed, he began with the second one. At that time he probably changed his mind regarding the dimensions of the blocks in the text, because instead of respecting the space he had previously delimitated to insert the blocks, which was similar to the size of the blocks from the upper line, he used for each new block one quarter of the size established in the first place. Like in the Mural A of the 96 Glyphs, the scribe began the second line with a Tzolk’in days sequence to indicate a distance number: 4 Men, 5 Kib’, 6 Kab’an, … . For some reason, after having written sixteen dates of Tzolk’in days, the scribe interrupted his work after having written the date 6 Ok, leaving the text of the Mural incomplete. After Mural C was interrupted and before the room was fully filled in with stones and sascab–Archaeologists Leticia Vargas and Víctor Castillo found the room filled to the top,–someone else had accessed the room to execute the fourth and last intervention in the northern wall of Room 29-sub. This person added several signs in three different places on the wall, two in the incomplete space of Mural C, and the third at its right. This new person draw first a numeral and a Tzolk’in day at the right of the 6 Ok day of the incomplete day sequence, perhaps in an attempt to complete what was left incomplete. A bit more to the right, below the J-K tablets of Mural C, he draw up three glyphic blocks. Farther away he designed other traces at the right of block U in Mural C, the last of the line. The traces delineated by this person are extremely coarse and of a very poor quality, evidencing his lack of skills in tracing curves, his ignorance concerning proportions. But what does the text say? Absolutely nothing. The person who wrote these signs was in fact drawing grafitti. He simply copied several glyphic blocks from the texts he saw painted on the wall and which caught his attention. The first grafitti, the tzolk’in date, is not actually the continuation of the sequence but a poor copy of the same 6 Ok day, where the account was interrupted; the three glyphic tablets in the middle represent, in fact, an attempt to reproduce tablets T3-U3 from the Mural A of the 96 Glyphs. Tests carried out in situ have shown that those were the blocks selected to be copied, of all others, because blocks T3-U3 from Mural A were located precisely in front of his eyes, there exactly, at an estimated height of 1.60 meters. We may compare the model with the resulting grafitti, and realize that it is a plain copy. But a wrongly executed copy, because we may observe that the copyist ignored even where the first glyphic block began (he omitted the numeral IV from T3) and split or merged some signs with others, probably because he was unable to identify them. The author of these grafitti was clearly an illiterate person, possibly–I dare say–one of the workers integrating the crew in charge of refilling the room. Although the outline presented here might explain the process of execution of the four mural paintings on the northern inner wall of Room 29-sub–or of the first three murals plus the grafitti added later–many questions still remain unanswered. The most important one has to do with the architectural history in this sector of the Acropolis, and how, and where, the second, third, and fourth re-entrances to Room 29-sub were accomplished, at a time when most probably the chamber no longer had a straight access from the outside, as a consequence of having been covered by the subsequent constructive phases of the Acropolis.
Mural in Room 22
Location: Northern wall, Room 22, Structure 1 (Acropolis)
Comments: The mural presents a peculiar reading arrangement, combining the reading by pairs of columns with the reading in horizontal lines. The syntax in the text supports this arrangement, together with the remains of red lines that grouped the blocks four by four, while the lower line appears free of marks. The texts began in A1-B1, A2-B2, C1-D1, C2-D2, and so on, until the two first bands were completed. Once at the end of the mural, the lower red line is read horizontally: A3, B3, C3, D3, etc. The mural is incomplete. The text begins with the Introductory Glyph and the verb-God N, followed in A2-B2 by the Calendar Round. 13 Hix 7 K’ank’in (9.17.12.16.14, October 18, A.D. 783) in an unusual syntactic pattern (but, vid. infra, "Linguistic Comments"). C1 may include a verbal expression, heavily damaged though, which poses reading problems. Two signs can be read, ya and ja, although the main sign has been destroyed. One possibility to consider is that ja was a part of the main sign, then a hand giving shape to the logogram HUL, but this is mere speculation. D1 reads perfectly clear ti-OTOT-ti, ti[’] otoot "to the house" or "in the house", followed by two possible gentilic expressions in C2-D2, two individual or collective nouns. They represent the subject of the verb lost in C1. Should this be the verb "to arrive", the text then would be indicating that at that time, the persons referred to "arrived in the house". E1-F1 display a rather eroded expression, with a suggested reading, transcription and translation, as follows:
XIV-tu-[TUN]-[#] K’AY-[li] Following this interesting expression, we find in E2-F2 a new Calendar Round which we may reconstruct as 3 Lamat 1 Wayeb’ (9.17.13.3.8, January 20, A.D. 784). Perhaps the following verb in block G1, whose reading is uncertain, is associated to this date. Following two remarkably damaged tablets from which no inferences can be made, we find in H2 the expression yi-chi-[#], which perhaps could be transcribed as yich[nal], "with (him), before (his) presence". Blocks I1-L1 indicate who this person is: …[la]j Chan K’awiil, Ukit Kan Le’k, Tal[ol] ajaw "…laj Chan K’awiil, Ukit Kan Le’k, king of Talol". Blocks K2-L2 are almost completely lost. However, considering what comes after in the text and the presence of u, u- in the first block, we may infer that the expression "son of a father" was written in K2, and in L2 probably a title of the name shown in M1-N1, written as u-ki-[ti] HEAD-##; M2 probably displayed an additional title. This is the name of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s father. N2 shows the beginning of the kinship phrase with the mother and the well known expression ya-YAL, yal, y-al "the son of a (female)". From O1 to R2, her name is present. However, this is almost completely lost, and only some of her titles may be identified: K’UH-IX(IK), k’uh[ul] ixik "sacred lady", and HO’-IX(IK)-[AJAW], … ho’ ixik ajaw "queen of …ho’ ". From then on, the mural is lost. Going down to the third line, which is read horizontally-wise, we find a series of Calendar Rounds. Despite their poor condition, they can be easily reconstructed as 8 Lamat 1 Pax, 2 Lamat 1 K’ayab’, 9 Lamat 1 Kumk’u, 8 B’en 1 Pop, 2 B’en 1 Wo, 9 B’en 1 Sip, 3 B’en 1 Sotz’, 10 B’en 1 Sek and 4 B’en [1 Xul] (vid. infra "Datings from Ek’ Balam"). These Calendar Rounds follow a sequence, indicating the beginnings of the winal corresponding to the 14 tun from the 17 k’atun (9.17.13.0.8, 9.17.13.1.8, 9.17.13.2.8, 9.17.13.3.13, …): precisely, the tun mentioned before in E1. The significance of this mural painting is remarkable. In addition to its historic value for contributing with new and valuable information about king Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’, his filiation for instance, it provides evidence about the celebration of a ceremony to prognosticate a tun–14 tuun k’a’y[i]l–associated to the New Year rituals, as those described by Landa in his Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán. An in-depth study on the historical and cultural implications on the contents of this mural painting, carried out jointly with Archaeologists L. Vargas and V. Castillo, will be presented in short.
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