The Glyphic Corpus from Ek’ Balam, Yucatán, México

Other Characters Mentioned in Ek’ Balam

I shall now discuss some of the characters that seem to be more relevant from the point of view of the political history from this site, mentioned in the Ek’ Balam inscriptions:

Tz’ihb’am Tuun

He appears twice in the Ek’ Balam texts:

The glyphic sequence tz’i-ba-ma TUN-ni may be transcribed as Tz’i[h]b’am Tuun, though the proper transliteration of the name sequence tz’i-ba-ma may also have been tz’iibam, as a consequence of the evidence that points to the existence in Ek’ Balam of a Yucatecan vernacular substratum. However, the transcription Tz’i[h]b’am is favored, as there is no evidence in the north-central region of Yucatán–the area where Ek’ Balam and Chichén Itzá are located–of the change Vh > VV (VV with a high tone in Yucatecan and VV in Itzaj-Mopán) reconstructed for the proto-Yucatecan. Other words in the region written in a clear Yucatecan context, such as k’a-k’a, k’a[h]k’  "fire", indicate that the change referred to had not taken place.

Tz’ihb’am Tuun may mean "he-who-paints/writes on-stones", after tz’ihb’  "painting, writing", -am, a possible archaic, agentive suffix documented in colonial Yucatecan (Barrera 1980:15) and tuun "stone".

It is uncertain whether Tz’ihb’am Tuun–provided he was a historic character⁴⁰ –was at any point king in Ek’ Balam, as he is not present in either of the two occasions in which he is named in association with the Emblem Glyph of the site. Nevertheless, this argument is not really definite, as Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’ occasionally appears without the Emblem Glyph. We may have a clue in the fact that Tz’ihb’am Tuun is associated with the cover of vaults from the rooms of a structure which is not a part of the Acropolis but of the Ballcourt (Structures 8-9), indicating perhaps a subsidiary character somehow connected to the Ballcourt or to the maintenance of the field. However, this argument is far from conclusive.

In Cover of Vault 1, Tz’ihb’am Tuun is associated with the date 11 Ok 13 Keh, 12 tun 5 Ajaw, matching 10.0.11.11.10 (August 30, A.D. 841). As previously indicated, this date is between the dates 10.0.10.0.0 from Ek’ Balam’s Stela 1 (January 18, A.D. 840), and 10.2.1.0.0 from Halakal’s Lintel 1 (A.D. 870). If Tz’ihb’am Tuun was in fact one of Ek’ Balam kings, then king …K’uh…nal, who dedicated Stela 1, and king K’ihnich Junpik Tok’ K’uh…nal mentioned in Halakal, cannot be one and the same person.

Ukit HEAD-## and Ukit Ahkan

In the mural found inside Room 22 of the Acropolis, an individual referred to as u-ki-ti HEAD-## is mentioned as the father of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. This is an almost exceptional information in the hieroglyphic texts from northern Yucatán, which rarely include such data. Unfortunately, neither the block preceding the name nor the one that follows, both corresponding to a nominal clause, were preserved. In case they included titles, important information could have been obtained on this individual’s identity.

The way in which the name of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s father was written in the mural of Room 22, u-ki-ti HEAD-##, greatly resembles the sequence u-ki-ti-a AKAN, Ukit Ahkan,–Ahkan being written with the logogram of God A’s head–which is present in the second text of Miscellaneous Text 7, the long inscription inscribed on a human thigh-bone, carved and transformed into a perforator (vid. supra). Ukit Ahkan is precisely the individual whose femur, physically, we are referring to (ub’aakel).

I have been considering the possibility that Ukit HEAD-## and Ukit Ahkan are one and the same individual. Should this suggestion be correct, it would account for the presence of the bone perforator in Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s tomb in the role of a relic from an ancestor, his father, and for the importance granted to the object through such an impressive carving and the long inscription written on it.

If so, it is possible that Ukit Ahkan, in spite of having been Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s father, had not been a king. The only title from Ukit Ahkan we are able to read in Miscellaneous Text 7, is that of ajk’uh "priest" (vid. supra MT7); the tablet that follows is partially destroyed, but the signs preserved indicate that it was not the Emblem Glyph; it could have been written in a last block now lost with the bone fracture, but this is something we are now unable to find out.

For the time being, it is not possible to confirm this suggestion. Nevertheless, I want to outline the fact that while the mother of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’, presented name and titles that covered eight glyphic blocks from the mural in Room 22, the name and titles of Ukit Kan Le’k’s father covered only four. This perhaps could support the suggestion that the mother enjoyed a higher status, from a social and political standpoint, than the father, and could account for many things regarding the importance imbued to Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’ in Ek’ Balam, which could be explained if he were the founder of the royal dynasty from the site. I would also like to point out that for now–though this may be a consequence of the incomplete knowledge of the corpus from this site,–no dedicatory inscriptions for Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s father have been found in the Acropolis.

K’uhul Ixik …/ …ho’ ixik ajaw

This female character, the first one appearing in the texts from Ek’ Balam for the time being, is mentioned only once in the texts of the site:

The poor condition of the glyphs in the mural prevents reading her name, but some of her titles could be recovered. She was a lady with a royal ancestry, as indicated by the reverential title shown at the beginning of her clause, k’uh(ul) ixik "sacred lady", and its final section, where an Emblem Glyph has been partially preserved. Interestingly, the Emblem Glyph, whose final portion can be recovered …ho’ ixik ajaw  "queen of …ho’ ", is not the one from Ek’ Balam.

This "queen of …ho’ " is the mother of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. This is clearly indicated in the mural of Room 22, where it says that Ukit Kan Le’k is ya-YAL, yal  "the son of" this noble lady.

Where did the mother of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’ come from? Where was her kingdom located? It would be hard to specify a location, though there are two possible alternatives. Both are suggested in the Cobá inscriptions, a city that stands sixty kilometers southeast of Ek’ Balam, where two places are mentioned with names ending in /ho’/. One could be the kingdom of Cobá, probably called EK’-HAB’-HO’, Ek’aab’ Ho’ during the Classic Period, like N. Grube suggested, in 1992, that the Emblem Glyph was to be read. The second one is the toponym HO’, Ho’ or better yet i-tz’i-a-HO’, Itz’a[’] Ho’ that is shown in the nominal clause of one of the captives represented in Stela 4.⁴¹

In any case, no matter if it was Cobá or some other place where the unfortunate captive of Stela 4 came from, the original kingdom of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s mother should be traced in the intermediate region between Ek’ Balam and Cobá–if not in Cobá itself.

Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’

He is mentioned three different times in Ek’ Balam: twice with his name and titles, and a third time simply by one of his titles:

The name of this individual could be transcribed as Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’. The translation is uncertain, as there are doubts concerning jutuuw, the root of the verb, which could be related to the Yucatecan juut "to demolish, to crumble, to fall to pieces" (Bastarrachea et al. 1992: 93) or otherwise with the Ch’orti’ root jujt "to blow" (Pérez et al. 1996: 88, M. Sanz, personal communication, January 2002). It is possible that chak here is representing the adverb "much, good, stout, stoutly" (Barrera 1980: 76-77).

Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ was an individual with a remarkably outstanding political status, as suggested by the titles displayed. The first time he is mentioned in Ek’ Balam, in the Mural of the 96 Glyps, his name is followed by the titles K’UH-MAMMAL-AJAW-wa, k’uh[ul] … ajaw  "sacred king of …", xa-MAN-na KALOMTE’, Xaman Kalo’mte’  "Kalo’mte’ from the North" and b’a-ka-b’a, B’a[ah] Kab’  "Head/Prince of the Earth". There are no higher political titles than these.

The kingdom of Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ has not been located. The primary sign represents the head of a mammal, perhaps a meat-eater. Don Héctor and other Maya-speaking workers from Ek’ Balam have suggested this is a sáab’im ("weasel, ferret", Bastarrechea et al. 1996: 116); all of them, together with Julio César Ho’il, a student in UADY and also a Maya speaker, have suggested that it could also be a k’ulu’ ("raccoon, badger, doggie, coati", ibid.: 100); in turn, D. Stuart and K. Taube have suggested it could be an ooch ("oppossum", "fox from the land", ibid.: 109) (personal communication, June 2002). Due to the lack of phonetic complements to help read the logogram, the final identification of the mammal represented in the primary sign of the Emblem Glyph is still pending. In none of the Emblem Glyphs documented in other texts of the region, a similar animal is clearly represented.

Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ is the individual who arrives in Ek’ Balam on 11 Eb’ 10 Sotz’, 9.16.9.3.12 (April 7, A.D. 770), and the one mentioned forty-nine days later in the same text, acting with Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. The context of the arrival in Ek’ Balam and its relation with Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’ is not totally clear. Unfortunately, the key expressions in the text which would allow to elucidate this issue in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs are obscure, or have not been deciphered: the expression u-b’a-tz’a-ma (ub’a[ah] tz’am "the head/first throne of"?), which seems to define the relation between the site of Ek’ Balam and Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’; the expression u-RABBIT-ka-ja that relates Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ with Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’; the expression IV-tzi-ma-hi or the verbal form ta-k’a-ni or ta-k’a-ni-ti cannot be reliably transcribed and translated. In the Mural of the 96 Glyphs, it is only clear that all this account concerning the arrival of Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ is related to, and culminates, with the expression i patlaj Tal[o]l ajaw  "then he became the king of Talol", an accession to the throne, presumably the accession of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’.

Forty-four years after the reference to Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs, an identical name CHAK-ju-tu-wi CHAN-EK’ appears once again in Mural C of Room 29-sub, this time joining only the title of B’aah Kab’  "Head/Prince of the Earth". Even though the time span of forty-four years between one reference and the other is important, it is not impossible that both references corresponded to one and the same person, and that is how they have been considered here. The evidence obtained by the repetition of the name, the fact that the context of the reference is identical, an arrival in Ek’ Balam, and the fact that both texts share the same physical location in the northern inner wall of Room 29-sub support this suggestion. In this case, we are also unable to assert that the content of the hieroglyphic mural has been fully understood. The same problematic expressions present in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs have been repeated here: the expression u-b’a-tz’a-ma and the expression u-RABBIT-ka-yi (in this case with a suffix -aay instead of -aj, vid. infra "Linguistic Comments") to define the relationship between Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’ and Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. The innovation in this mural is the reference to K’an B’ohb’ Tok’, a new ruler from Ek’ Balam.

Endnotes

40. V. Bricker (personal communication, March 2000) has suggested a different alternative to the interpretation of –am as an agentive suffix, and consequently of Tz’ihb’am Tuun, as "he-who-paints/writes-on stones". V. Bricker suggests that –am could be the allophone of the Yucatecan participle suffix –a’an, and tz’ihb’am tuun could therefore stand for "painted stone" or "written stone", not making reference to an individual but instead, to some type of object housed in the rooms where the vaults come from.

41. Although it seems inevitable to consider Mérida-Dzibilchaltún (ti-jo, ti-jo-i), in my opinion, the invariable way of writing the name with the syllable jo (velar aspirate), never using the syllable ho or the number five HO’ (glottal aspirate) would indicate they would not be related to one another.

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