Cobá Part 8: The stelae of Grupo Macanxoc that celebrate Cobá's greatest ruler

 

The author, standing in front of Stela #2 of the Grupo Macanxoc. This is one of four stelae at Cobá that display images of Kaloomté K'awiil Ajaw, a woman who was Cobá's most powerful monarch during the Classic era (500-800 AD). Her reign lasted for 42 years, a period that was the city's Golden Age. The stela stands 3m (9.9ft) tall and is the largest in Grupo Macanxoc. It is also one of the largest in Cobá itself. The stela is set into the bottom step on the staircase of a large and complex platform shown later in this posting. The stelae at Cobá are numbered according to when they were discovered, rather than their age.

This, along with my next posting, will focus on Grupo Macanxoc. The Maya created this group of structures solely for ceremonial and religious purposes. Part 8 will be devoted to the four of the eight stelae (1,2,4, and 5). These contain a total of six images of rulers. Five of these images have been identified as K'awiil Ajaw and the sixth is believed to be her husband. In Part 9, I'll show you Stelae 3, 6,7, and 8, the four remaining stelae. These display male rulers, including K'awiil Ajaw's predecessors and successors. Also included will be some of the temples that are scattered around Grupo Macanxoc.

Overview

Site map of Grupo Macanxoc. This group of structures is reached by way of Sacbe 9, one of Cobá's famous stucco-surfaced "White Roads" (see Part 1). On the map, the sacbe enters Grupo Macanxoc from the upper left. Stela #2 is part of the cluster of numbered stelae at the opposite end of the map from where the sacbe enters. To see how Grupo Macanxoc fits into Cobá's overall layout, see Part 4. That map shows this group of structures as somewhat isolated from the other three groups, which may have been intentional. It can only be reached by Sacbe 9, while the other groups are tied together by multiple sacbeob.

Grupo Macanxoc is a collection of structures built on a platform that is 200m (656ft) long and stands about 4m (13ft) above the surrounding swampy terrain. Maya architects nearly always oriented their structures with the Four Cardinal Directions in mind. However, on this platform, the structures are scattered about with very little reference to the Cardinal Directions. There are eight stelae, some of which are incorporated into ritual platforms while others stand independently. All of the stelae are believed to have originally been placed elsewhere in Cobá, but were moved to their present positions in the Post Classic period.

 

This wall is part of the many un-excavated structures at Coba. I spotted it while walking along Sacbe 9 on the way to the Grupo Macanxoc. More than 6,500 structures have been identified at Cobá, but only about 10% of them have been been excavated. Until recently, archeologists focused on the temples, pyramids, palaces, ball courts, stelae, and sacbeob in the core area of the city used by the elite. In recent years, their attention has been drawn to the areas where ordinary people lived and worked, as they worked to understand daily life.

Sacbe 9 is only a few hundred meters in length, fairly short for a Cobá sacbeob. However, it is 6.7m (22ft) wide, making the city's broadest. Clearly, it was meant for grand ceremonial processions. The path is narrower today and hemmed in by the encroaching jungle. Still, we occasionally caught glimpses of semi-buried structures like the one above. As we walked along, people on bicycles and tricycle carriages whizzed passed in either direction. Both forms of transportation can be rented near Cobá's main entrance. However, Carole and I preferred to stroll along and enjoy the sights and sounds of the jungle around us. 

Stela #1

Stela #1 is the first structure encountered upon entering Grupo Macanxoc. The stela sits on top of a platform called A9. There are staircases on all four sides of A9. A small altar stands a couple of meters in front of the main stairs. Stela #1 contains images and glyphs on both sides. Its 313 glyphs are the Maya world's longest known hieroglyphic text. Included are dates that reach back to the mythical Maya creation date of 3114 BC. They also extend forward to the calendar date of December 21, 2012. This covers an astounding 5,127 years, the full length of one of the five Maya ritual eras. Together, these eras total 25,685 years!

The images on both sides of the stela are of Kaloomté K'awiil Ajaw. However, she did not erect this stela, her son and heir Chan Yopaat did. This occurred following her death in 682 and Chan Yopaat's accession to the throne that same year. The new kaloomté put up Stela #1 both to memorialize his mother's 42-year reign and to legitimize his own rule. Archeologists have known of Stela #1's existence since the late 19th century. However, the Maya hieroglyphic code was not broken until the 1970s. It was not until the first decade of the 21st century that the readable portion of Stela #1 began to be accurately deciphered. 

K'awiil Ajaw is shown on both sides of Stela #1 and is surrounded by 313 glyphs. Archeologists have determined the image to be that of a woman because she wears a huipil (dress) down to her ankles. Maya men are never portrayed wearing huipiles. Aside from the dress, she is portrayed in a manner similar to images of Cobá's male rulers. Her body faces forward with her head turned to the right and she carries the long scepter office across her chest. Dangling from her neck, almost to her ankles, is a horizontal bar with three tubular beads on each end. Rulers wore this emblem when they intended to take captives in war.

The two sides of the stela contain a total of eight bound captives. Each side shows K'awiil Ajaw standing directly on top of two of them, while another kneels on either side of her feet. Every one of K'awiil Ajaw's stelae at Grupo Macanxoc shows her standing next to at least one captive. This remarkable total of fourteen captives is greater than those shown on the stelae of any other Cobá ruler. It is also greater than almost any other Classic-era monarch in the Maya world. This was apparently a woman who meant business.

Stela #2

Stela #2 is set at the bottom of the staircase of a large and complex platform. This staircase is the only one on the platform. A large square altar stands about 3m (10ft) in front of the large stela. While Stela #1 was erected by K'awiil Ajaw's son after her death in 682, Stela #2 was the first one that she put up herself near the beginning of her long reign. According to the glyphs on a different stela, she became Cobá's kaloomté in 640 AD. Two years later, in 642, the she erected and dedicated this one.  

Ix Ch'ak Ch'een (see Part 7) was the first of Cobá's female rulers. Later, in 569 she was elevated to kaloomté ("Supreme Warrior"), making her the first of the city's rulers to become a regional overlord. She died in 573 was succeeded by another queen, Ix Che'enal, who ruled for only about a year before abdicating in favor of her husband, K'ahk Bahlam (ruled 574-610). He was succeeded by his son Sihyal Chan K'awiil (ruled 610-632) who, in turn, was followed by his son Xaman K'awiil (ruled 632-640). Xaman K'awiil was probably K'awiil Ajaw's brother, although there is some speculation that he may have been her father.

Stela #2 has been eroded by the weather for over a millennia.  Due to the poor quality of the limestone, only the outlines of K'awiil Ajaw's image and of the glyphs surrounding her can be seen. The only clear part is the captive on whose back she stands and the lower part of another to the right of her feet. The only readable glyphs are along the stela's side edges. Given the immense hieroglyphic record at Cobá, it must be intensely frustrating to epigraphers (the people who decipher hieroglyphs) that so few glyphs are readable.  

In fact, we don't even know the actual name of this powerful queen. While the title kaloomté is readable, her name is not. The closest that epigraphers could come was K'awiil ("God of Lightning") and Ajaw ("Lord"). K'awiil and Ajaw are believed to be honorific titles attached to her still unreadable name. However, new discoveries of readable glyphs at Cobá are made fairly regularly (see Parts 2 & 7), so stay tuned. 

A long room with several pillars lines the left side of Stela #2's large platform. The presence of this and other rooms makes the stela's platform one of the more complex structures of Grupo Macanxoc. While the stela was dedicated in 642, the platform may have been constructed much later, with the stela having been brought from elsewhere to adorn it.

We know from Grupo Macanxoc's various stelae that K'awiil Ajaw was probably born in 617 as the daughter of Kaloomté Sihyaj Chan K'awiil. Following her father's death in 632, her brother Xaman K'awiil took over and reigned until his death in 640. So, at the age of 23, K'awiil Ajaw became Cobá's third female Kaloomté. Thus began her 42-year reign as the overlord of Cobá's northeastern Yucatan realm. She was the city-state's greatest ruler at the time when the Maya Classic world was reaching its political, economic, and social peak. 

View of the rear of Stela #2's platform. By ascending the throne at this time, K'awiil Ajaw became an important player in the complex inter-relationships among the various Maya city-states. Her reign roughly paralleled that of Yuknoom Ch'een (ruled 636-686). He was the Kaan (Snake) dynasty ruler who was the kaloomté of Calakmul, the Maya world's greatest power at that time. Although Cobá and Calakmul are separated by 260km (162mi) of rugged jungle, K'awiil Ajaw and Yuknoom Ch'een undoubtedly knew of and communicated with each other.

The Kaan Dynasty had long maintained a relationship with Cobá. In the fifth century, the Kaan were still based in Dzibanche. In 494, they helped Juunpiktook (the Cobá dynasty's founder) to become ruler. Kaan strategy was to build power through a broad network of allies. They also sent their royal daughters to marry the rulers of other city-states. For example, K'awiil Ajaw's grandmother, Ix Che'enal (Cobá's second female kaloomté) may have have been the daughter of a Kaan ruler. Through these alliances they assembled the power to defeat Tikal, the other great city-state of the Classic world. 

Stela #4

Stela #4 stands inside an enclosure embedded into a broad staircase. The impressive staircase leads to the top of a largely un-excavated temple/pyramid (known to archeologists as A1). You can see trees and other vegetation still growing at the top. It is the highest structure in Grupo Macanxoc and stands about 12m (39ft) tall. Structure A1 and its stela are located about 40m (131ft) to the southwest of Stela #1 (see site map above). The fact that the staircase and stela enclosure are the only parts excavated so far shows how much work still needed to be done at Cobá when we visted.  

Stela #4, inside its enclosure. The space in which the stela stands is about the size of a telephone booth (for those of us old enough to remember them). The enclosure was built by the ancient architects, rather than by modern archeologists, in order to protect the stela and possibly to conceal it from unauthorized eyes. 

Stela #4 is 2.5m (8.2ft) tall and a 1.04m (3.4ft) wide, making it one of the larger of Cobá's stelae. It contains the image of a female ruler, along with glyphs containing her accession date of 640 and the stela's dedication date of 652. Although K'awiil Ajaw's name is again not decipherable, her title of kaloomté is. This, along with the dress and the dates, confirms that she is the person in the image. Stela #4 was erected a decade after Stela #1 and is the second that was put up during her reign.

Although most of the glyphs on Stela #4 are unreadable, K'awiil Ajaw's image is clear. So are the images of the three captives at her feet. She stands with each sandaled foot on the back of a crouching captive. A third captive kneels next to her right foot with his bound hands raised. All are naked, except for loincloths and simple head-dresses. Note that, on Stela #2--her first--there were two captives. One this one, there are three. Her conquests seem to be expanding. The ceremonial bar she holds is the symbol of a kaloomté. The face of a divine figure emerges from the lower end of the ceremonial bar. 

Kaloomté K'awiil Ajaw ruled a city-state that was expansionist and militaristic, as attested by the numerous captives displayed on her various stelae. She pushed her realm's boundaries to the west, as well as north and south. Almost certainly, Cobá controlled the Caribbean coastal seaports like Tulum that were so important to Cobá's trade. At this point, Cobá had "arrived" and was no longer subordinate to Calakmul. There is even some evidence of military conflict between those two city-states, as well as with Edzna to the southwest and Oxkintok to the west. Control over trade routes and subordinate towns were the usual causes.

Stela #5

Stela #5 is a stand-alone stelae, not incorporated into a platform or temple. This is the only stela with an image of K'awiil Ajaw on one side and a male image on the other. Epigraphers came to the conclusion that the male must must be her husband, since husband-and-wife stelae have been found in other Maya cities. Also, since he only appears on one side of one of the four stelae showing K'awiil Ajaw, it is believed that he is clearly the junior partner in the relationship. Although his image is on the "front" side, we should remember that this is probably not the original place or orientation of Stela #5. 

K'awiil Ajaw lived up to her "Sacred Warrior" title. She actively used her military to expand her realm. While Yaxuná probably fell under the sway of Cobá during the rule of an earlier kaloomté, she consolidated control and encouraged inter-city trade. She was also a builder and a patron of the arts and science. Many of Cobá's 50+ sacbeob were built under her direction, possibly including the 100km (62mi) sacbe to Yaxuná. During her long reign, scribes at Cobá were very active and the city became a center of calendric studies. People of the Post Classic period, hundreds of years later, viewed her reign as a golden age.

The  two sides of Stela #5 display K'awiil Ajaw and her husband. Glyphs on the stela indicate that it was dedicated in 662, at the mid-point between her accession as kaloomté and her death. Since no male figure appears on Stelae #2 or #4, she may not have been married when those stelae were dedicated. The fact that the glyphs don't refer to the male figure as a kaloomté indicates his lesser status. In addition, he did not become kaloomté when K'awiil Ajaw died. The regional overlord position went to her son, Chan Yopaat. This suggests that either the husband was already dead or was simply not in the line of succession.

In the drawings of Stela #5 above, the male figure appears on the left and K'awiil Ajaw is on the right, He is dressed in a man's the knee-length kilt. She wears the standard ankle-length women's huipil. Oddly, he has two captives at his feet, while she has only one. The meaning of this disparity is unknown. Perhaps Kaloomté K'awiil Ajaw, at the height of her power, simply wanted to boost the image of her husband a bit and saw no need to increase her own fame.

This completes Part 8 of my Cobá series. I hope you have enjoyed it. If so, please leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments, please be sure to include your email address so that I can respond in a timely manner.

Hasta luego, Jim

P.S. For those who would like to dive deeper into the things I cover in Parts 8 & 9, here are the main sources I relied upon:

Harvard Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology

The Queen of Cobá, a Reanalysis of the Maccanxoc Stelae

A Preliminary Ruling Sequence of Cobá, Quintana Roo

Notes on the Accession Dates in the Inscriptions of Cobá

The Maya Ruins Website: Cobá

Wikipedia: Maya Monarchs