NW Yucatan Part 23: Sayil's Mirador, Hieroglyphic Doorway, and Phallic Stela

The pyramid temple called El Mirador loomed up out of the jungle as we approached. This rather dramatic view of El Mirador turned out to be the back side of the ruin. In the previous posting, we visited the Great Palace of Sayil. The overall site of this ancient city is fairly large and, since we visited in the late afternoon, we had little time to extensively explore it. The South Palace was one area that we did not visit. It lies about a mile south of El Mirador at the end of an ancient raised limestone road called a sacbe. The South Palace complex includes a ball court and other outlying structures. For a site map of Sayil that will help you relate the various ruined structures to one another, click here.

El Mirador is composed of a temple which sits on top of a pyramid with three stepped platforms. This cutaway design shows a side view of the ruin, looking east. A large roof comb rises high above the temple on which it rests. The comb is perforated by rows of vertical slots. The three rectangular pyramid platforms below the temple form a base with a height of 4 meters (13 ft.). However, most of the pyramid is still buried under sloping piles of rubble. The architectural style is Early Puuc and the structure shows some similarities to Labnás El Mirador. However, at Labná, the roof comb rises flush with the front wall of the temple, whereas at Sayil, the comb bisects the building.

The front of El Mirador faces south. Projecting from the roof comb on this side you can see a number of stone studs. Upon these once hung stucco decorations, including human figures at each corner and another at the center of the comb. Still remaining on the comb face are carved stone feather and rosette designs, similar to those found at Labná, as well as traces of red, green, and blue paint. The temple contains five vaulted rooms, with doorways at the center of the north and south sides of the temple to provide access.


House of the Hieroglyphic Doorway

The House of the Hieroglyphic Doorway is still mostly buried. This building may have been an elite home or possibly an administrative office connected to a nearby marketplace. It once contained six vaulted rooms. It was constructed in Classic Puuc style sometime between 800 and 1000 AD. The doorway on the right, partly screened by a small tree, provides the ruin with its name.

How the Hieroglyphic Door may have once appeared. Hieroglyphs extend across the top of the door and down to its base on both sides. It must have been quite impressive when the limestone was freshly carved and vividly painted.

The Hieroglyphic Door as it looks today.  Only the top .5 meter (18 in.) of the doorway is now above ground. The limestone has been stained black by water-borne minerals deposited over the centuries. The other doorway to the left has no hieroglyphs or other decorations. I would normally expect such writing to appear around the main entrance of a building, but perhaps the room into which this opens had some special purpose.

Detail of the hieroglyphs. Archaeologists have managed only a partial translation of the glyphs, due to the multiple meanings some of them can have. For example, a key glyph over the doorway can be translated as "sky," "captor," "four," or "snake". You can see the problem. In fairness, English words can also have multiple unrelated meanings. For example, the English word "see" can refer to vision or to a holy office in the Catholic Church.

Inside the room with the decorated doorway. Caretakers have propped up the crumbling corbel arch with a couple of poles. Even when not full of rubble, the doorway would have been relatively low, reflecting the short statue of the people who built the house. The ceilings would have been generous, however. Rooms like this, lacking windows, would have been dark. They may also have been smoky from fires, but perhaps that accounts for the high ceilings.

A small ruined temple with an altar lies adjacent to the house with the hieroglyphs. The hump of rocky soil in the background, now grown over with trees, is what remains of the old temple. Directly in front is a heap of stones that once formed an altar. Although now little more than piles of stones, they were part of a group of structures surrounding a marketplace. Scientists have tested the soil in the area and found high concentrations of phosphorous, indicating the decomposition of organic matter, probably foodstuffs displayed for sale. In addition, they found evidence of ceramic manufacturing.


The Phallic Stela

A large stela is protected by a tattered palapa shelter. This stela is part of the Phallic Cult prevalent in northern Yucatan during the Terminal Classic era (800-900 AD). We saw large stone phalli at Loltún Cave and Labná. The cult may have originated in the Gulf Coast area around present-day Vera Cruz and later spread to the Maya country. It became prominent during a time of great turmoil and change. The Classic-era Maya world was collapsing. Great cities in southern Yucatan and northern Guatemala were being abandoned, and populations were migrating into northern Yucatan. "Mexicanized Maya" from the Gulf area, who had adopted the military tactics and warrior cults of the Toltec, were beginning to invade Yucatan.

Relief sculpture on the Phallic Stela. This fellow is rather generously endowed, to say the least. Archaeologists who have studied the phallic cult believe that, as disorder and chaos threatened, "phallic imagery served to sanctify sacred ritual space, order the community, and legitimize the authority of the ruling elite." The phallic cult has also been linked to Itzamna, the most powerful of the Maya gods. He ruled over lesser gods much like Zeus in Greek mythology.


Residential ruins

An elite home. Notice the columnettes lining the upper part of the right side of the house. The pile of stone in the immediate foreground appears to have been part of this decoration at one time. In size, the home is not impressive. However, every one of the stones had to be individually cut and shaped by hand using stone tools. It is clear that only a person of wealth and authority could build such a house. Ordinary Maya lived in homes with thatched roofs and walls made of upright sticks plastered with mud. The foundations of more than 300 such ordinary homes have been excavated at Sayil. The perishable materials that originally sat on the foundations have long since disappeared, of course.

An echo of Labná. The use of side-by-side columnettes is common in the Puuc style. However, they are seldom used to form the corners of buildings. The three columnettes you see above are almost exactly like those we saw in the central part of the Great Palace at Labná (see Part ). This provided me with one more bit evidence that Labná was an administrative outpost for Sayil, from which it copied many architectural details. However, there is continuing debate among archaeologists about this connection.

Our guide hustled by the opening of this small cave, possibly fearing aluxob. As we walked along the deserted jungle paths, he told us about these mischievous little forest beings, in whom some Maya still believe. They are something like the leprechauns or trolls of European legends. An alux (pronounced "aloosh") will entice an unwary visitor deep into the forest and the person is never seen again. Our guide laughed as he told us this story, but I thought I noticed a certain nervousness in his tone. As the dusk began to gather, he hurried us along, and seemed to skirt this little cave with a wary eye for a lurking alux.

This completes Part 23 of my NW Yucatan series. Next week we will complete this series by taking a look at how ordinary Maya lived in ancient times, and many still do today. I hope you liked this posting. I always enjoy and encourage feedback. If you would like to leave a comment, please do so in the Comments section below, or email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

NW Yucatan Part 22: The Great Palace of Sayil

The Great Palace of Sayil, bathed in the golden winter sunlight of a late afternoon. Sayil was our last stop on the Puuc Route (see Parts 18-21). You may notice a curious absence of people in many of the following photos. As I have mentioned in previous postings, the Puuc Route is much less popular than sites like Chichen Itza, or Tulum, both of which offer easy access to floods of tourists from the nearby resort of Cancun. As a consequence, both of those sites--although still worth seeing--lose much of the mystery and serenity I value when visiting ancient ruins. When we finally reached Sayil on this late January afternoon, our small tour party was the only one within the whole site. The other couple in our party were tired and stayed near the entrance to the site, so Carole and I, accompanied by our guide, had the whole place to ourselves.


Approaching the Great Palace

The Puuc are unique in the Yucatan Peninsula. The Maya word Puuc means "hills." The rolling country seen above on the eastern horizon is part of a range of low hills that cut diagonally across the Peninsula from southwest to northeast. They form the only area of significant elevation gain in all of the otherwise dead-flat limestone shelf that makes up Yucatan. The forest that begins at the edge of the clearing above stretches virtually unbroken across much of the central and southern areas of the Peninsula. Sayil is set in a shallow valley surrounded by steep hills. It is one of a number of ancient cities in this area of Yucatan known for the distinctive Puuc style of architecture. Other sites include Uxmal, Labná, Kabah, and Xlapak. UNESCO designated Sayil, together with Uxmal, as a World Heritage Site in 1996.

Carole walks along an unpaved trail through the thick jungle that closely surrounds Sayil.  Yucatan's forests contain an extraordinary quantity of birds and other animals, including jaguars and poisonous snakes. The ancient Maya cleared much of the jungle around their cities for agriculture. This deforestation caused droughts and other environmental consequences that, along with incessant warfare, brought about the end of their Classic-era civilization. Over the centuries the forest returned, leaving once-proud cities lost in the green canopy that now covers much of the Yucatan. It is important, when visiting a site like this, to remain on the trails. After a few steps into the thick jungle, all sense of direction can easily be lost. As I walked along behind Carole, I recalled the visitor to Tikal who stepped into to similar jungle to take some photos. Nine days later he finally stumbled out. He was emaciated and dehydrated, but lucky to be alive.

Our guide points out an unrestored ruin along the trail. As at most ancient ruins, the vast majority of the original buildings still remain as simple mounds of stones. This was how explorers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood would have first seen the place they called Zayi when they explored it in 1841. Covered thickly by vegetation, the mounds could easily be mistaken for natural features. Fortunately, by the time Stephens and Catherwood found the ruins, they had learned to interpret the landscape of ancient sites. In the Maya language Sayil means "Place of the Leafcutter Insects".

A cut stone provides a vital clue. Nature rarely produces straight lines or corners. This rectangular limestone block was clearly produced by the hand of man, a tip-off that the rubble pile on which it rests was once the home of a noble or priest.

Site map of the Great Palace. This magnificent, three-story structure is 85 meters (279 ft.) long, and contains more than 90 bedrooms. The earliest occupation at Sayil was around 500 AD, but Puuc-style buildings didn't begin to appear until about 800 AD. The construction of the Great Palace occurred in several stages between 800 AD (late Classic) and 1000 AD (early Post-Classic). Sayil is spread over an area of 3.5 square kilometers (2.175 sq. mi.). In this posting, we will focus on the Great Palace, beginning with the West Wing. We'll then make our way up the grand staircase in the center and take a look at the somewhat less preserved East Wing. The site map above is courtesy of Wikipedia.


The West Wing of the Great Palace

Our first view of the Great Palace. As we emerged from the green, leafy tunnel that was our trail from the parking area, we came upon a large clearing in the forest dominated by the Palace. The effect, heightened by the golden afternoon light, was stunning. The view above is of the West Wing, the most intact part of the Palace. In the right center of the photo, you can see the main staircase. Monuments found at Sayil indicate that the city was ruled by a royal dynasty which, along with an elite of nobles and priests, based its power on the control of the best agricultural lands in the area. About 900 AD, the population peaked at 10,000 people in the city itself and another 5000-7000 in surrounding areas. By about 950 AD, the city began to decline and it was abandoned by 1000 AD. Such a rapid rise and decline was typical of Puuc area cities, which flourished just before the general collapse of Classic-era Maya civilization.

A closer view of the first and second stories of the West Wing. On the ground floor, the roof has collapsed into the center room. You can see half of the corbel arch that formed the ceiling of the room, as well as a doorway in the back of this room, leading into another shallow room. The rooms on either side have doorways bisected by single pillars that support the lintels. This area is the oldest part of the Great Palace. The first story opens out onto a large plaza to its south. Eight chultunes (underground cisterns) have been discovered immediately around the Great Palace. These provided the water supply for the large elite population living in the Palace. Above the ground floor is the much more highly decorated 2nd story, reached by the central staircase.

The West Wing's 2nd story, viewed from the central staircase. Several features shown here are similar to those at Labná, shown in Parts 19 and 20 of this series. The groups of segmented columns, separated by doorways, along with some of the decorations found above the doorways, are almost identical to those at Labná's Palace. Many archaeologists think that Labná was a political subsidiary to either Sayil or Uxmal, although this is not yet proven. I have visited all three sites, and it seems to me that the architectural features of Labná much more closely resemble Sayil than Uxmal.

Decorative designs above the 2nd story doors. The circular, cog-like object in the center is very similar to some I saw at Labná. In addition, the writhing, snake-like designs on either side of the cog resemble those at Labná. Unfortunately, much of the lower-left part of the design has fallen away. There are several small, circular humps in the design that resemble turtle shells with cross-hatched designs. Turtles were prevalent in the Maya's natural world and are associated in their mythology with the earth, as well as water and thunder. The thunder connection probably has something to do with the use of turtle shells as drums. The Maya god Pauahtun was believed to support the earth somewhat like Atlas. He is often shown wearing a turtle shell as a hat. Turtles were also related to Hu Nal Yeh, the god of maiz (corn), who is sometimes shown emerging from a turtle shell.

One of the 90 bedrooms of the Great Palace. Although the rooms are supported by massive walls, they are quite shallow. The Maya failure to achieve the "true" arch in their architecture restricted their ability to enclose large spaces. It is likely that the rooms were used for storage, shelter during the rainy season, or privacy. The climate of Yucatan would have allowed most activities to occur outdoors on one of the many terraces. Archaeologists estimate that as many as 350 people lived in the Great Palace. Most of its many rooms would have been family apartments, but it is also likely that some were used for administrative purposes.

A large Chaac mask adorns the center of the 2nd story. The protruding nose has lost its typical upward curl, but the rest of the mask appears intact. A set of 6 teeth curl downward from the mouth, while the eyes are represented by round stone balls set in sockets on either side of the nose. The Chaac appears to be wearing a decorative headband, as well as earrings. Although this Chaac possesses a rather ferocious appearance, as a god he is associated with life-giving water, important to all agricultural societies, and especially so in Yucatan where there are no above-ground rivers.

Another Chaac, on the corner of the West Wing. This one still has the curled nose found on most Chaacs throughout the Puuc area. The corner Chaac wears earrings similar to those on the center mask. Notice the large, curved earlobe to the right of the square earring. Similar earrings worn by the Maya elite were often made from carved jade. Ceramic, jade, and obsidian artifacts found at Sayil indicate trade connections with the Petén region of northern Guatemala, and even with areas as far away as Guatemala's Pacific Coast.

The West Wing's 3rd story is much plainer than the one below. This part of the West Wing is decorated much more simply than the 2nd story. The walls are of smooth limestone blocks. The area above the doorways is undecorated, although there may have once been carved stone decorations that have since fallen away. At the base of the wall are the only remaining decorative features, composed of a line of very short pillars that extends the length of the building.


The Grand Staircase and the East Wing

The Grand Staircase is one of the Great Palace's most prominent features. Extending out from the south side of the Palace into the plaza, it rises up to the 3rd story in two stages. The lower stage has been completely restored, while the upper stage is still in fairly rough shape. On the north (rear) side of the Palace is a smaller staircase that extends up to the 2nd story.

A faint echo of Teotihuacan? As I reached the landing between the first and second level staircases, I spotted the inclined slabs, called taludes, seen in the upper left quadrant of the photo. Such features were a signature architectural element of Teotihuacan the seat of the great empire located north of Mexico City. Architectural aspects of Teotihuacan were widely copied throughout in Mesoamerica. As the old saying goes "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Teotihuacan fell 200 years before Sayil's Great Palace was built, but the inclusion of taludes in the Grand Staircase could well have been a tip of the hat to a civilization which, by that time, had receded into the misty past and had achieved an almost mythical status.

The East Wing is less intact than its mate to the left of the staircase. This is probably closer to what Stephens and Catherwood saw on that day in 1841 when they emerged from the jungle to first view the Great Palace. However, the East Wing's first story is in much better shape than its counterpart on the West Wing.

A closeup look at the 2nd story of the East Wing. It appears that this wing copied the style of the same story of the West Wing, using rows of columns to decorate the area above the doorways. The door lintels are supported by double pillars, just like the other wing.

Across a narrow valley, a noble's house peeps through the foliage. When I reached the top of the Great Palace, I looked across the valley to the north and spotted a structure near the top of the steep ridge on the other side. Going for maximum telephoto zoom, I picked out this stone house with its double doors and rows of pillars decorating the space above. Apparently the Maya nobility appreciated a good view from the front of their homes as much as modern people do. Next week, we'll look at some temples with unusual features in the southern area of the Sayil site.

I hope you have enjoyed this posting. Sayil is a gorgeous site. I am not surprised it won its
World Heritage designation. I always appreciate comments and feedback. If you would like to leave a comment, please do so in the Comments section below, or email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim