Mayan Hearth-Stones
"jehlaj k’oj baah,
the face-image changed
Rather enigmatic, to be sure, and we’ll come back to it. Next comes a glyph with the number three, but it’s not a date. It’s another sentence that reads:
ux k’ahlaj tuun
thrice are bound(?) the stones
This refers to an important ceremony of stone dedication, common in history during a period ending, when the twenty stones (tuuns) of a K’atun or its subdivision were gathered and bound together as a mark of its completion. Here, three stones were similarly set together in primordial time. According to the glyphs that follow, these three stones were thought of as three different monuments, probably upright stelae, dedicated by a pair of rather enigmatic deities we know of as “the paddlers.” (In one of their few portraits, they are shown rowing a canoe bearing the maize god and several animals, clearly a scene from a myth now lost to us.) In numerous other ritual texts the same paddler gods are said to watch over the calendar ceremonies of the kings, sanctifying the ritual through a metaphorical “bathing” of time and its celebration. Stela C shows that their important roles as godly patrons of period endings in historical time was a continuation of their much older mythological tasks as participants of Creation. The three monumental stones carry names that still elude decipherment, but each appears to be classified in a different way: One is a “jaguar stone,” planted into the ground by the paddler gods in a place known perhaps as the “Five Sky House” or “Five Sky Houses.” The second is a “snake stone,” planted by a god whose name, frustratingly, appears nowhere else in Maya mythology, The third stone is called a “water stone,” and this was “bound” with the others, perhaps, by the great celestial god we call Itzámnaah, who ruled the heavens from a cosmic throne in the sky. The idea of binding means that this was the completion of the set, in some sense the fastening together or gathering of the individual stones. The text concludes by telling us that the overall occasion of Creation and the setting of the three stones were overseen by the “Six Sky Lords.” We do not know who these deities were, but the number six suggests a solar arrangement of some sort, perhaps referring to the four solstice points along with zenith and nadir. Alternatively, it might relate to the fact that the dedication date of Stela C fell on the day 6 Ahaw (9.17.5.0.0 6 Ahaw 13 K’ayab). Two glyphs provide important information about where this “image change” happened:
ti’ chan, Yax Yoket Nal(?)
(at) the edge of the sky, (at the) New Hearth Place(?).
This final place name has received a good deal of attention from Mayanists in recent years. As Linda Schele points out, the main component of its glyph represents three stones arranged in triangular fashion, surely a visual cue to the three rocks that make up a hearth in any traditional Mesoamerican house (what is sometimes called a tenamaste). In modern Mayan languages close to what we know was spoken by ancient scribes, the word for the three hearthstones is yoket, which can be a very provisional reading in this setting. Stela C is not the only text to refer to these ideas of “image change” and hearths. In fact, the notion is found throughout the Maya region at many different sites of the Classic period, usually distilled to its essentials, as in this phrase from a text at Palenque:
jelaj k’ojbah ti’ chan Yax Yoket Nal(?)
The face/image changed at the sky’s edge, at the First Hearth Place.
I think that we’ll be debating the precise meaning of this opaque phrase for a long time. At the very least it refers to some type of replacement or switch from a previous state (jel) involving “images” or “masks,” at or near the “First Hearth.”
In their influential book Maya Cosmos—the first work to offer a coherent interpretation of this Creation event—Linda Schele and her colleagues advocate for an astronomical interpretation of the phrase, which she translates a bit differently than I have here.d Schele links the “First Hearth” reference to the modern K’iché’ Maya belief that a triangular arrangement of three stars in the constellation Orion (Rigel, Alnitak, and Saiph) represents a hearth, its “smoke” being the Orion Nebula, visible in the center of the triangle. In making this association, she proposes that the date of Creation was the centering of the cosmos by the gods who dedicated the three stellar hearthstones in Orion on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u. Schele and her colleagues go much further, making a number of related astronomical readings of mythical events cited in the art and inscriptions at Palenque and other sites. I remain somewhat skeptical of many of their astronomical interpretations, to be honest (I explore these ideas further in chapter 10). The reading of the three stars of Orion as a hearth arrangement seems reasonable, perhaps, but it simply grafts modern K’iché’ ideas onto the mythology of the Classic Maya. Significantly, other Maya of today do not see a hearth in that location, which raises a number of questions and doubts in my mind. We’ll need far more than a simple one-to-one parallel to make a firm interpretation of the still obscure contents of classic Maya Creation mythology. Another possibility worth considering is that the three stones of the Stela C text refer to the establishment of a geometric ideal that’s reflected in several different kinds of triadic arrangements and dimensions in Maya cosmology. As we’ve seen, three-part divisions of space are common in the Mesoamerican worldview, most obviously in the fundamental division of the world into sky, earth, and Underworld. I’m reminded also of the basic three-part movement perceived in the coursing of celestial bodies across the sky, emerging from the east, running above the earth at noon, and setting in the west, what K’iché’ Maya of today call “the three sides, the three corners.”8 In other words, we need not link the hearth of Maya Creation mythology to a specific constellation of stars. To me, the sense is more general and overarching, clarifying that on the day of Creation, the gods established a three-part dimension to the universe, complementing the other sacred numbers, such as four, five, thirteen, and twenty, reflected in the structures of the cosmos. Returning to the textual description of the episode, just what is meant by the “changing of the image” or “changing of the mask”? This is difficult to know. Perhaps the word k’oj refers to masks, images, or faces that should be equated in some manner with the three sacred stones dedicated on that day by the gods. I suggest this as a possibility because we’ve long known that three stone heads or masks along a celestial band comprise an important cosmological symbol for the Classic Maya, most often manifested as small portrait heads attached to “sky-belts” worn by Maya kings as part of the ceremonial costume for period-ending rituals. The “change of masks” might, then, refer to the idea of the cosmos getting a new identity of some type—a makeover of sorts—which in turn became symbolically reflected in the ritual dress of Maya kings, and especially in their cosmic belts. The nature of these seminal events related to the Creation base date of 3114 BC—the stones, the “images,” the hearth, and so on—will be studied over and over for the foreseeable future. Mythology is one of the more exciting aspects of ongoing work in Maya decipherment and art history, where confident pronouncements of a final answer or a complete understanding are always going to be met with some skepticism and doubt."
I think that I may be able to propose a solution to all these problems that might satisfy Mayanists. But to do so, I first have to engage in a rather detailed description of what was going on in the heavens on Creation Day.
To begin, it will be observed that the sun is at zenith on this day (at 12:02 p.m). This is extremely significant, given that the sun is flanked by Mercury and Venus in conjunction to the west and by Saturn to the east. All four of these planets are situated in the constellation of Virgo.
rise transit set
Mercury 5:03 a.m. 11:29 a.m. 5:54 p.m.
Venus 5:05 a.m. 11:29 a.m. 5:53 p.m.
Sun 5:42 a.m. 12:02 p.m. 6:22 p.m.
Saturn 6:06 a.m. 12:25 p.m. 6:44 p.m.
Here, the Paddlers are definitely designated by Venus and Mercury (not, as tradition would have it, by the Sun and Moon). This notion is confirmed by the statement from the Tila panel (see “Understanding Maya Inscriptions”) to the effect that the Jaguar Paddler and Stingray Paddler “were companioned” on the day of Creation. The phrase "were companioned" I take to mean they were in conjunction. The Sun and Moon are NOT in conjunction on Creation Day.
The clue to solving the mystery, I believe, is the Jaguar Stone name. One of the Paddler Twins is distinguished by patches of jaguar skin, and for this reason the conjoined Paddler Twins were envisioned as binding themselves to the ecliptic. The reference to image or face changing at the edge of the sky is a way of describing one planet being replaced by another planet on the horizon as one rises after the other.
The Sun or Kinich Ahau was associated with Itzamnaah, and for this reason must be the Water Stone.
The unknown Black House God would be Saturn. According to Susan Milbrath in her Stars Gods of the Maya, Saturn was a double of K'awil's Jupiter and the retrograde periods of these two planets had something to do with determining the length of the katun. Saturn is the Snake Stone.
Virgo is, doubtless, Five Sky House.
We would have in this scenario the presence of the Palenque Triad in the Creation story (see https://firstjaguaronelord.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-gods-of-palenque.html), binding themselves as the hearth stones to the ecliptic. I will show in a future article why I believe Mercury should be identified with Venus in the Palenque birth story of GI, GIII and GII.
For now, I would (admittedly, somewhat fancifully) arrange the stones and gods of the Quiriguan stela like this:
Paddlers/Mercury-Venus: Jaguar Stone/Moon
Itzamnaah-Sun: Water Stone/Mars
Black House God/K'awil-Saturn: Snake Stone/Jupiter
I understand and appreciate that all of the above is highly theoretical and may be objected to in any number of ways. But there may be something to it, as otherwise I can see absolutely nothing else happening in the heavens on Creation Day. And, indeed, that has been the problem for all investigators. Most have simply not been able to see anything at all on this day in the Mayan calendar, and so they have had to resort to assuming the date did not, in fact, relate to what was happening in the heavens at all! Instead, it has been proposed, quite reasonably, that an incredibly complex calendrical numerology was being employed. This idea has gained currency for an obvious reason: no one really believes the Mayans could possibly have known what what the sky looked like on 8 September 3114 B.C.
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