Maya News Updates - Photo Special: Kabah

With the recent news that a new and fully funded archaeological project will start at the Yucatecan site of Kabah hereby I post some images that I took when I was in Kabah on September 24, 2005:

Kabah is a site of considerable size. As Henry Pollock notes in 1980: "Principal structures lie within an area approximately 1 km north-south by 1.2 km east-west. To the north, east, south, and west, small buildings and groups of buildings continue over the plain and low hills in seemingly endless array, and raise once again the question of where to draw the limits of a site. Kabah boasts more large structures, in the monumental sense, than any site we have previously described" (Pollock, H.E.D., 1980, The Puuc: An Architectural Survey of the Hill Country of Yucatan and Northern Campeche, Mexico, Cambridge, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, p. 140).

Image of the raised platform and the stairway that provides access to the platform that supports the well-known building named the Codz Pop.

The Codz Pop building is covered in a multitude of mosaic masks that depict the therianthropic manifestation of the living mountain or witz.

In front of the Codz Pop a small rectangular platform can be found, the sides of which are covered in a long hieroglyphic insciption, of which only small portions have survived in a sufficiently well condition to still be properly analyzed by epigraphers. Among those still recognizable rank collocations that spell the title or god-name k'awil and the paramount title ajaw "king."

Access to one of the rooms within the Codz Pop is provided by a single step in the shape of mountain or witz mosaic mask.

View of the upper facade of the back of the Codz Pop building. This upper facade once contained a line of life size warriors, their hands still open and which once contained their weapons of choice (probably spears and shields, made of perishable materials).

View of the upper section of the left jamb of the doorway that provides acces to the inner court at the Codz Pop building (unfortunately access is denied by that famous little sign "no hay paso" ...). This section depicts two warriors in combat, each warrior elaborately dressed and carrying weapons of choice for the occasion (throwing darts and atlatl). Note the possible full upperbody armor on the right hand warrior.

View over the large plaza in front of the west side of Structure 2C2. A stairway gives access to the second level of this two storey building. Two of the doorways of the second level building have a column in the center. A huge crest once mounted this upper storey building, only a part of which has survived.

One of the hieroglyphic collocations from the Hieroglyphic Platform, this one spells k'awil through the sequence K'AWIL-wi-la.