The name Chichén Itzá can be divided
into three words. “Chi”, “Chén” and
“Itzá” which respectively mean: Mouth, Well and Itzá-people. Hence the mouth of the well of Itzá. The well
referred to is the famous sacred well or Cenote
sagrado.
See further on.
In Chichén Itzá 2 construction styles dominate. De Maya-Puuc-style (600-900
A.D.)
and the Toltec construction style (900-1200 A.D.). Famous buildings such
as El
Castillo, Temple of the Warriors, and the ball game square are typical
examples of Mexican influence. The result is therefore an unique fusion
of Maya and Toltec art, and everywhere in the city are images of both
Chac, the Maya rain god, and Quetzalcóatl, the feathered snake of the
central highland (in Maya-city the Kukulcán). Compared to the more
romantic complexes such as Palenque and Uxmal, Chichén itzá offers
almost a militaristic aspect. For a long time one thought that the Mayas
were a peaceful people, but the wall paintings and steles with images of
warriors, battlefields and human sacrifices give the lie to that
conception. On the flat terrain, with grass overgrown stands more than
30 reconstructed buildings but in the jungle lie still hundreds of
crumbled off buildings.
Templo de Kukulcán
The pyramid stands on an older temple and has been
built around 800 A.D. Its 24 meters high and has 9 platforms The pyramid has
4 staircases. Each staircase counts 91 steps. 4 x 91 = 364. Plus the temple
on the pyramid as a last step makes 365 steps, the days in 1 year.
Each side has 52 panels which present the cosmic cycle
of 52 years. That was the moment that the religious and the worldly calendar
coincided and, thus it was believed, on which the time finished started
again.
Left: Stele
Beneath: Souvenir bought on the market at Chichén
Itzá
Juego de pelota.
Or with other words, the ball game. It was played with a rubber ball between
3 and the 8 kilos. One has found also drawings that the ball was represented
as a skull, or a rabbit. The ball had to be played through a ring. They had
to
move the ball without using their hands or feet. They let the ball bounce,
and with shoulders and hips they had to try to get the ball through a ring
attached to the wall. The original ball game had a religious and political
meaning which is nowadays hardly known. It was a game between triumphing
rulers and his defeated enemy, whereupon the loser was sacrificed and was
rolled down, with tied up arms and legs, from the top of the pyramid to
smash to death on the ground.
But it was no real contest. The
triumphing ruler first starved his defeated enemy for a couple weeks and if
he was then still fit he broke him his arm or a leg just before the
game. This ritual game symbolized the victory of the light and life on evil
and darkness and depicted the Creation of the world. This Happening has been
described in hieroglyphs of the Mixtecs and in Maya-codics and also by
people who have contemplated the game in the years shortly after the Spanish
conquest.
Right: Ton applauds in its hands to let hear the echo between the
walls. It seems you hear the echo 7 times bounce before it becomes extinct.
Drawings which decorate the ball game field.
They frequently portray the game itself.
I am still not sure what THIS is.
Tzompantli.
(skull platform)
One thinks that this is a stone platform that
served as a pedestal for a rack on which the chopped heads of defeated
enemies or the sacrificed enemies were exhibit.
The northern area of the province Yucatán exists of a
plate of sediment lime. The problem of this is that the lime floor lets the
water through, with the result that the surface water disappears immediately
in the porous earth. But there where the lime plate has collapsed there are
accesses to the groundwater, called cenote. See the photograph. The walls
can be 10 up to 80 meters high. In principle they always contain water
because they are continuously supplied underground water flows.
At the beginning of the 20th century archaeologist have stored a
great part of the precious offerings, by diving on the bottom of this
cenote. The cenote in Chichén Itzá is called Cenote de los
Sacrificios. What one found were human skeletons, figurines of jade-stone
and gold; further proof that Mayas believed in human sacrifices.
Jacques Cousteau have dove here also....a Oui...
Templo de los Guerreros.
By to use of pillars, large airy halls could be built. The pillars exist
from piled up stone block-systems and the capitals have square plate. On top
of the photo you see sitting a Chak Mo'ol.
Tot nu toe
betreft het een viertal vakanties: Suriname,
Egypte, Peru, Bolivia en Mexico. Verder een kort
fotoverslag van de zonsverduistering in 1999 te
noord-frankrijk in de buurt van het plaatsje
Spincourt. Er is een mogelijkheid om mijn
gastenboek te tekenen. Deze homepage is
ontworpen door Sander van Kuppevelt (sandervk).
