First Day in Merida: Uxmal!!

So here I am being silly at Uxmal (which means "built three times"- but actually Uxmal may have been "built" more like 5 times). Uxmal (pronounced Oosh mahl) is the greatest of the "Puuc" sites. Puuc refers to the regional style of several different sites (more on those other sites later). Uxmal covered at least 4 square miles and given its size and complexity, it may have served as a regional center of sorts. But curiously, there is no epigraphic evidence to be found at Uxmal that boasts of conquering other sites or polities. While the inscriptions of this great Maya city are few, we do know about Lord Chac (not to be confused with the god Chac) who was Uxmal's greatest king. He ruled around 900CE and many of Uxmal's greatest monuments were built under his rulership. It is truly a breathtaking Maya site and I feel so blessed to have been able to be here, where many ancient Maya lived and worked. This was probably my favorite Puuc site that we were able to visit!!

The great Pyramid of the Magician is a fascinating structure! I was so excited to see this one! Running up both sides of the staircase (and no, you can't climb the pyramid) are what appear to be Chac masks (Chac was the Maya god of rain). You can barely see me in this first picture but I wanted to show just how big this pyramid is. When John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood came here in the mid nineteenth-century, the locals called this the Pyramid of the Dwarf after a legend that it was built in one night by a dwarf with supernatural powers who bested the ruler of Uxmal in a series of tests and then the dwarf assumed rulership of Uxmal. But the present structure actually had 5 different building stages and it displays the maturation of the Puuc style (even though this pyramid started with a Chenes-style- a style from the present state of Campeche to the south of Yucatan). Also, this pyramid is an elliptical building, not very common for the ancient Maya.

Here is the Nunnery Quadrangle found at Uxmal. It is a huge courtyard directly west of the Pyramid of the Magician. The buildings contain small rooms and to the first Spaniards, appeared to be just like the nunneries in Spain so they named it the Nunnery Quadrangle. The buildings were apparently built in one concentrated effort toward the end of the 9th century. Various studies have shown that the orientation of the buildings, the number of rooms, their levels, and ornamentation correspond to a Maya cosmogram (such as the 13 doorways that stand for the 13 levels of the heavens). There is quite a bit of feathered serpent ornamentation here and the serpent motifs recall the Maya (and greater Mesoamerican) association of serpents with the sky (which just fascinates me!!).

Here are some pictures from around the grounds of Uxmal. I included a picture of a ballcourt at Uxmal and the remnant of what was once an entire sculpted image of the feathered serpent (the feathered rattle differentiated Kukulkan from other serpents- he was known as Quetzalcoatl to the central Mexican cultures but both names signify "feathered serpent" in different languages). I'm also including a picture of the Great Pyramid of Uxmal which is a much more typical Maya pyramid than the Magician. This pyramid predates the Governor's Palace and you can still climb to the top of this pyramid. The exterior facade has several images of macaws and it's an interesting building.

And finally, here is the Governor's Palace at Uxmal. The Palace is 321.5 feet long and the upper frieze has lattice patterns, feathered serpents, and over 100 Chac masks. It's a very beautiful building here in Uxmal and one of the things that I really wanted to see! It could have possibly been an elite administrative building and residence. Over the center door was the face (now gone) of a god, some say of Chac, the Maya god of rain. This is truly a special building and obviously one of great importance. I like the view of the Pyramid of the Magician from the Governor's Palace. This was a great place to visit and I feel so lucky to have been able to come here!