During excavations in the palace of the Mayan city of Palenque, archaeologists discovered for the first time a sculpture of the Mayan corn god – one of the highest gods of this Central American civilization. The placement of the 1,300-year-old headbust amidst symbolic offerings in a tiled basin suggests the figure’s use in a ritual, the team reports.
For the Maya people, corn was an essential staple food. In this respect, it is hardly surprising that he also found his way into their world of belief: the corn god Hunaal-Yeh was considered one of the children of the divine creator couple and was one of the highest-ranking representatives of the Maya world of gods. The god, usually depicted as a youth with a corn-like headdress, embodied fertility, but also rebirth: like the corn kernel, the god symbolically died after sowing, descended into the underworld and then rose again as a corn plant.
Corn God Bust from the Palace Corridor
Although this Maya deity is described on stele inscriptions in Palenque, no sculptures or statues of this deity have been known from the Maya city. This has changed now. During excavations in Palenque Palace, archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have discovered a bust of the corn god for the first time. The team around Arnoldo González Cruz made the find when they removed the rubble from a corridor that connected palace buildings B and F in July 2021.
The sculpture was discovered removing a loose layer of earth that covered numerous artifacts in a rectangular basin. The head of the corn god, 45 meters long and 16 centimeters wide, came to light. “The sculpture, which must have been modeled around a limestone core, has clear facial features: the chin is defined and cleft, the lips are thin, arched and reveal the canine teeth,” Cruz and his colleagues describe the find. “The corn god’s cheekbones are rounded, his eyes long and narrow.” The god’s forehead is strikingly long and broad. According to the dates, the bust was made in the late classic period between 700 and 850.
ritual context
According to the research institute, this is the first find of a sculpture of this important Mayan deity in Palenque. However, the context in which the corn god was found is also significant. Because the head of the gods was part of an ensemble that indicates its use as part of a ritual. The head was oriented east-west towards the rising sun, indicating the symbolic rebirth of the corn plant, the archaeologists explain. Other artifacts were placed around the figure at the bottom of a rectangular brick basin.
“The discovery of these finds allows us to reconstruct how the Maya of Palenque reenacted the mythical passage of the corn god of birth, death and resurrection in ritual over and over again,” explains Cruz. According to this, the pond, which is one meter long and three meters wide, was initially used as a surface of water to reflect the night sky and as a symbol of the cosmos. Later, probably under the rule of the Mayan king Ahkal Mo’ Nahb’ III from 721, the basin was converted and used for the corn god ritual.
Surrounded by offerings and buried
For the corn god rituals, the Maya placed the corn god sculpture on a tripod and surrounded it with symbolic offerings in the form of plants, animal bones, seashells, pieces of pottery. In addition, the archaeologists found three fragments of miniature human figures, 120 pieces of obsidian blades, some green stone beads and seeds. “These objects weren’t layered, they were arranged concentrically, covering almost 75 percent of the space,” Cruz explains. “Some of the animal bones were cooked, others show bite marks and nicks. The flesh of these animals was therefore probably eaten as part of the ritual.”
On top of the offerings, the Maya placed a limestone slab with a small opening into which one of the legs of the tripod pedestal fit. On the slab lay a semi-circular bed of broken pottery and small stones on which the deity’s head rested. At the end of the ritual, the corn god and his gifts were covered with earth and walled in – as a symbol of his descent into the underworld. Thanks to this “packaging”, the head remained almost untouched for more than 1300 years.
Source: National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH)