From Merida we decide to go to Campeche and stop
in one of the many Maya cities along the 261 road. Uxmal
was one of the biggest Maya city in the Yucatan region
with some 25 000 inhabitants. The Puuc route connect
us to other city like Kabah, Labna and Sayil, but we
will only visited two of this sites. I mean we could
do all but we didn t want to get bored with seeing all
the stones monuments. So we concentrated us on two of
these.
Uxmal
After one long hour from Merida we rich Uxmal
. The temperature here is very high and I easely imagine
the difficulty to leave here in the past. On this part
of the peninsula of Yucatan the water is rare and the
people here developped once an ingenious technic to
collect water for the 25 000 habitant that leave here.
They construct a kind of big cone but very flat called
Chultune, when it was raining
the water flow in the center of this plate and go into
a citern under it. Water how we will see was very important
in all Yucatan. Sacrifice where done to the God Chak
(god of the rain) and Cenote (natural limestone sinkholes
) had a big importance for the spiritual ceremonies.
 The
first Temple we see is called the "Temple
of the Dwarf" (900-1000 A.D.), a
strange construction if you consider the rounded structure
of the pyramide. That s not very common for a maya Temple.
I mean all the other temple are with corner, but this
one seems more femine look. The ovaloid base is covered
by stairs that rich the top 45 m later. This temple
is constructed over other temple (Uxmal = Ox
means "3" + mal means "times"
= 3 times reconstructed) like it is common in the Maya
culture. Sometime they built up to 3-5 times over a
temple, mostly in cyclus of 52 years. You will ask me
why 52 years cyclus, well if you want to know that,
I have to write about the complicated calendar system
of the maya I???#@!... So please don t ask me.
We continue the visit and walk behind the temple of
the Dwarf to the Nunnary a monument built and dedicated
by King Chan-Chak-K'ak nal-Ahaw (also known
as Lord Chak) who is credited with shaping most of the
city of Uxmal that we see today. You get his name ?
Good so....
The court is surrounded by 4 building who stay at different
levels. Each of the building has totaly different design
and shape and decored with lot of little details. If
you ever like to play LEGO you will need to see this
construction. A crossword how this people could made
all this decoration hold together.
Okay here you can see the view of the Nunnary
Quadrangle with the North
building on the left, place was a meet point for festivals,
dancing but also for discussing about the different
affairs of the community. On the north building the
molding shows small flower designs at regular intervals
that are called Itz (means make magic), and refers to
any number of sacred fluids like nectar, tree sap, candle
wax or morning dew . The West building
(here in the midle) was restaured completly by the archeologist
in the 19 th as it was discovered broken appart. Though
the knowledge of other sites and the small surviving
section they put the stone back together as they were
100 years agos. Hoppefully some of the falling part
still remained intact on the ground and helped to restaure
the ruin into a majestic piece of work as we can see
it today. Here we found again the Itz flower
patchwork and beetwen the last two door a figur of a
man naked with short sticks penetrating their thights
and penis. This symbolise the most sacred Mayan sacrifice
to the gods, a painfull ceremonie where the prisoners
get pierced in the genitals to offer the blood. :-(
The southern building is covered with a theme of reburn
symbolized by the maize dough. You have to know that
in the maya myth of creation the gods formed the human
out of maize dough. I m actualy reading a big book about
the maya that explain everything. I ll make a resume
for you in one of the section. There I will speak about
the coutume, language and origine of the mayan.
The overview of all the site can be made by going up
to the Grand Pyramid. The steps leads you to a magnific
panorama, but take care its not undangerous. Falling
from here could be an retrospective to the sacrifice
done a long time ago, where the victime where decapited
and the body fall all the steps down.
Finaly we passed the Governor s Palace made with all
kind of freeze like 230 Chaak masks (Chaak - rain god),
Itz representation and so more than 10 000 stone to
decorate the 100 meter long palast. All this frieze
done in a perfect size so that they could match one
against the other to form a harmonic repetition. An
error in each of the piece of work could totaly defigurate
the monument in the 100 m distance. That in a time were
people hadn t any metal tools and special measuring
devices.
Kabah.
As we arrived in Kabah, everything changed. The site
seems to be undiscovered, it has a big part of it still
remaining under the vegetation and an other part restaured.
And you know what s best: we are the only visitor now.
All arround us the birds were singing, birds of all
colors, orange, blue, red, yellow. This site is the
most magic of all. The best part of it is a wall. Yes
try to imagine this huge wall covered by 260 Chaaks
stone mask (number of all days in the spiritual calender).
All these looking at you with their big eyes and they
lond nose. This caricatural faces seems to be living.
On the little garden in front of the wall hundret of
statues are waiting to be put together. Alys and me
were seduce by the place. I can t tell you how we felt
to be here. This sight realy inspired me a lot for later
illustration, because everything is so strong, the funniest
maya caricatural design and in the same moment an historical
heritage of spiritual sculture.
What a great city this culture let us behind. I can
t imagine that the people in tousend of years could
say the same about our architecture. There is no doubt
that our civilization construct fantastic monument,
but cities bring not the deep signification of this
old culture. What we will let behind is pollution and
47% race of animals less. The fact that this people
could create cities without destructing and polluting
the environment is for me very seducting. And this constructions
stay for a long time, until we arrived and explore the
places with dynamite, searching for a tresor of gold,
but the tresor was there and it was of stone. Of course
the main problem was the slavery at this time. But let
imagine we bring our technical knowledge with they natural
way of thinking together and build a city where everything
will have a deep respectfull signification (maybie I
get a vision...ehehehe) and of course an ecologic oriented
construction. May we combine modern and knowledge together
what will happen? How deep can a city influence people
? Or how deep influence the people the city ? That s
a big big thing to think about. OH that strange I get
serious...
Sorry that you could be there with us. I try to get
some photos but when I was there I was to facinated
to catch something strong. My eyes just turn all the
time all arround the buildings, trying to fix some of
the details in my mind, what realy was impossible due
to the richness of that sites. Maybie I get ensorceled
by Chaak.
The night fall and we took Frida, my beetle to go to
Palenque, the road discribe in the lonely planet as
a dangerous one and not recommanded to be drive at night.
We don t feel realy good after reading that, because
the night was falling and we had no real ID how dangerous
it could be. Should we had left before? Should we realy
go to Palenque? The psychose was beginning...What will
happend tonight? |
