Sayil
Sayil is a Mayan ruin site in Mexico near the Mayan ruins of Labná and Uxmal on federal highway 261. There you will find a palace, several temples and steles as well as a ball playground . Sayil is very spacious and you can spend the whole day walking miles and miles and discovering the ruined city. At its heyday, around 800 AD, this city had around 7,000 to 9,000 inhabitants. The name "Sayil" is probably old, as it is mentioned in the Chilam Balam book by Chumayel. It is supposed to mean "place of the ants" or "anthill".
Research history
Sayil was rediscovered by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood in 1842. A later visitor in 1886 was Teobert painter . An in-depth study of the buildings was done by Harry ED Pollock . A modern settlement survey with extensive mapping carried out a large project under Jeremy Sabloff . Compared to other large Mayan cities , little restoration work has been done in Sayil, which is limited to the great palace.
The great palace (El Palacio)
The Grand Palace is believed to be the largest compact Mayan building in the northern Yucatán . It comprises 94 rooms on three floors. The palace was evidently built in a largely symmetrical shape according to a plan that was adhered to throughout. It has only been examined and consolidated in parts of its southern aspect by excavations.
The palace was built with the inclusion of at least one smaller previous building. This is a three-room building with a central entrance supported by two columns. A wing with four rooms was added to this in the west, starting with an entrance with a central column. To maintain symmetry, the third room also has an entrance with two columns. Behind the first two rooms there are two smaller rooms in a second row, one of which leads to a third. Behind the rooms is a narrow corridor that was later closed, the function of which is unclear. Half a vault can be seen behind the rooms, which must have belonged to an early building that was later dismantled. The facade is only preserved in small parts, the wall stones are large and irregularly set. The door beams are made of stone and, if there are columns, rest on capitals. The middle cornice consists of a wide, smooth band that must have jumped up above the entrances with columns for technical reasons (even if these parts have not been preserved). The upper wall surface appears to have carried large stone mosaic, the upper cornice, which can be recognized by the staircase that partially covers the facade, was tripartite. This first part of the palace can therefore be assigned to the early Puuc style. The remaining parts of the ground floor were probably built in one construction phase. In the west it consists of a transverse wing with six rooms, a north wing with four and six rooms that are separated by a staircase, and an east wing with five entrances that are not evenly distributed, which lead into a complex series of eight rooms to lead. The south-east wing is kept simple with five rooms. The uniformity of this construction phase can be deduced from the facade design and the masonry. The base has only one smooth element, the lower wall surface has large and mostly well-cut stones in not always regular rows. The middle cornice consists of three bands: the usual outwardly protruding bath, a somewhat sunken with a continuous row of low columns and above it an even lower, smooth band. The upper wall surface shows the maximum decor of the pillar style: an uninterrupted sequence of pillars with a connecting element in the middle. the upper cornice is the same as the middle one, except that the top and front protruding end is made of large stones.
On the south side, the first floor is symmetrical on both sides of the stairs. There are four entrances each with two columns that carry capitals. The eastern part has largely collapsed, the western part is in excellent condition, the eastern part was probably designed in the same way. There is another room behind each room. A peculiar structural element are two narrow doors on each of the two sides, which lead into long corridors, some of which are filled with rubble, which lead towards the inside of the building. Their further course and their function have not yet been investigated. The facade is fully decorated: above a three-section base with a middle column band follows the middle wall surface, which is fully covered with columns on the south-western section of the facade, which show the binding motif above, in the middle and below. The middle cornice is four-part: above the protruding lower band a continuous column band, then another smooth band and above it in the opposite direction projecting band. The upper wall surface is decorated with columns throughout. A large mask of the god Chac is located between the middle wall . It is no longer possible to determine whether it was not a cascade of two masks. To the side of it, the motif of the falling creature is repeated twice, framed by two dragon-like creatures with wide open mouths. The west facade was designed similarly, only that the lower wall surface is mostly smooth, interrupted by groups of three pillars identical to the pillars on the south facade. A large Chac mask over the central entrance. The division of space on this side is remarkable in that a longitudinal room to the north of the central room, which was originally to be entered from the room behind the entrance room, was given a new entrance, which was roughly broken into the facade while the original entrance was closed . The north side had five simple entrances on either side of an entrance divided by two columns in the middle. Except for the corner rooms, these rooms were probably filled with rubble and bricked up in preparation for the second floor. The construction of a staircase to the roof level has started but has not been completed. The east side is badly preserved. The facade design corresponded to the west side.
The second floor consists of just a single row of seven rooms, with another in front of the middle room. It is noticeable that the two corner rooms also have another entrance on the narrow side. The facade of this floor is kept simple. Plinth with three elements, smooth wall surface, three-part central cornice, upper wall surface smooth with decoration above the entrances, above a three-part cornice. The entrances had wooden door beams. Since the wall surfaces above the entrances were not preserved, the reconstruction at this point is hypothetically derived from a few remains above the third entrance from the west: stone pegs, which presumably carried stone sculptures, protruded from smooth wall surfaces that continued above the roof level and stopped.
The extension in the southwest on the ground level was added later. Its facade design, which has only been preserved in the inner corner, and which corresponds to the rear of the palace, assigns it to the pillar style.
El Mirador
The El Mirador is located about 300 m south of the palace. It is actually not a temple like that of Labná , but a small building on a low substructure, half of which has collapsed.
South Palace (Palacio del Sur)
The south palace is around 800 m south of the great palace. It is a large building in the pillar style of the Puuc architecture with four sides arranged around a massive core of stone and rubble on which a second floor was or was to be built later. This part has almost completely disintegrated today, so it cannot be decided whether it was even completed. Against this is the fact that there are no stairs to the second floor. There is a large ball playground and the stele platform nearby.
Ball court (Juego de Pelota)
The large ball court is located near the northeast corner of the South Palace. The famous Mesoamerican ball game took place on it. The ball playground is not exposed and not officially accessible.
Stelae platform (Grupo de Estelas)
In Sayil, as in other places in the Puuc area, steles were usually not placed in front of (the stairs to) important buildings, but were assembled on a separate platform. This platform is located in Sayil near the ball court. The Sayil steles are unfortunately not in good condition today, they were re-erected near the entrance. Hieroglyphics on one of the steles indicate the year 810 AD.
Mountain group
Opposite the entrance on the other side of the street, a narrow and very steep path leads to a group of buildings that belong to an early form of the pillar style. Only one of the parts of the building that leans against the top of the hill is still well preserved. Characteristic is the inwardly inclined upper part of the outer wall, which emerges from the central cornice. The base has only a simple band; the upper cornice was probably designed in the same way. The lower and the upper wall surface have smooth parts, which are provided by groups of three columns with several, differently designed cranks. A human head protrudes from the middle group of pillars on the upper wall. To the right of the preserved staircase, now completely destroyed, led to the platform above the building; further to the right were other rooms that have also not been preserved.
More buildings
In Sayil there are relatively many buildings in the early phases of the Puuc style. Like most other buildings, they do not have a name, but a number code that relates to the quadrants of the overall plan drawn up by E. Shook in 1940. South-east of the Grand Palace is the Proto-Puuc building 2C4 with multiple entrances to one room and the upper half of the facade, which was left raw, and once certainly covered with stucco ornaments. A typical early Puuc style building is 1B2, southeast of the Mirador. There is no proper middle cornice, the upper cornice is roughly made from large wall stones. Only one room has been preserved and the building is not officially accessible.
Individual evidence
- ↑ John L. Stephens : In the Mayan Cities. Travels and discoveries in Central America and Mexico 1839-1842 . Du Mont, Cologne 1980. ISBN 3-7701-1215-6 .
- ^ Teobert painter : Península Yucatán (ed. By Hanns J. Prem ). Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-7861-1755-1 .
- ↑ Harry ED Pollock : The Puuc. An architectural survey of the hill country of Yucatan and northern Campeche, Mexico . Peabody Museums of Archeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, Mass. 1980, ISBN 0-87365-693-8 .
- ^ Jeremy A. Sabloff : The ancient Maya city of Sayil: the mapping of a Puuc Region center . Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans 1991. ISBN 0-939238-88-8 . (consists mainly of cards)
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 20 ° 10 ′ 39.9 ″ N , 89 ° 39 ′ 7.8 ″ W.