Seibal

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Steles 10 and 11 and temple pyramid A-3

Seibal or Ceibal is a Mayan ruined city in the Guatemalan lowlands ( Petén ).

location

The archeological site of Seibal is located about 16 km east of Sayaxché at an altitude of about 220 m above sea level. d. M. From Flores / Santa Elena we recommend a one-hour bus ride to Sayaxché and from there a further half-hour boat ride over the Río La Pasión . Depending on the weather, the approx. 100 m high and approx. 350 m long ascent from the landing stage to the ruins is muddy and arduous.

history

The first traces of Seibal's settlement possibly go back to the 9th century BC. BC back; Early ceramic finds and a jade ax were discovered from this period , which point to mercantile and cultural influences on the Mexican Gulf Coast ( La Venta ). In the late early Classical Mayan culture (approx. 400 BC to 200 AD) the place experienced its first heyday. There are no archaeologically usable traces from the period between 200 and 650, even if the place was still sparsely populated. The new settlement gradually emerged from around 650 AD, but it was conquered by Dos Pilas in 735 . The stelae and temple pyramids visible today all come from the later Mayan city, which reached its heyday between 830 and 930; For this period the population of Seibal is estimated to be around 8,000 to 10,000. After that, Seibal - like all other cities of the Maya lowlands - was abandoned.

At the end of the 19th century the ruins were rediscovered by loggers. In 1892, Frederico Antes wrote a report, following which the Guatemalan government commissioned the production of plaster casts of some of the steles that were shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). Two years later, Teobert Maler was commissioned by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University to explore the site, and in 1914 Sylvanus Griswold Morley continued his work without discovering anything new. Another excavation campaign for the Peabody Museum between 1964 and 1968 brought the facility to its present-day state.

Using the lidar method, Takeshi Inomata found artificial older rectangular plateau structures from around 950 BC. They are among the oldest Mayan monumental buildings, only the similar structures in Aguada Fénix, which were also discovered in 2017 using the lidar method, are older .

Attractions

The center of the archaeological site with complexes A, C and D takes up an area of ​​about one square kilometer; the early discovered complex B is about 3 km from the center. Most of the steles and the most interesting buildings are located in complex A.

Stele 11
Structure A-3
The structure A-3 is a 3-tier pyramid - framed on all four sides by stairs with steles presented - with a large standing building, in the center of which there is no sacrificial altar, but another stele. Below this stele, three larger unprocessed jade stones were discovered during the excavation work of the Peabody Museum. The entire complex of steles and temple pyramids is dated to the year 849 - that is, in the late heyday of Seibal - and symbolizes with the five number of steles (4 cardinal points + world axis ) possibly the newly won power of the ruler Wat'ul Chatel . At the eaves of the temple there is a protruding cornice made of larger stone slabs - a very unusual construction in the Maya area.
Steles 8–12
All five steles show rulers with different insignia of their power, among which a lavish head, neck and chest ornament should be emphasized. Stele 8 shows a prince with jaguar paws and a girdle with a head trophy; the inscription reads: "The Katun end 849 was the end of time of the whale Yik'al Kilek 'Ak', the 20th descendant of Seibal, and Hacawitz of Tollan ( Tula ?) was present at the ceremony in the house on the square". An inscription on stele 9 reads roughly: “At the date 849 the Kan Ah ('proud lord') saw the beginning of his bundle and the appearance of his ancestors in the mouth of a vision snake. This happened after the accession of Hu K'inil Ts'ibak, the 21st descendant of Seibal, who also bore the title 6-Tun-Tah. ”On stele 11, a Mayan prince holds a ruler's staff in his left hand; the right one seems to be scattering offerings. On either side of his legs there are barely recognizable smaller figures; he stands on a subjugated prisoner. The stele 12 inside the building also shows a ruler with a scepter staff; the stele text is illegible. The different design of the figures and the inscriptions seem to indicate that the figures on the stelae are a kind of ancestral gallery of the ruler Wat'ul Chatel (or Aj B'olon Haab'tal ).
Stele 2
Stele 19
The stele 19 framed by a stone frame shows a figure with a 'duck bill' face. The non-human face, a missing scepter staff in his hands and the fact that his feet are on glyphs usually indicate a god - this may be Q'uq'umatz in his form as the wind god Ehecatl . With his right hand, however, he scatters corn kernels , which would be unusual for the wind god - perhaps the figure is a priest king with a 'duckbill' mask performing a sacrifice or a sowing ritual.
Stele 2
The slender 3.17 m high and unusually 'primitive' looking stele 2 broke into six pieces during an attempt at transport, which were patched together again in a makeshift manner. The stele does not contain any glyphs and shows - unusually - a figure with close-fitting arms in a frontal view: a pointed tongue seems to protrude slightly from the open mouth; the eyes are almost button-like and the ears are more square than realistic. Overall, the stele seems to belong to a completely different culture ( Toltec ?); it is also dated to the late 9th century.
Round pyramid C-79
Round pyramid C-79
The most interesting building in the somewhat isolated Complex C is a three-tier flat circular pyramid that was erected over an older structure. Two flights of stairs (a short one on the east side, a longer one in the west) lead up to the platform on which a rectangular temple once rose. Immediately next to the pyramid is a zoomorphic altar with a jaguar head - the temple pyramid and altar are dated around the year 870.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Gockel : Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. Mayan cities and colonial architecture in Central America. DuMont, Cologne 1999, p. 237ff, ISBN 3-7701-4732-4

Web links

Commons : Seibal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inomata and a., Artificial plateau construction during the Preclassic period at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, PLoS ONE, Volume 14, Issue 8, 2019, e0221943

Coordinates: 16 ° 30 ′ 42 "  N , 90 ° 3 ′ 40"  W.