The subject matter of Panel 2, another panel on Structure O-13, also pertained to past relations between Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. In contrast to Panel 3’s convivial scene, Panel 2’s image had a military theme. Panel 2, dated 9.11.15.0.0 (25 July 667 ce), was reset on the last building phase of Structure O-13, during K’inich Yat Ahk II’s reign (fig. 4.4). At the time of its making in the seventh century, the panel created discourse with its past through pictorial and textual narration. The eighth-century resetting of Panel 2 on Structure O-13 constituted a new phase in the object’s life history in which this discourse was expanded.
Figure 4.4. Piedras Negras Panel 2 (Lintel 2), limestone, 667 CE. a. Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #00-36-20/C2740. Digital File #96350006. b. Drawing by David Stuart. Courtesy of David Stuart.
Panel 2 is a sculpture of Itzam K’an Ahk I and bears an image of the standing king wearing an elaborate costume and a prominent feathered headdress. A smaller figure stands behind him (at the right of the panel). Named in a caption as Joy Chi-tam Ahk, with the title chok yokib ajaw, the smaller figure likely is the heir to the throne. Both ruler and heir have rectangular shields and costume elements reminiscent of Teotihuacan. Six armed warriors dressed in similar Teotihuacan-influenced costumes kneel in front, and captions identify them as having come from other sites in the region: Yaxchilan, Bonampak, and Lacanha (Martin and Grube 2008:143-44; Schele and Miller 1986:136-37, 148-50). This scene shows the deference of these warriors to the Piedras Negras ruler, but the warriors are armed—this is an image of regional alliance.
The timing of the depicted event is ambiguous, for Panel 2’s text narrates two events from different moments in time and presents them as parallel. The text begins in 658 (9.11.6.2.1 3 Imix 19 Keh, or 21 October 658 ce), when Itzam K’an Ahk I participated in a ceremony of the taking of the ko’haw, the Teotihuacan-style plated war helmet, on the one-k’atun anniversary of the death of his father, Yo’nal Ahk I. He undertakes this event in the company of deities (Fitzsimmons 1998:272; Martin and Grube 2008:141-44). The text then jumps to the past, over 150 years back, to the early sixth century, on 9.3.16.0.5 (11 November 510 ce), when Yat Ahk I participated in the same ko’haw helmet ceremony (Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008; Martin and Grube 2008:141-44; Schele and Miller 1986:149). The text specifies that he performed this ceremony in the company of a person named Tajoom Uk’ab Tuun, who bears the title och k’in kaloomte’, an eminent title associated with Teotihuacan. This phrase implies a hierarchical relationship, with Tajoom Uk’ab Tuun, who oversees the ceremony, superior to Yat Ahk I. The naming of Tajoom Uk’ab Tuun also makes reference to an early sixth-century Teotihuacan affiliation or presence at Piedras Negras (Martin and Grube 2008:17, 141, 143-44). A distance number returns the narrative to the year 658 with a re-expression of Itzam K’an Ahk I’s participation in the ko’haw helmet ceremony; this restatement emphasizes the link between the two events.4 The rest of the text concerns Itzam K’an Ahk I; stated events include his accession and commemoration of the 9.11.15.0.0 (25 July 667 ce) period ending, the panel’s dedication date.
The presentation of the ko’haw war-helmet events as analogous draws a connection between the protagonists Yat Ahk I in the early sixth century and Itzam K’an Ahk I in the seventh century (Schele and Miller 1986:148-49). Because the two helmet ceremonies are parallel, there is ambiguity as to which event is depicted in the image. Schele and Miller state that the image portrays the later Itzam K’an Ahk I event. However, Stuart (2000:498-99) and Martin and Grube (2008:144) suggest it depicts the earlier event, with Yat Ahk I as protagonist. Martin and Grube note that the feathers touch Yat Ahk I’s name and may be a visual cue pointing to the earlier protagonist, though they also maintain that the panel makes “a powerful analogy between the two periods.”
The depiction may function as a portrayal of both Yat Ahk I and Itzam K’an Ahk I, with the ambiguity intentional in order to strengthen the connection made between them in the text. Moreover, it may not even matter which is portrayed but that both are evoked. In fact, Itzam K’an Ahk I may have reenacted the ceremony his forebear performed as a way to make the link between them explicit and tangible. At the same
Time, similar to other Piedras Negras carved panels, the image portrays a moment from the past, in which Yat Ahk I is posthumously depicted 150 years after an event, which made his action current in the seventh century.
By invoking Yat Ahk I, Itzam K’an Ahk I returned to a time in which the Yokib polity may have had direct contact with Teotihuacan, which was a thriving, powerful state during Yat Ahk I’s reign. Indeed, excavations found Teotihuacan-related artifacts cached in front of Piedras Negras Structure R-5. Hruby (1999:376-78) notes two deposits with seven prismatic obsidian blades from the Central Mexican obsidian source at Pachuca. In addition, Escobedo and Zamora (2001b:201, 206) suggest that a recovered candelero—an object used for burning incense in Teotihuacan residential altars—is further evidence of Teotihuacan contact.
These objects may have been obtained from contact with Teotihuacan during its heyday, retained as heirlooms and later cached. Houston, Escobedo, and Webster (2008) note that these items were few and may imply only limited contact. Other evidence for early sixth-century affiliation with Teotihuacan in the region comes from a carved wooden box discovered in a cave in eastern Tabasco. The text on this box includes the name of Tajoom Uk’ab Tuun; this is most probably the same prominent och k’in kaloomte’ who was named on Piedras Negras Panel 2 (Anaya, Guenter, and Mathews 2002:2-3; Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008, citing Marc Zender, personal communication, 2005).
By Itzam K’an Ahk I’s time, Teotihuacan was in decline, if not already destroyed. Yet during his reign and later, Piedras Negras and other Maya polities recalled the memory of Teotihuacan by using Teotihuacan warrior imagery on stelae and panels. K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I and Itzam K’an Ahk I and their successors drew on connections to Teotihuacan and its legendary military power in representations of their own military costume (Stone 1989; Stuart 2000:498-501).5 With the creation of Panel 2, then, Itzam K’an Ahk I displayed links not only with his predecessor Yat Ahk I and the polity’s earlier history but also with the legendary Teotihuacan.
But Panel 2’s seventh-century creation was only one phase in the panel’s life history, for it was reset on an eighth-century version of Structure O-13. Morley was the first to propose that Panel 2 had been on display elsewhere and later was moved to O-13. His suggestion for its original provenance was in the South Group with Itzam K’an Ahk I’s other monuments, including Stela 36, with which it shares the period ending 9.11.15.0.0, and which was placed in front of Structure R-5 (Morley 1937-38, 3:78, 84, 92, 96). Panel 2 once may have been installed on Structure R-5 or another building in the South Group. Alternatively, it may have been displayed on an earlier version of O-13.
Regardless of whether it was already at Structure O-13 and reset on its last phase or carried to Structure O-13 for reuse, what is important is that it was installed on this building in the late eighth century during K’inich Yat Ahk II’s reign. K’inich Yat Ahk II thereby made this panel and the ancestors it mentioned—Yat Ahk I and Itzam K’an Ahk I—current and relevant. Yet the resetting of Panel 2 was only one way that K’inich Yat Ahk II made a link with Yat Ahk I; he was also Yat Ahk I’s namesake (Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008). His reuse of the name and his resetting of Panel 2 were parallel acts that created a link with a predecessor from over two hundred sixty years before his reign.
World History
