Maya Creation Myths: Words and Worlds of the Chilam Balam

7: The Calendar and the Catechism

153 The final cosmogony contained in the Chumayel mythography is an especially beautiful narrative, titled here, following Edmonson (1986), the “Birth of the Uinal,” uinal being the twenty-day Maya week (V. Bricker 2002b).1 While the preface presents the purpose of the Chumayel mythography as an answer to the questions of origin posed to the Maya by their colonial interlocutors (42.19–21), this final text answers these interlocutors with an assertion of the compatibility of Maya and Spanish cosmologies presented in the hybrid voice of both Maya and Spanish Christian traditions ’ most ancient authorities. The dialoGism of reCeived TradiTion This creation narrative known as the “Birth of the Uinal” begins by relating the genre of the cosmogony as the Maya scribe identified it and by asserting its source as an ancient received tradition: Bay tzolci yax ah miatz merchise Thus it had been chronicled by the first sage Melchizedek The Calendar and the Catechism C h a p T e r s e v e n The Calendar and the Catechism 154 Yax ah / bouat na puc tun The first diviner Na Puc Tun Sacerdote Sacerdote Yax ah kin The first day-keeper Lay kay uchci v sihil vinal This song is how the birth of the uinal had come to pass Ti ma to ahac / cab cuchie. when it had not yet dawned back then. (Chumayel 60.3–6) The cosmogonic narrative of the “Birth of the Uinal” is presented as deriving from received tradition, a “song” (kay) relating how this cosmogony had been “chronicled” (tzol), which means literally “to put in order.” Tzol is also used to refer to counting, particularly in ritual processions and land surveys, the tzol peten and tzol pictun, respectively (Hanks 2000:258, 267). This creation song is attributed to the first sage (Yucatec: yax ah miatz) and sacerdote of Judeo-Christian tradition, Melchizedek. It is simultaneously attributed to a Maya religious leader who is listed in both clandestine Maya books and published Spanish sources as among the traditional companions of the Chilam Balam, Na Puc Tun, here called both the first diviner (Yucatec: yax ah bouat) and first day-keeper (Yucatec: yax ah kin), as a parallel to the Spanish title for “priest.” Bothsemanticcoupletsandbilingualismarewell-documentedfeatures of Maya discourse style from the pre-Hispanic period (V. Bricker 2000). The use of bilingual semantic couplets occurs often in Maya documents, from the listing of everyday objects of Colonial period notarial documents (Restall 1997:241–242, 301–302) to the naming of cosmological phenomena in the various redactions of a Ptolemaic-Christian Genesis commentary (Knowlton 2008). In the present context, these bilingual couplets form an example of the discursive strategy of syncrisis, the juxtaposition of various points of view on a single object, in this case, the traditional author of the cosmogony being related. The names attributed to the “First Priest” relating this song of creation is quite significant. Na Puc Tun is the first of a series of four diviners whose proclamations accompany the prophecy of the Chilam Balam published in the Franciscan Lizana’s 1633 chronicle of the “spiritual conquest ” of Yucatán (Lizana 1995 [1633]). This is the same published text discussed earlier (Chapter 3), in which the Maya-language prophecies it contained were later hand-copied into numerous Maya community books, including the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (ms. page 104). As an indigenous priest whose prophecies have been, in a sense, “legitimized ” as poesia by their publication in “orthodox” Franciscan sources, The Calendar and the Catechism 155 Na Puc Tun is an intriguing character in the religious imagination of colonial Yucatán. Perhaps even more intriguing is the identification of this enigmatic Maya priest Na Puc Tun with the equally enigmatic Judeo-Christian figure of Melchizedek. Regarding the “historical” figure, he is virtually unknown besides his brief appearance in the Hebrew Bible as king of Salem (later Jerusalem) and the priest of El Elyon (“God Most High”), who both blesses and receives tithes from the patriarch Abraham (Genesis 14.18–20). Over the centuries, a mystique grew up around this Melchizedek among the religious communities of the eastern Mediterranean, and by the time of Christ, Melchizedek had acquired a messianic character in the lore. A first-century BC document recovered from among the Dead Sea Scrolls identifies him as a heavenly priest and eschatological deliverer (Vermes 1997:500–502). Toward the end of the first century...