Cave of Sustenance

Quirigua Zoomorph P

In the samples of M. Finley's Maya Calendar Calculator, I came across a fragment of the Quirigua monument named Zoomorph P. The Initial Series Glyph at the top was not very interesting at first.

Figure 1

Having recently worked on the glyphs of the Temple of the Sun in Palenque, where I encountered a similar ISG, I realized that the two were very distinct from one another. The one in Palenque inferred a different story line for the text below it. The sky band there was part of the headdress of the patron of Keh, who also ends the completed text.

I felt that it said the boy Chan Baalam had learned about past history of his land before he could take the throne. In short, he graduated. The panel in the Temple of the Cross was an indication that he had passed his tests with flying colors, The boy, when he became a ruler, had the panel created as part of his historic past.

Here on the monument at Quirigua, the ISG appears to say that the text below it will only be about the sky event or events, not people or rulers. In the 1996 Workbook of the Maya Meetings, then called the Maya Hieroglyphic Forum (March 9-10) there are sixteen (16) different ISG's.

Two of them (p. 100 [Copan Stela 63] and p. 132 [Quirigua, F]) refer to the Square Nose Beastie. Copan had just as much right to make a monument about the Square Nosed Beastie as Quirigua did.

In The Nuttall Codex, this entity appears three times as a creature who devoured the star ball court. So that says that the Mixtecs also has a right to record the event of the star entity, the Square Nosed Beastie.

On page 157 of the Workbook, the ISG indicates that the text is to be about the "Venus" entity. His mother is identified as the "Rainbow Lady" and the source of the two sky serpents or dragons (as eyes of the serpent, not as shells) by the glyphs over her head. This is in agreement with another myth if his home had been the wing of Cygnus.

However, we are discussing Monument P of Quirigua that M. Finley of Canada placed in his samples to test his Maya Calendar calculator. He has these number 9.18.5.0.0. 4 Ahaw 13 Keh. The only place I "see" a 13 is in the second column after a "9". (Figure 2) It is possible that the 13 was calculated as being the only number possible in that glyph sequence.

Figure 2

Although the left bottom glyph of this particular segment of the monument (Figure 3) does appear to be zero, it is next to a blind entity. The glyph to the right of it has a double sun, a "Venus" segment over a dead creature with a sky band. This may relate to the poem "The Birth of the Fifth Sun" found in Kay Almere Read's book, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos when both Teç and Nan were competing to become the Sun. The wall mural at Chichen Itza shows a similar double "sun" associated with a sky serpent (head and tail) which is repeated in various serpent images, (i.e in Palenque) where K'awil has one leg and foot as the tail of the serpent.

Figure 3

At the top of Figure 3, the glyph on the left contains a sun with two eyes of a dragon or sky serpent which on the right is a very tiny version of the "Cave of Sustenance"(Figure 3) identified by Simon Martin in March, 2004 at the Austin, Texas Maya Meeting and here as the introductory picture.Above the cave is seen two small circles, which on the Kerr vase (K6547) has the Sun and the Moon over a split mountain. Inside of that mountain is the corpse. On the back side of that vase, three corpses become three trees of life. It is a mesoamerican message that even, the recent painter, Diego Rivera knew when he painted a dead man with the corn stalk growing out of his heart: Death is an event in the lives of men in order that others may live.

Figure 4

However, the Quirigua segment shown in the bottom left of Figure 3, instead, appears to contain the star elements taken from p. 111 and 112 of the Madrid Codex. and they appear to relate to the Blind God with another star form on his head.

Figure 5

The zero element has become so standardized that it is difficult to identify anything else but the number. It may be a "zero" but again it may refer to the same star that is found in Figure 6, that of a strange brilliant star that becomes benign on top of the blind head glyph.

Figure 6

similar to the "zero" glyph of the Madrid which is A above. It also contains the Blind God of M-39. (See Figure 6-B amd Figure 7 below.)

Figure 7

The Blind God, with his "radish" earplugs, appears to be a constellation within the confines of the mouth of the Jaguar of the Night Sky, full of stars in his pelt. Such earplugs are inferred on the plains of Nasca where two such "radishes" are located almost side-by-side below the great bird.

If the great bird is Cygnus, then the "radish" earplugs would be on either side of the face of the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent holder. The serpents are replaced in the land version on the Nasca Plains by the "radish" forms.

Why the "radish" and not some other legume? In Oaxaca, México, in December, there is a festival honoring the lowly radish. It is in Oaxaca, that evidence of Peruvian metallurgy was present before it moved into the Yucatan. December is a month when the winter constellations are visible in the north.

But it is in Peru, that the constellation Ophiuchus rises in and about Christmastime. That could indicate, that Ophiuchus was a very important constellation in both areas of the Americas. It would also mean that the true relationship of this particular constellation in México is "blinded" or "hidden" quite easily because in the Northern hemisphere, Ophiuchus and the Summer Triangle (part of the Big Bird of Peru) constellations are seen only in the Summer, not the Winter.

Here are the three elements of the Maya world, the Initial Series Glyphs that may be the title of the texts below them; the Cave of Sustenance that is the resting place of the dead and the origin of new life; and the Zero glyph with sharp rays, found in the text of Monument Zoomorph P of Quirigua which is attached to a "god" form who is blind (without eyes) and has a non-threatening sun similar to the Zero glyph without the sharp rays, on top of his head.

These explanations may or may not have any value in reading the glyphs. It is for the epigraphers to decide, whether ALL glyphs are spelled out words, or if some of them are visual story-aids.