by David Stuart
This entry is offered in anticipation of the solar eclipse visible over much of Mexico and the United States on April 8, 2024.
Only one record of a solar eclipse is known from Maya inscriptions of the Classic period. This appears on Stela 3 from Santa Elena Poco Uinic, a remote site in highland Chiapas, as part of a lengthy text relating several historical events of the late eighth century. This large monument was first recorded in 1926 by a team led by Enrique Juan Palacios, and it was shortly afterward that the great Mayanist John Teeple saw the published photographs and drawings (Palacios 1928), taking special note of a glyph showing a K’IN (sun) sign covered by two flanking elements (Figure 1b). Its strong resemblance to some “covered suns” represented within the eclipse tables of the Dresden Codex probably also caught Teeple’s eye.
This “possible eclipse glyph,” as Teeple called it, follows a Calendar Round record of 5 Cib 14 Ch’en. Unlike other historical episodes recorded on the Poco Uinic stela, there is nothing more to the passage – no personal name, nor any other associated event or description. Rhetorically it serves as a simple calendrical statement, much like a Period Ending would be curtly described in a lengthy text, as a day of inherent noteworthiness, with no human actor. The day corresponds to the Long Count 9.17.19.13.16, firmly anchored by the larger narrative, including a Distance Number that connects it to the stela’s dedication date on the k’atun ending 9.18.0.0.0 11 Ahau 18 Mac, 84 days later. Teeple made the simple observation that “according to the Goodman correlation, which we have been using, this 5 Cib 14 Ch’en fell on July 16, 790, and on that day shortly after noon a total eclipse of the sun was visible from the spot where this monument was soon afterward erected” (Teeple 1931:115). Here we should remember that the correlation of ancient Maya and Gregorian calendars was still a matter of great debate when Teeple wrote these words. His masterful compilation of evidence from lunar records in the Classic inscriptions and other lines of evidence made him more comfortable in using a version of the Goodman (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson, or GMT) correlation, although he was still cautious in coming down too strongly in its favor.
Teeple’s eclipse was mentioned here and there in the epigraphic literature after 1931, but its importance was also strangely ignored. This changed in 2012, when Martin and Skidmore revisited the Poco Uinic text, featuring it in their elegant discussion of the correlation question. They made a clear case for its central importance in refining the match between Maya and Gregorian days (Martin and Skidmore 2012). The principal variants of the GMT correlation that most Mayanists used between 1931 and 2012 necessitated placements of the Poco Uinic date on July 13, 790 (using the 584283 Julian Day Number constant) or July 15, 790 (584285). In positing the Poco Uinic eclipse, Teeple had relied on a necessary one-day adjustment (584286), but this variation on the GMT had failed to gain wide acceptance in the years that followed. This was due in large measure to Thompson’s preference for the 584285, and his stubbornness to explore the issue only through postconquest documents of Yucatan (see Martin and Skidmore 2012:6, 9). Today, thanks to Teeple and, more recently, Martin and Skidmore, we can appreciate how a simple statement of a solar eclipse has allowed us to refine the correlation of Maya dates. My own work with new-moon records may offer some small support for it as well (Stuart 2020).
A recent astronomical study of the July 16, 790 eclipse by Hayakawa et al. (2021) noted how the path of totality passed 80 or so miles to the south of Santa Elena Poco Uinic. Still, its maximum magnitude was 0.946 at shortly after noon, and it surely would have been a noticeable event, as the authors note.
The eclipse record is part of a longer text on the Poco Uinic stela, the point of which was to celebrate the k’atun ending 9.18.0.0.0, which fell shortly later on October 8, 790. The inscription also features the accession of a local ruler named Yax Bahlam, which occurred on 9.17.11.14.16 5 Cib 14 Ceh, or September 16, 782. Significantly, the eclipse of 790 occurred on another 5 Cib (Martin and Skidmore 2012:6), as well as on a haab station that fell on the 14th day of Ceh, a “color” month similar to Ch’en. The occurrence of the eclipse on a day so resonant with the accession eight years earlier, and so close to the k’atun ending to come, is striking. It must have been especially meaningful to the Maya of Santa Elena Poco Uinic.
Regarding the eclipse glyph, its reading remains difficult to know. Prager (2006) has suggested that the covering elements around the central K’IN might be read as NAM, but this will need further testing. These strongly resemble the arching element that is part of the K’ABA’, “name,” glyph (Love 2018). The visual form of these covering elements has a complex history of its own, as reflected in one variety of Glyph X from the lunar series, where a reference to darkened suns and moons seems to be included in the proper names of certain lunations (Grube 2018). Love (2018) offers a useful overview of the glyph from Poco Uinic and rightly suggests that many of the so-called “eclipse” glyphs we find in Maya texts and iconography might not all be the same, with some referring to sun-darkening in a more general way.
With a solar eclipse approaching in a few days, visible over much of the United States and Mexico, it seems a good moment to revisit the unique text from Poco Uinic. A century after its recognition by Teeple, it remains a singular record of an intensive “sun-darkening” from Maya history, from over twelve centuries ago.
References Cited
Grube, Nikolai. 2018. The Forms of Glyph X of the Lunar Series. Research Note 9, Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. Universität Bonn, Bonn.
Hayakawa, Hisashi, Mistturu Soma, and J. Hutch Kinsman. 2021. Analyses of a Datable Solar Eclipse Record in Maya Classic Period Monumental Inscriptions. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan. DOI: 10.1093/pasj/psab088
Love, Bruce. 2018. The “Eclipse Glyph” in Maya Text and Iconography: A Century of Misinterpretation. Ancient Mesoamerica 29(1):219-244.
Martin, Simon, and Joel Skidmore. 2012. Exploring the 584286 Correlation between the Maya and European Calendars. The PARI Journal 13(2):3-16. https://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/journal/1302/Correlation.pdf
Palacios, Enrique Juan. 1928. En los confines de la selva lacandona. Exploraciones en el estado de Chiapas, Mayo-Agosto 1926. Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, México.
Prager, Christian. 2006. Is T326 a Logograph for NA:M “hide, to go out of sight”? Unpublished Manuscript.
Stuart, David. 2020. Yesterday’s Moon: A Decipherment of the Classic Mayan Adverb ak’biiy. Maya Decipherment (www.mayadecipherment.com), posted August 1, 2020.
Teeple, John E. 1931. Maya Astronomy. Contributions of American Archaeology, No. 2, pp. 29-116. Publication 403. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D.C.
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