Product Code Database
K’uk’ulkan, also spelled Kukulkan (; " Plumed Serpent", " Amazing Serpent"), is the serpent deity of Maya mythology. It is closely related to the deity Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people and to Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology.Read & Gonzalez 2000, pp. 180-2. Prominent temples to Kukulkan are found at archaeological sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan.
The depiction of the Feathered Serpent is present in other cultures of Mesoamerica. Although heavily Mexicanised, Kukulkan has its origins among the Maya of the Classic Period. Little is known of the mythology of this Pre-Columbian era deity.Read & Gonzalez 2000, p. 201.
Kukulkan has its origins among the Maya of the Classic Period, when it was known as Waxaklahun Ubah Kan (), the War Serpent. It has been identified also as the Postclassic version of the Vision Serpent of Classic Maya art.
In Yucatán, references to the deity Kukulkan are confused by references to a historical individual who bore the name of the god. Because of this, the distinction between the two has become blurred.Miller & Taube 1993, p. 142. This individual appears to have been a ruler or priest at Chichen Itza who first appeared around the 10th century.Read & González 2000, p. 201. Although Kukulkan was mentioned as a historical person by Maya writers of the 16th century, the earlier 9th-century texts at Chichen Itza never identified him as human and artistic representations depicted him as a Vision Serpent entwined around the figures of nobles.Freidel et al 1993, p. 325. At Chichen Itza, Kukulkan is also depicted presiding over sacrifice scenes.Freidel et al 1993, p. 478n60.
At Chichen Itza, Kukulkan ceased to be the Vision Serpent that served as a messenger between the king and the gods and came instead to symbolise the divinity of the territory.Schele & Freidel 1990, pp. 394-5.
El Castillo, Chichen Itza served as a temple to Kukulkan. During the spring and fall the shadow cast by the angle of the sun and edges of the nine step pyramid combined with the northern stairway and the stone serpent head carvings create the illusion of a massive serpent descending the pyramid.
After the fall of Chichen Itza, the nearby Postclassic city of Mayapan became the centre of the revived Kukulkan worshipers, with temples decorated with feathered serpent columns.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 598. At the time of the Spanish colonization, the high priest of Kukulkan was the family patriarch of the Xiu faction and was one of the two most powerful men in the city.Schele & Freidel 1990, pp. 361-2.
The religion of Kukulkan spread as far as the Guatemalan Highlands and northern Belize, where Postclassic feathered serpent sculptures are found with open mouths from which protrude the heads of human warriors.
A modern collection of folklore from Yucatán tells how Kukulkan was a winged serpent that flew to the sun and tried to speak to it but the sun, in its pride, burnt his tongue. The same source relates how Kukulkan always travels ahead of the Yucatec Maya rain god Chaac, helping to predict the rains as his tail moves the winds and sweeps the earth clean.Gómez 1995, p. 57.
Among the Lacandon people Maya of Chiapas, Kukulkan is an evil, monstrous snake that is the pet of the sun god. She destroys much of the world until she tries to herself during the long trip—the trip between the life and death. During the trip, she meets a boy who shares food with her and follows her back to the human world. She returns with him and constructs her own country.
In the episode, " How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth," the starship Enterprise encounters an ancient alien being that appears as a winged serpent and claims to be the Kukulkan of the ancient Mayan and Aztec cultures.
In the 2018 Video Game Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the main antagonist Dominguez/Amaru, who has usurped the throne of a hidden city founded by Mayan refugees in Peru, claims to be an incarnation of Kukulkan and seeks a pair of artifacts that will grant him the god's power.
In the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe film , the king of Talokan, Namor (played by Tenoch Huerta Mejía), is also referred to as K'uk'ulkan by his subjects.
|
|
