The inscription itself contains the exact date on which the jamb was carved which would correspond to 9.15.19.6.10, 6 ook 8 kéej, September 17, 750 A.D. However, since it is a record of an individual calendrical system of the northern Yucatan peninsula, it would probably fall a day later, that is, on 9.15.19.6.11, 7 chuwe’en 8 kéej, September 18, 750 A.D.
Its origin is unknown, although because of the calligraphic style, the way the date is written and the syntax of the text, this jamb comes from somewhere in the northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula, a region known as Puuc. This sculpture must have functioned as the jamb of a door or gate. Its hieroglyphic text commemorates the completion of the recording or the inscription that decorated the room of a person named Piip, who in turn held the political and religious titles sajal and ajk’uhu’n (worshiper), in other words, a priest.
The sajales were usually second order rulers that were subject to the authority of the k’uhul ajaw or ‘divine lords’, but in the northwest region of Yucatan several sajales came to reign tly over major cities like Xcalumkin, apparently without recognizing the authority of any k’uhul ajaw. This hieroglyphic text presents a way of writing the date that is characteristic of the northern Yucatan Peninsula, because instead of putting the day first, in the tzolk’iin system (divining calendar of 260 days) and immediately after that of ha’ab’ (old year of 365 days), between both types of records it places the phrase … k’in, ta …, ‘… day, in …’, while the number that accompanies the twenty of the ha’ab’ is expressed in its ordinal form and not cardinal, in other words: …k’in, ta uwaxak chaksijo’m, ‘… day, in the eight [of month] chaksij’om’ or ‘kéej’.
Another diagnostic feature of the dating method used in this inscription is the use of the so-called tuun-ajaw system, which consists in identifying the specific year of the date within a determined k’atuun or twenty-year period of 360 days each; therefore the inscription reads: ta ub’uluch tuun ta cha’ ajaw, ‘in the eleventh tuun in the [k’atuun] 2 ajaw, which corresponds to a day in the year 750 A.D. Although the word tuun does not mean ‘year’, but ‘stone’, the practice of erecting sculptures or piling stones on a mound at the end of each k'atuun, came to turn the word tuun into a semantic equivalent of the noun year.
If we follow the canons of dating used in the central lowlands of the Maya region, the wheel calendar written in this inscription should be 6 ook 8 kéej, September 17, 750 A.D. 6 ook is a date from the tzolk’iin calendar, but in this jamb the hieroglyph box where this data should be written is eroded. Since the scribes of northern Yucatan peninsula had a peculiar way of writing dates, where the number accompanying the twenty days lagged by one day compared to the tzolk’iin day, it is likely that what actually has been written is 7 chuwe’en 8 kéej, September 18, 750 A.D.
The normal word order, which we would expect in this jamb, is date-verb-object·owned-name·of the·owner. However, it should be noted that in this case the date is split into two halves, so we have first·part·of·the·date-verb-object·owned-second·part·of·the·date-name·of·the·owner. As noted by Alfonso Lacadena Garcia-Gallo, the scribe who carved this jamb decided to intentionally alter the syntax in order to impart upon the text a literal type of ornamentation, which rhetoric scholars call hyperbaton.
Lacadena García-Gallo himself has observed that the Mayan scribes of northern Yucatan Peninsula used to put the titles of the nobles before their names, which was opposite to the practice of their colleagues in the southern lowlands. For example, a scribe of Calakmul, Copan, Palenque and Tikal would have written Piip, sajal, ajk’uhu’n, but the author of this jamb did it backwards: sajal, ajk’uhu’n, Piip, which reveals that the vernacular was an ancestor of the yucatecan languages.
The analysis of the inscription is as follows:
TRANSLITERATION: (A1) ## (B1) K’IN-ni (A2) ta-u (B2) 8-CHAK-SIJOM (A3) a-ALAY?-ya (B3) b’o-TE’-ja (A4) yu-xu (B4) lu-li (A5) u-k’a (B5) li (A6) ta-u (B6) 11-TUN-ni (A7) ta-2-AJAW (B7) ha-i (A8) sa-ja (B8) a-K’UH (A9) pi-pa (B9) ha-i
TRANSCRIPTION: … k’in, ta uwaxak chaksijo’m, alay, b’o[h]te’[a]j yuxuluul uk’aal, ta ub’uluch tuun ta cha’ ajaw, ha’i, saja[l], a[j]k’uh[u’n] Piip, ha’i
MORPHEMIC SEGMENTATION: … k’in, ta u-waxak chaksijo’m, alay, b’ohte’-aj y-uxul-uul u-k’aal ta u-b’uluch tuun ta cha’ ajaw, ha’i, sajal, aj-k’uh-u’n Piip, ha’i
MORPHOLOGICAL NOTES: … day, PREP 3sERG-ocho kéej, there·is, strike·empty-INTR 3sERG-scrape-SUST 3sERG-room PREP 3sERG-eleventh stone PREP two ajaw, 3sIND, sajal, AG-god-TRAN Piip, 3Sind
TRANSLATION: ‘[on] the day…, in the eight of [the twenty] kéej, there is, the engraving of the room was placed on the wall, in the eleventh tuun in [the k’atuun] 2 ajaw, of the, the sajal, the worshiper Piip, he is’
PARAPHRASE: On a day who's name is lost, which corresponds to September of 750 A.D., the decoration engraved from the room that this jamb gave entry to was placed on the walls; this room belonged to a man named Piip, who held the political title of sajal and was also a priest.
OBSERVATIONS:
Previous studies: Mayer (1995); Graña Behrens (2002); Pallán Gayol (2006); Lacadena García-Gallo (2007).
