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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Church

The Church

The Church, built 800-900 A.D
Puuc Architectural Style


 

The older part of the city of Chichén Itza has many fine examples of the richly decorated Puuc architectural style. Among the structures which are representative of this period are the Church and the Annex of the Nunnary.

In the older part of Chichén Itzá we find a complex of buildings, one of which was named Eglesia (Church), by the early Spanish visitors. The Church is one of the most outstanding examples of Puuc ornamentation with elaborately carved masks of Chaac, the Mayan rain god covering the front of the structure.

Catherwood drawing of The Church
from the mid 19th Century.


On either side of the masks are smaller carvings of a crab, a snail, an armadillo and a turtle which some researchers say represent the forces which the Mayas believed supported the sky in each of the four directions.

Above these carvings is an image of a moving snake and a roof with even more big-nosed masks of the rain god.

Chaac, the god of rain, was the guardian of the Maya groups who lived on the Yucatan penninsula from around 600 A.D.. A giver of water, Chaac became the core of a civilization that depended on agriculture for its existence. The engraving of the masks evolved gradully from the beginning in other parts of the Yucatan to the elaborate work on the monuments at Chichen Itza.

When Stephens and Catherwood visited the site in 1843 they wrote:
This building is in a good state of preservation. The interior consists of a single apartment, once covered with plaster, and along the top of the wall are seen traces of a line ... which once contained hieroglyphics. The Indians have no superstitious feelings about these ruins, except in regard to this building: they say that on Good Friday of every year music is heard. But this illusion was destined to be broken. In this chamber we opened our Daguerrotype apparatus, and on Good Friday were at work all day, but heard no music.



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