Ah Puch

Also Known As: also Ah Pukuh; Yucatec Maya Yum Kimil or Yum Cimil, lord of death; Hunhau in Diego de Landa’s account; Kisin or Cizin among the Lacandon; in scholarship simply God A
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is death as a physical process rather than as a judgement, and every one of his attributes is a stage of a body coming apart.
Role in Mythos: He is the Maya god of death and of the underworld, the most frequently drawn figure in the surviving codices, and the sign that stands for both the number ten and the day called Death.
Relation to Humans: He is not petitioned for a good afterlife and he does not weigh anyone. He turns up in the almanacs beside particular days to say what those days will bring, which is usually something ending, and the living arrange around him rather than appeal to him.

The collar is the detail that stays. It is worn like any other lord’s ornament, sitting properly on the collarbones, and it is made of eyes. Not carved eyes. Eyes with the optic nerve still attached, hanging down from it in a row, the way jade beads would hang. Above it the head is a bare skull. Below it the ribs show, and then the belly, which is not skeletal at all but rounded and tight with the gas of a body several days into its work.

He is the commonest figure in the surviving Maya books, and nobody is entirely sure what to call him.

The name that reached English is Ah Puch, and it is probably wrong. The likeliest account is that it began as a copying error in a sixteenth-century manuscript, where the form should have read Ah Pukuh, and the mistake has been reprinted for so long that it is now the name most readers know. Working Mayanists have largely given up on it and use the letter designation instead: God A, the first deity identified in the codices when a German scholar sat down at the end of the nineteenth century and worked through them assigning letters to recurring figures. It is a bloodless label for the most vivid figure in the manuscripts, and it is used because it makes no claims.

The names that are defensible come from three directions. Diego de Landa, the Franciscan who burned most of the Maya books and then wrote a description of the culture he had helped destroy, gives Hunhau, along with a second death god called Uacmitun Ahau. Yucatec speakers say Yum Kimil or Yum Cimil, lord of death, and still do. The Lacandon of the Chiapas forest call him Kisin, from roots meaning flatulence and stench, which is a fair reading of the swollen belly and blunter than any of the others.

What he actually does, in the only ancient documents that survive, is appear on a page beside a date. The Dresden and Madrid codices are largely almanacs: grids of days paired with the gods and the outcomes attached to them, made for priests working out what a particular day was good for. God A turns up constantly in those grids, and his presence is the answer to the question rather than a story about him. The Maya of the codices did not need his biography. They needed to know which days he was on.

He is built into the writing system itself. His skull is the sign for the day Kimi, which means Death and is one of the twenty named days. His lower jawbone alone is the sign for the number ten. He appears as a variable element inside the calculation of the moon’s age. A scribe writing an ordinary date would draw part of this god without thinking about it, in the same way an English writer puts a Norse god into Wednesday.

The forehead usually carries a mark meaning darkness. The hair, where he has any, is hung with more eyes. On some pots he holds a severed head and the arm is casual about it. And in the illustrations of the codices he does things that no cult god does: he stands beside a hanged woman, he presides over a bloodletting, he waits at the end of a column of days.

There is a habit in popular writing of calling him the lord of Xibalba, and it needs a caution. Xibalba is the underworld of the K’iche’ Maya in the Guatemalan highlands, described in the Popol Vuh, and that book names its rulers precisely: One Death and Seven Death, at the head of twelve lords with departmental responsibilities. Ah Puch belongs to the Yucatec lowlands, and the Yucatec underworld is called Metnal. The two traditions are related, separated by several hundred miles and a language boundary, and merging them produces a god who is not attested anywhere. The relationship is real. The identity is not.

His power is not judgement. Nothing in the Maya record has him weighing a soul or deciding a destination, and there is no sense that the dead deserve what they get from him. He simply owns the process, and the process is thorough: the swelling, the smell, the spotting of the skin, the sinking of the eyes. Putting all of that on a divine body and then hanging the eyes round its neck as jewellery is not squeamish about what death is, and it is not trying to make it mean anything either.

His limits are the limits of the record rather than of the god. Almost every Maya book was burnt, and what survives of him is four damaged manuscripts, a bishop’s account written by the man who lit the fires, painted pots, and the memory of living communities who kept his name and lost most of his stories. There is no Yucatec narrative of him comparable to the Popol Vuh. He is a face and a function and a number, endlessly repeated, and the thing he is missing is a plot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ah Puch?

Ah Puch is the Maya god of death and the underworld, known in scholarship as God A. He is depicted as an animated skeleton with black decay spots, a gas-swollen belly, and a collar of eyes hanging by their nerve cords. He is the most frequently pictured deity in the surviving Maya codices.

Is Ah Puch his real name?

Probably not. The form Ah Puch is generally thought to come from a copying error in a sixteenth-century manuscript for Ah Pukuh, and modern Mayanists mostly use the neutral designation God A instead. Better attested names are Hunhau, recorded by Diego de Landa, the Yucatec Yum Kimil or Yum Cimil meaning lord of death, and the Lacandon Kisin.

What does Ah Puch look like?

He is skeletal, with a skull for a head and ribs showing, but his stomach is bloated with the gas of decomposition and his skin carries black spots representing rotting flesh. His characteristic ornament is a collar of human eyes still attached to their nerve cords, and he often wears a sign meaning darkness on his forehead.

Is Ah Puch the lord of Xibalba?

Not in the sources. Xibalba is the K’iche’ Maya underworld of the Popol Vuh in highland Guatemala, and it is ruled by One Death and Seven Death at the head of twelve named lords. Ah Puch is a Yucatec lowland god, and the Yucatec underworld is called Metnal. The two traditions are related but not the same.

Why is Ah Puch connected to the number ten?

His head is the hieroglyph for Kimi, the day named Death, and his lower jawbone alone serves as the sign for the number ten. He also appears as a variable element in the Maya calculation of the age of the moon, so parts of him are built directly into ordinary Maya date-writing.