Bacabs

Somewhere at the edge of the world, in each of its four corners, a brother stands with the sky on his back. That is the whole of the picture Diego de Landa gives, and it is enough. The Bacabs, he wrote in his account of Yucatán, were four brothers whom God placed at the four parts of the world when he made it, holding up the heavens so that they would not fall. The same people told him something stranger. When the world was destroyed by the flood, the Bacabs escaped.

Landa was a Franciscan, and his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, written around 1566 and first printed in 1864, reaches the Bacabs through a Christian lens. He calls the creator God and blames the devil for the offerings that followed. Strip that frame away and the Maya system underneath is clear and orderly. Each brother had a personal name, a quarter of the world, a colour and a day. Hobnil was the Yellow Bacab, Kanalbacab, and he stood in the south. Cantzicnal was the Red Bacab, Chacalbacab, in the east. Zaccimi was the White Bacab, Zacalbacab, in the north. Hozanek was the Black Bacab, Ekelbacab, in the west. Landa lists two more titles for each, built on the same colours: Kanpauahtun and Kanxibchac for Hobnil, and so on round the compass. Ralph Roys, who translated the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel in 1933, read the xibchac names as the red, white, black and yellow male Chacs, the rain gods, and thought the Pauahtuns were not quite the same beings as the Bacabs but spirits of the winds that blow from the four directions. Four colours, four winds, four rains and four brothers all lined up on the same cross.

The brothers mattered because of the calendar. In Yucatán at the conquest, only four day names could begin the new year: Kan, Muluc, Ix and Cauac. Landa calls them dominical letters, as if they were the letters of a church almanac, and he pairs each with its Bacab. Whoever held the year’s day ruled that year and its omens.

The year itself did not simply begin. It had to be cleared. In the five unlucky days that closed the old year, people made great services to the Bacabs and to a demon who went by four colour names of his own, Kanuuayayab, Chacuuayayab, Zacuuayayab and Ekuuayayab. Images were carried to the edge of town, set up, censed with incense and ground maize, and then taken in or thrown out at the proper quarter, where the next ceremony would come for them a year later. The smoke hung heavy in the courtyards. If the rites were skipped, sickness followed.

Each brother brought his own weather. A Kan year was a good one, because Hobnil, they said, had not sinned as his brothers had, and so no miseries came with him. A Muluc year was good too, since Cantzicnal was the best and greatest of the four and was named first in prayer. Zaccimi’s Ix years were feared. Too much sun would scorch the maize, hunger would follow, and after hunger came theft, slavery, quarrels and war, and even changes among the lords and priests. Hozanek’s Cauac years were little better, with suns that killed the fields and ants and birds that ate whatever was sown. The prophecy for a whole year rested on the shoulders of a single figure in the dark at the rim of the world.

There is a gentler scene in Landa too. In the month of Tzec the beekeepers held their festival, and their advocates were the Bacabs, Hobnil above all. Nobody drew blood that day. Four plates went to the four Chacs, each with a ball of incense in the middle and figures painted around the rim in honey, so that the hives would be full. The feast ended with drink. Roys adds that the Maya knew red, white, black and yellow bees and gave each kind to the quarter of its colour. In another month, at the renewal of the temple, the priests read the forecasts of the Bacabs once more.

The Chumayel tells the end of a world from the other side. Its creation chapter is broken and allusive, but the outline is plain. Oxlahun-ti-ku was seized by Bolon-ti-ku. Fire came down, and a rope, and rocks and trees. A rush of water followed the theft of his insignia, and the sky fell upon the earth when the four gods, the four Bacabs, were set up, who brought about the destruction of the world. Afterwards came the trees. A white tree of abundance was raised in the north as a pillar of the sky, a black one in the west where a black-breasted bird could perch, a yellow one in the south, and a green one at the centre. In Landa the brothers survive the flood. In the Chumayel they are present at the ruin. The two accounts sit side by side and nobody reconciles them.

No colonial writer says what a Bacab looked like. Art may supply what the friar left out. Maya sculpture and painting have an aged god, labelled God N by modern scholars and read as Pauahtun, who often wears a turtle shell, and Karl Taube noted that four turtle sculptures of this god were found together in one building at Mayapan, a set of four for a god who comes in fours. At Copán the excavated noble residence known as Structure 9N-82 was published in 1989 under the title The House of the Bacabs. Roys believed some of the Atlantean figures at Chichén Itzá, men with their arms raised to bear a weight, showed the sky-bearers. That remains an identification, not a caption. The god in the turtle shell has his own long history and is better told on his own page.

The name outlived the temples. In the winter of 1914 to 1915 a small paper book of 164 leaves was found in Maya hands in Yucatán, written in the late eighteenth century and filled with incantations and herbal cures for seizures, bites, asthma, toothache and fever. Roys published it in 1965 as the Ritual of the Bacabs, and it now sits in Princeton’s Garrett-Gates collection. Studies of these chants tie the four quarters of the world to particular winds, rains and illnesses.

The Bacabs’ power is the plainest power there is. They keep the sky off the ground. From that post at the corners they also hold the year, so that rain, harvest, health and peace all depend on whose turn it is. Their limits are just as clear. They do not change the fortune they bring; Hozanek cannot make a Cauac year kind, and the people had to answer his omens with offerings rather than appeal to his mercy. And for all the weight they bear, the world has fallen once already.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Bacabs in Maya mythology?

The Bacabs are four Maya brother gods who hold up the sky at the four corners of the world. The Franciscan friar Diego de Landa recorded them in Yucatán around 1566, saying God placed them there at the creation so the sky would not fall. Landa also wrote that they escaped when the world was destroyed by a flood.

What are the names and colours of the four Bacabs?

Landa names them Hobnil, the Yellow Bacab of the south; Cantzicnal, the Red Bacab of the east; Zaccimi, the White Bacab of the north; and Hozanek, the Black Bacab of the west. Each also had colour titles such as Kanalbacab, Chacalbacab, Zacalbacab and Ekelbacab.

What did the Bacabs have to do with the Maya calendar?

Each Bacab ruled one of the four year-bearer days, Kan, Muluc, Ix and Cauac, which could begin a new year in colonial Yucatán. The Bacab of the year decided its fortune. Hobnil’s and Cantzicnal’s years were counted good, while Zaccimi’s and Hozanek’s years brought drought, hunger and trouble.

Why were the Bacabs patrons of beekeepers?

Landa reports that at the beekeepers’ festival in the month of Tzec the Bacabs, and Hobnil above all, were the beekeepers’ advocates. Offerings of incense on plates painted with honey were made so that the hives would be plentiful. The translator Ralph Roys added that red, white, black and yellow bees were each assigned to the quarter of their colour.

What is the Ritual of the Bacabs?

The Ritual of the Bacabs is a late eighteenth-century Maya manuscript of curing incantations and herbal remedies, found in Yucatán in 1914 to 1915. Ralph Roys translated and published it in 1965 under that title, and the manuscript is held at Princeton University.

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