God L

Also Known As: a scholar’s label, not a Maya name: the letter was assigned by Paul Schellhas in his catalogue of the gods of the Maya books; the god’s own name glyph, the black-painted head of an old man, has not been securely read
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: An aged lord of the underworld, of wealth and of long-distance trade, bound up with jaguars, owls, tobacco, cacao and the night.
Role in Mythos: He sits enthroned in a dark palace as a master of riches and, in the later books, rises as the morning star to hurl spears, while on painted vases he is the rich old man who gets stripped of everything.
Relation to Humans: Merchants and travellers stand under his sign, since he is shown with a walking staff and a trader’s pack and his cloth is printed with footprints. In the Dresden Codex his mantle and loincloth are hung on the stone posts honoured during the unlucky days that close the year.

The old man on the doorjamb at Palenque is smoking. He stands in the cool dark of the inner shrine of the Temple of the Cross, carved in low relief on the limestone, stooped under a hat as broad as a cartwheel, and a thick cigar juts from his mouth with the smoke curling up in stone. A jaguar pelt hangs down his back. He has the look of someone who has been rich for a very long time and has stopped being surprised by anything.

Nobody knows what the Maya called him. When the German scholar Paul Schellhas sorted the gods painted in the surviving Maya books around the turn of the twentieth century, he could not read their names, so he gave each one a letter. This one got L. More than a century later the letter is still in use, because the god’s name glyph, a black-painted old man’s head, has resisted a firm reading. A bishop’s account of sixteenth-century Yucatán mentions a merchant god called Ek Chuah, and that name may once have been his, but it is more often given to a different trader god of the later books.

What he looked like is beyond doubt, because Maya painters loved him. He is always old, with a caved-in mouth and a hooked nose. One ear is a jaguar’s. His hat is the giveaway: a wide brim trimmed with feathers, and on top of it a bird, usually read as an owl, with its wings half open. Around his shoulders goes either a spotted jaguar skin or a stiff cape woven in a pattern of plates like an armadillo’s back. He leans on a staff. On some vessels a trader’s bundle sits behind him.

The best portrait of him at home is on a slender chocolate cup now in the Princeton University Art Museum, painted in fine black line on cream by a master of the eighth century. He sits cross-legged on a throne inside a curtained palace, tying a bracelet on the wrist of a young woman. Four more women kneel and pour around him, and one of them is tipping a stream of foaming cacao from one jar into another. Under the throne a rabbit sits hunched over a book bound in jaguar skin, writing everything down. Just outside, on the same cup, two masked men are cutting the head off a bound prisoner. It is a full picture of the god: comfort, chocolate, women, record-keeping, and blood on the step.

The stories never say where he came from. No surviving text gives him parents or a birth. He is simply there in the dark before things begin, and one famous vase shows exactly that: God L on his jaguar throne, cigar lit, presiding over six other gods ranked in two rows against a black ground, on the date the Maya counted as the first day of the present world.

Then somebody robs him. A painted vase from the region of Naranjo tells it in two scenes. In the first, a rabbit stands on a hill holding God L’s hat, his cape and his staff, and the old god stands below him stripped to his loincloth, thin and furious. In the second, he kneels before the enthroned sun god to complain, while the rabbit crouches behind the throne where the plaintiff cannot see him. Other vessels show the young maize god and the Hero Twins taking part in the stripping, pulling off his finery and leaving him bare and bowed. The rabbit belongs to the moon goddess. The old rich lord of the night, in other words, is brought low by the powers that rise.

He lost his hat to a rabbit. It is hard to think of another great god anywhere of whom that can be said.

At Palenque the kings made the same point in stone. On the central panel of the Temple of the Sun, God L and a companion crouch on hands and knees with a bar across their backs, holding up the shield and crossed spears that stood for royal war. The underworld’s wealthy lord has been turned into furniture.

Yet he was no weakling. His powers run from his nature as an old lord of the dark places. He owns riches, above all cacao, the bean that served as both drink and money, and a mural at Cacaxtla in highland Mexico paints him as a travelling merchant beside a cacao tree with his loaded pack propped behind him. His owl and jaguar are creatures of night, sorcery and ambush, and his cigar hints at the tobacco magic of curers and travellers. In the Dresden Codex he is one of the forms of the morning star, climbing out of the underworld armed with darts, and on that page his victim is the lightning god K’awiil, speared and sprawled on his back. In the same book his patterned mantle and his footprint cloth are draped over the stone posts set up in the dangerous last days of the year.

His limits are the ones the vases keep laughing at. Everything he has can be taken off him. His authority lives in his hat, his cape and his staff, and without them he is a naked old man asking a younger god for justice. He rules the dark, and the dark ends each morning. In the highland town of Santiago Atitlán, a cigar-smoking wooden figure called Maximón, the Grandfather, is still dressed and undressed with great ceremony each Holy Week, and more than one student of the Maya has looked at him and thought of the old man on the doorjamb.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is God L in Maya mythology?

God L is an aged Maya god of the underworld, wealth and long-distance trade. He is shown as a toothless old man with a jaguar ear, a wide feathered hat with a bird on top, and often a cigar. He appears on Classic period painted vases, on carvings at Palenque, and in the Dresden Codex.

Why is he called God L?

God L is a modern label, not a Maya name. The scholar Paul Schellhas gave letters to the gods in the surviving Maya books because their names could not be read, and this god received the letter L. His name glyph, a black-painted old man’s head, still has no secure reading.

What happens between God L and the rabbit?

On a painted vase from the Naranjo region, a rabbit steals God L’s hat, cape and staff and leaves him stripped. God L then kneels before the sun god to complain, while the rabbit hides behind the sun god’s throne. The rabbit is the companion of the moon goddess.

What is God L the god of?

God L is a god of riches, trade and the underworld, with a strong link to cacao. He carries a walking staff and a merchant’s pack, and a mural at Cacaxtla shows him as a trader beside a cacao tree. He also has a warlike side, appearing in the Dresden Codex as the morning star who spears the god K’awiil.

Where can images of God L be seen?

The best known carving of God L is on a doorjamb in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque, where he smokes a cigar. He also appears on the Princeton Vase in the Princeton University Art Museum, seated in his palace among five young women. At Palenque’s Temple of the Sun he crouches beneath the royal shield and spears.