The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Three miles from the hacienda of Santa Anna, where we stayed, are the ruins of Kabah. There is every reason to believe that these ruins represent the remains of what was once, though probably only for a short period, a large and powerful city. As far as it is possible to piece together from traditional history the records of this group of cities of the Southern Sierras, it would seem to be fairly certain that the ruins we find to-day represent a vigorous recrudescence of building immediately after, and as a result of, the destruction of Mayapan by the confederation of caciques. Doubtless Labna, Sayil, and Kabah existed as cities before this great victory. But just as the downfall of the overlord of Mayapan was, we believe, the signal for that temporary supremacy of the Itzas, what we might call "the golden age" of Chichen, so it heralded in a period short of a century during which this group of Southern Sierra cities enjoyed an hitherto unknown prosperity. We shall later try to show what exact connection we believe existed between the art of these sierra towns, of fifteenth-century Chichen, and Copan and Palenque.

This architectural period, which is perhaps best of all represented in Kabah, is essentially florid and, though highly adroit in its intricacy, distinctly barbaric. The most notable feature at Kabah, as at most of the ruined cities of Yucatan, is the huge mound or teocalli some 80 feet high, now a mountain of loose stone rubbish and overgrowth, though once stepped all round and crowned by a building. North-eastward on a terrace 200 feet wide by 142 deep (these are Stephens's measurements) stands one of the only two buildings of Kabah which are in any sort of preservation. The structure had a frontage of upwards of 150 feet, and its façade is so remarkable for its ornamentation that we reproduce at page 318 Stephens's drawing, which will give a far better idea of the design than any description. Over the doorways had been a cornice of which remnants remain, and which, as Stephens says, "tried by the severest rules of art recognised among us, would embellish the architecture of any known era." This building had been surmounted by a sort of elaborate stone combing extending the full length of the front and reaching a height of about 15 feet. The interior was planned on the usual arrangement of rooms found in these Mayan cities, each doorway admitting to a front room which in turn gives admission to an inner chamber raised a foot or two above the ground-level of the first and reached by a step. In the centre apartment at Kabah this usually simple step had been replaced by two stone steps carved out of a single block, the lower step being in the form of a scroll. The sides of the steps were carved, as was also the wall under the doorway.

To the north-east stands a second palace, three-storeyed, which must once have been a smaller replica of the majestic building at Sayil. Although hopelessly ruined and silted over with débris, the plan of the building was obviously the same in all particulars, even to the staircase by which ascent was made to the topmost range of apartments. To the westward of these ruins, Stephens, in 1842, found two buildings erected on a great terrace some 800 feet long and 100 feet wide. The first of these houses, with a 217-foot frontage, has seven doorways, each opening to single apartments, except the centre one, which led into two. The doorways had had wooden lintels, which had disappeared. The other house, with a 143-foot frontage and 31 feet deep, was two-storeyed, with a wide staircase in the centre leading to the topmost range. Here Stephens discovered a wonderful carved lintel consisting of two beams, the outer one split in two lengthwise. This constitutes the best example so far discovered of Central American wood-carving.

Tradition relates that this city of Kabah was contemporaneous with the most prosperous days of Uxmal (pronounced Ooshmal), which city we shall now shortly describe. Between the two ran, says tradition, a great paved way of pure white stone, serving as a highroad of communication for the two allied chiefs, upon which their messengers passed bearing letters written on leaves and the bark of trees. Uxmal, at once the largest and the best preserved of all the ruined cities of the Southern Sierras, is between fifty and sixty miles to the south-west of Merida, and stands on the hacienda of Don Augusto Peon, who, however, has not visited it, he told us, more than two or three times during the past nine years, because of its extreme unhealthiness as a place of residence owing to the malaria-breeding swamps. The ruins cover about half a square mile, and consist of five principal buildings. These are the pyramid temple, a castillo such as that at Chichen; a quadrangular edifice which archæologists have agreed to call the Nunnery; the House of Turtles, named from the nature of some of the decorations; the House of Pigeons, from the high, pierced combing which has some likeness to the front of a long dovecote; and the Governor's Palace.

The latter-day names of Mayan ruined buildings are usually unsatisfactory, and perhaps those of Uxmal are the most unsatisfactory of any. Taking the pyramid first, as being at once the largest and the most prominent feature of the ruined group, we find it to consist of a mound upwards of 80 feet high, 240 feet at the base and 160 feet wide. The platform-top of the pyramid measures about 23 feet by 80. The pyramid is built of rough stone and rubble, and was faced with stones flat-hewn, some of which are still in position. On the east side a stairway, steeper than that of Chichen, ascends to the top. The pyramid is crowned with a temple which measures some 70 feet by 12 and is three-roomed. This castillo at Uxmal is distinguished from those at Chichen and elsewhere by a unique feature, namely the building-out of a small edifice or temple some 20 feet below the level of the platform summit of the mound, and having its roof level with it. This building stands on a projecting platform of its own, on the west side of the pyramid, and originally communicated with the ground by a stairway 24 feet wide. It has one doorway, and its façade is more richly ornamented than that of any other building in the group, notable being the colossal "snouted mask" over the doorway. This rests upon a pedestal with two jaguar heads looking each way. The door lintels are sapota beams, which are to-day still in their places, as they were when Stephens visited the city in 1842.

Separated from the pyramid by what appears to have been a small courtyard, is the Nunnery, a group of four buildings roughly forming a quadrangle, with passage-way at the corners; really four distinct buildings forming the sides of a large courtyard. Three of these edifices present a solid front externally, while that on the south, 279 feet long, has as its centre a gateway spanned by an arch, 10 feet 8 inches wide and some 15 feet high. The whole four buildings, though on slightly different levels, may be roughly said to stand on a terrace some 300 feet square. All the buildings have the walls plain and the entablature elaborately sculptured. That on the east had a centrepiece above the cornice; while that on the north was adorned with a false front, consisting of a series of triangular gables. In the scheme of decoration, the most notable features are the so-called snouted mask, which we found at Chichen, and the feathered serpent design. Between the Nunnery and the Castillo Stephens found what he called the House of Birds, because of its exterior being ornamented with rude representations of feathers and birds. To the south of the Nunnery quadrangle still stand the ruined walls of what was a tennis-court, such as we have described and illustrated at Chichen. Still further south stands the Governor's Palace, about 300 feet long, 40 feet wide, and some 25 feet high. It has eleven doorways in front and one at each end. The interior is longitudinally divided into two corridors which are in turn partitioned off into oblong-shaped rooms, the chief of which, in the centre of the building, are 60 feet long. There is nothing notable in the actual building of this palace, which conforms to the designs common at Chichen and elsewhere. The rear of the building is unbroken by doorways, but has two arches towards each end let into the building. The full length of the entablature is elaborately carved in a latticework pattern, with ornamentation superimposed, in which the snouted mask is a leading feature. Over the doorways the ordinary design is broken by specially elaborate carvings which usually take the form of a V shape bordered with a lattice pattern and small projecting squares. To the north-west of this palace is the so-called House of Turtles, which gains its name from the curious frieze on which turtles are the chief ornamentation. It has a frontage of 94 feet and is about 30 feet deep. The east and west ends are much ruined, and portions of the roof have fallen. It is remarkable as entirely lacking the profuse ornamentation of the Governor's Palace and the Nunnery.

To the south-west of this stands the building, in shape a quadrangle, to which the absurd name of House of Pigeons has been given in allusion to a series of nine gables, of which eight are still standing, which form a false front, each gable pierced with thirty rectangular openings in seven horizontal rows. The whole building is 240 feet long. In the centre of the front, which looks northward, is an arch 10 feet wide, leading into what was once the courtyard of the building. The other wings of the quadrangle are in hopeless ruin. To the south of the House of Pigeons is another small courtyard enclosed once on the east and west by buildings, with a mound on the south side up which runs a well-preserved stairway. At the south-west corner of the Governor's Palace is a large truncated pyramid between 60 and 70 feet high and about 270 feet at the base. The top is about 70 feet square, and some 15 feet from it on the north side is a ledge or terrace which suggests that the buildings which once stood on this mound were similar in design to those which we have described as still standing on the mound called the House of the Dwarf.