The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

“Many of the larger golden objects, apparently, were not ‘killed’ before being offered to the Rain God, but nearly all the smaller articles of gold were crushed. Most of these have since been painstakingly straightened into their original shapes.

“Of the pottery vessels, very few were recovered unbroken. Some, as I have said, were containers for copal and rubber incense. Others, I am led to believe, contained the ancient libation of bal-che or sacred mead which was thrown into the pool together with the captive warrior victims. This fermented drink made of rainwater, wild honey, and the bark of the yax tree, according to tradition, was for men only. Women were never permitted to taste it nor to be present at the ceremonies where it was used as a libation to the gods. The narrow-necked vessel in which it was contained was called a pool and had a flat clay stopper fastened to the neck with cords of bark. We brought up several of the necks of such containers with the stoppers still held in the orifices by the bark binding.

“Several of the open vessels with tripod legs are glazed with red inside and out; others have a blue lining, and many were red on the outer surface but left the natural clay color upon the inside. The legs were either rounded and hollow, containing rattle pellets, or thin and solid. They are often fashioned as the heads of alligators or as human grotesques. Many large flat vessels and shallow circular dishes, some nine inches in diameter, were found, of the same design and finish as those I have unearthed in ancient graves in Labna and other old Maya cities.

“The ancient devotees seem to have been especially partial to a certain cylindrical vessel about six inches in diameter and nine inches high. These were often of thin structure and covered with designs and hieroglyphs or bearing the outlined figures of some deity surrounded with the conventional symbols of his attributes.

“A large circular earthenware pan, seven inches in diameter and with a long, thick handle which frequently ended in a carved head, was in common use as an incense-burner. It was rarely made of well-kilned ware and was evidently intended only for brief service. We found many broken utensils of this sort, but only one perfect specimen, which is exceptional in that it is of better-kilned material and of most artistic workmanship. Its pleasing outline is ornamented with openwork spaces intended to give needed draft to the burning copal in its basin. Nearly all the incense-burners of this type have hollow legs containing burned clay pellets evidently designed to produce a rattling sound at religious dances and rituals.

“The mortuary urns are large vessels ornamented with the likeness of a human figure surrounded with a conventional design. The figure usually bears upon its back a vase-like receptacle doubtless designed to receive and preserve the ashes of the dead. I do not know whether these urns were empty when thrown into the well or actually contained human ashes. I hope this point may be settled by laboratory examination.

“The finding of copal and the intimate association of the copal masses with the potsherds and unbroken earthenware vessels, leaves no doubt as to the use and purpose of both. The employment of copal resin as a medicament and as a sacred offering seems to have occurred almost simultaneously with the appearance of man upon the peninsula of Yucatan. In the primitive rock sculptures in the famous cave of Loltum is shown the burning of copal as a religious rite, while the earthen vessels found in the cave contain the blackened residue of burnt copal—a residue that, despite its antiquity and long inhumation, gives forth, when burned, the characteristic odor of copal resin, a fragrance not to be mistaken for any other. The copal tree, anciently known as psom, still grows sparsely in nearly every part of Yucatan and in ancient times it was carefully cultivated, while the gathering of the resin partook of the nature of a religious ceremony. One of the early Spanish chroniclers says:

Psom is the name of a tree from which the natives take out a certain kind of resin-like incense which they burn before their idols and in their houses. We Spaniards took advantage of this resin to cure many diseases and we called it copal, which is a Mexican word.

“The first piece of copal we found was nearly round and about the size of a baseball. The resin when fresh is light in weight and almost transparent, but time and the pressure of water at the bottom of the well have given our copal specimens the general lack-luster appearance of the bog-butter found in the lacustrine deposits of Switzerland. Several hundreds of these copal masses were brought up in round or oval form and many with the marks on them of wicker containers or baskets. One of the largest of these copal specimens, weighing several pounds, was thus incased, some portions of the basket fabric still clinging to the copal. Evidently the copal was still plastic when placed in the baskets. A number of the copal nodules had been wrapped in leaves, the veined imprint of which upon the copal surface is so clear that I doubt not that any good botanist would be able to identify the tree or vine from which they were plucked.

“Quantities of bark were brought up which have upon the inner surface pellets of copal arranged in the conventional symbol or prayer for rain. Several of the copal masses are molded in the semblance of human figures or faces, many of them fantastic or grotesque. Many are in the form of frogs and some of these frogs hold a small ball of rubber in their mouths.