Maya symbols and gods
The gods and signs of the ancient Maya, from Kukulkan and Chaac to the calendar and the bar-and-dot numbers, and how Maya communities keep them today.
- KukulkanThe feathered serpent of the Yucatec Maya, carved as serpent heads at the foot of the great pyramid at Chichén Itzá. Around the spring and autumn equinoxes, crowds gather there to watch a serpent of sunlight form on the stairway.
- ChaacThe Maya god of rain, thunder and lightning, drawn in the codices with a long, hanging nose and a lightning axe in his hand. Yucatec Maya farmers still hold the Ch’a Cháak ceremony to ask the chaacs for rain.
- ItzamnaThe aged creator god of the Maya, lord of the sky, shown as an old man and named in the glyphs with a sign like a shield or mirror. Mayanists also call him God D.
- Maize GodThe young Maya god of maize, his long head shaped like an ear of corn and sprouting leaves. In the K’iche’ creation story the first people were made from maize, and Maya people today speak of maize as sacred.
- Maya calendarSeveral interlocking counts of days: the 260-day Tzolk’in, the 365-day Haab’, the 52-year Calendar Round and the Long Count. Maya daykeepers in Guatemala keep the 260-day count today, and the Long Count cycle that ended on 21 December 2012 foretold no end of the world.
- Maya numerals (bar and dot)The Maya wrote numbers with a dot for one, a bar for five and a shell for zero, counting in twenties. Stacked in levels, the signs could record very large numbers and long spans of time.
About maya symbols and gods
Maya symbols and gods follows the images of the Maya world back to the codices, the carved stones and the people who keep them. There are six pages so far. Four are gods: Kukulkan, the feathered serpent of Chichén Itzá; Chaac, the long-nosed god of rain and lightning; Itzamna, the old creator god of the sky; and the young Maize God, whose head is shaped like an ear of corn. Two are systems of signs: the Maya calendar, with its 260-day Tzolk’in, 365-day Haab’ and Long Count, and the bar-and-dot numbers, with a shell for zero.
A living people
The Maya are not a vanished people. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) counts more than thirty living Mayan languages, and describes a shared heritage from a civilisation that peaked between 250 and 1200 CE. The name itself, the museum notes, comes from Maaya, a Yucatec word for the language of the Yucatán peninsula, which Western scholars extended to all Maya peoples. Rituals tied to the land and the calendar are still practised: daykeepers in the highlands of Guatemala keep the 260-day count, and farmers in Yucatán hold ceremonies for rain.
Where the images come from
Most of what is known about the Maya gods comes from the Maya themselves, not from Spanish writers. Karl Taube points out that sixteenth-century sources are scarcer for the Maya than for the Aztecs; the Spanish colonial account of Diego de Landa and the K’iche’ Popol Vuh are indispensable, but the gods are known above all from Maya art and writing. Only three Maya books from before the conquest are known, the Dresden, Paris and Madrid codices, and in 1904 Paul Schellhas gave each of their gods a letter, from A onwards, because so few could then be named. Chaac is God B, Itzamna God D and the Maize God God E. The gods appear far more often on Classic stone monuments and on painted cups for drinking cacao, made between 250 and 900.
Modern stories about Maya signs
Two modern events gather around these pages. The end of a Long Count cycle on 21 December 2012 was widely called a Maya prophecy of the end of the world; the NMAI says these predictions were mostly made by non-experts and people who are not Maya. And each spring equinox thousands of visitors gather at Chichén Itzá to watch a serpent of light descend the pyramid of Kukulkan, an effect first described as an equinox event in the 1960s and 1970s, whose purpose archaeologists still debate.
Sources
- The Maya People (Living Maya Time), Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, The Maya People
- The Calendar System (Living Maya Time), Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, The Calendar System
- Antiguos dioses mayas (Karl A. Taube, Arqueología Mexicana), Karl A. Taube, “Antiguos dioses mayas”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 20, pp. 20–29, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- ¿Quién es Chaac? (Mercedes de la Garza, Arqueología Mexicana), Mercedes de la Garza, “Chaac, la sacralidad del agua”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 96, pp. 35–39, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Itzamnaaj. El dios creador (Dios D) (Tomás Pérez Suárez, Arqueología Mexicana), Tomás Pérez Suárez, “Dioses mayas”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 88, pp. 57–65, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), title
- Nal. El Dios del Maíz (Dios E) (Tomás Pérez Suárez, Arqueología Mexicana), Tomás Pérez Suárez, “Dioses mayas”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 88, pp. 57–65, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), title
- 2012: Resetting the Count (Living Maya Time), Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2012: Resetting the Count
- El Sol en Chichén Itzá y Dzibilchaltún. La supuesta importancia de los equinoccios en Mesoamérica (Ivan Šprajc and Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, Arqueología Mexicana), Ivan Šprajc and Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, Arqueología Mexicana no. 149, pp. 26–31, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
Last reviewed October 3, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research