Editing Maya mythology (section)

==Reconstructing pre-Spanish mythology==
{{Mythology}}
It is doubtful that mythological narratives were ever completely rendered hieroglyphically, even though a sort of 'strip books' may once have existed. The surviving Mayan books are mainly of a ritual and also (in the case of the [[Paris Codex]]) historical nature, and contain few mythical scenes. As a consequence, depictions on temple walls, stelae, and movable objects (especially the so-called 'ceramic codex') are used to aid reconstruction of pre-Spanish Mayan mythology. A main problem with depictions is defining what constitutes a mythological scene, since any given scene might also represent a moment in a ritual sequence, a visual metaphor stemming from oral literature, a scene from mundane life, or a historical event. The easiest way to solve this problem is to focus on scenes that include known mythological actors. This only became possible in the early 1970s, when an enormous increase in the number of Maya vases available for study occurred.

In the seventies, the leading Maya scholar [[Michael D. Coe]] identified several actors of the ''Popol Vuh'' hero myth on ceramics, chief amongst these Hunahpu, Xbalanque, and the Howler Monkey brothers (Hun Batz and Hun Choven).<ref>Coe 1973, 1977, 1978</ref> This initiated a tendency among scholars to interpret vase scenes nearly exclusively in terms of the ''Popol Vuh''. Especially influential in this respect was one of Coe's students, [[Karl Taube]], who equated the so-called "tonsured maize god" with [[Hun Hunahpu|Hun-Hunahpu]], the father of the ''Popol Vuh'' hero brothers.<ref>Taube 1983</ref> Using bits from monumental inscriptions, [[Linda Schele]] even composed a cosmogonic myth for this "First Father", one that still awaits iconographic confirmation. It runs as follows:<ref>Schele 1993: 75</ref> 

"Under the aegis of First Father, One-Maize-revealed, three stones were set up at a place called 'Lying-down-sky', forming the image of the sky. First Father had entered the sky and made a house of eight partitions there. He had also raised the Wakah-Chan, the World Tree, so that its crown stood in the north sky. And finally, he had given circular motion to the sky, setting the constellations into their dance through the night." 

More recently, two major works by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos (2011, 2017) opened up new horizons of iconographic interpretation by considering a great variety of Mayan and Mesoamerican tales in addition to the ''Popol Vuh''.