World history of the ball game. How the ancient Mayans played ball Mayan stadiums

The year is 1185, we are in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula (now the territory of modern Mexico) in the ancient Indian city of Chichen Itza. We walk around the central square, surrounded on all sides by majestic pyramidal temples dedicated to various gods of the Mayan religion. But where is everyone rushing to? Apparently something very interesting will happen now, and for sure - in an instant the usual din of the city is absorbed by the rhythmic (and very loud) beat of drums by the solemn playing of trumpets, flutes, and some other strange instruments. And no wonder, because in a moment the real Mesoamerican football will begin! Although it’s not exactly football (well, as we used to imagine it), but a ritual ball game, let’s go quickly and take seats according to the tickets we bought.

Football is one of the oldest (and favorite) sports games in the world, which boys (and even some girls) love to play in almost all corners of our planet. Nowadays the attention of a huge number of people is focused on football topics, even when Euro 2012 recently began. So I also decided not to stand aside and write something interesting about football, and since our site is far from sports, but very close to various “high matters” such as culture, art, religion. Do you think football has nothing to do with religion, but just an interesting sports game? Nothing of the kind, even in ancient times among some peoples, in particular the Mayans, the appearance of football was inextricably linked with the sacred religious epic and had a real ritual character. And ancient Indian football, which the Mayans loved so much, was a real religious mystery that reproduced the events of the sacred epic Popol Vuh. Therefore, welcome to mystery football, a ritual ball game.

And we are again transported to the Mayan stadium, this is how it looks in our time.

As you can see, everything around is overgrown with grass and has fallen into disrepair, but on the sides there are still stone rings like these.

They served as gates; you had to hit them with a huge, heavy rubber ball. It was not easy to do this, because the ball was large and heavy (they say it could easily cause fatal injuries to some not very efficient player, but bruises from blows were generally common for ancient Indian football players) the ring was small, only several centimeters larger than the size of the ball itself. The game went down to one goal, the team that scored first immediately won. The ball could not be picked up with your hands; you could only hit it with your knee, elbows or a special bat. These are all technical points, but let's imagine how it could be.

We turn on the time machine and rewind nine centuries ago, we are at that very stadium, around which life is in full swing, on its two sides there is nowhere for an apple to fall, everything is packed with curious spectators and fans. Drums are solemnly beaten and trumpets are played, two teams enter the stadium, superbly trained, infinitely brave and courageous player-warriors are dressed in special shields, leather elbow pads and knee pads, today they will play, although what kind of play is there - to fight, not for life, but to death. After all, the team that loses the ritual ball game, according to the ancient, cruel Mayan customs, will be sacrificed in its entirety to the gods, they will be put on the altar and their hearts will be torn out while still alive. But the team that wins will be covered with great glory and honors, they know what they are getting into.

One of the ancient Mayan frescoes depicting the sacrifice of a ball player.

Now the players have already entered the field and taken their positions, the priest on duty (who also acts as a judge) gives a conventional sign, the drums and trumpets fall silent, and finally the game begins! Hundreds of spectators watch in fascination the flight of the heavy rubber ball as the players desperately try to score into the coveted hoop. But all in vain, the ball bounces off the ring every now and then. By the way, for unsuccessful shots, when the ball simply hits the ring, penalty points are awarded. All actions of the players are under the close attention of the spectators, successful masterful strikes, high jumps The audience accompanies with loud applause and applause. There were even cases when one of the spectators, too carried away by the game, fell from the stands, which often had fatal consequences for such a poor fellow (the fall was high).

... The game has already lasted two hours, the players (and spectators too) are pretty tired, and the priests are thinking about counting the victory by points, but then the stocky captain of one of the teams suddenly intercepts the ball, throws it up and hits it with all his might with his bat, the ball hits straight into the ring, the stands literally explode with applause and ovations dedicated to the winning team. And on the walls of the neighboring temple the sacrificial fires have already been lit, the poor fellow from the losing team is waiting for the ax head in an instant...

This is what it is - a ritual ball game, a cruel bloody mystery of the no less cruel religion of the Mayan Indians. For the Indians themselves, playing ball was not just fun, but had enormous ritual and sacred significance; they believed that in this way they served the gods. Often, a ritual ball game was played when it was necessary to make rain, ask the gods for victory in a war, or simply give some kind of bribe. But its appearance is interesting, which is associated with the mythical Indian epic Popol Vuh about the adventures of two divine twin brothers, where one of the first (and one of the oldest) mentions of football is there. But read about the Popol Vuh in the next article.

P.S. The spirits say: It’s also very interesting to know and listen to the solemn music that was played before the ancient Indian ritual ball game. Nowadays it’s not a problem to download music from contact, torrents or somewhere else in three clicks of the mouse, but where can you find that ancient music that sounded many centuries ago? (There were no contacts with torrents then).

Mesoamerican ball game

Sports and ritual

E. Priymak

M. Styuflyaev

© S. Dida, 2017

© E. Priymak, 2017

© M. Styuflyaev, 2017

ISBN 978-5-4485-2606-0

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero

Introduction

In historical science, Mesoamerica is usually called a vast region that stretched from the central regions of Mexico in the north to Costa Rica in the south. Geographically, it is part of Central America, but the term "Mesoamerica" ​​is used to denote a historical and cultural community. Numerous indigenous peoples living on the territory of Mesoamerica from ancient times to the present day, despite all the features and differences from each other, apparently had a single origin, their historical destinies are also inextricably intertwined. It is therefore not surprising that when studying Mesoamerican cultures, researchers encounter similar systems of hieroglyphic writing, a common complex cyclical calendar, interconnected religious concepts and ritual ceremonies emphasizing the importance of the sacrifice of human blood.

A worthy place in this series of general Mesoamerican cultural phenomena is occupied by the ball game. It is probably the oldest known team ball game in the world. Archaeological research shows that people were playing on special courts as early as 1400 BC, and the rubber ball itself appears no later than 1700 BC, and the context in which several balls were found indicates that they were used not only for ritual purposes. In addition, in the site of El Openo in the state of Michoacán (Mexico), figurines of ball players were found dating back to 1700 BC, however, there are no rubber growers in this region, therefore, most likely, the game got there as a result of external influence.

It is safe to say that the Mesoamerican ball game is at least one of the first international sports games. The territory of distribution of the game in one or another variety went beyond the already impressive region of Mesoamerica and included the southwest of the modern USA, the Antilles, and perhaps even reached South America. In 1529, it was introduced in Europe - admiring the skill of the players, the conqueror of the Aztec Empire, Hernan Cortes, took several of them with him on his return journey and showed the game at the Spanish court as one of the wonders of the New World. The Europeans were especially impressed by the properties of the rubber ball, a material hitherto unknown to them.

The king of Kalakmul (right) plays ball with the deceased ruler of Tonina (left) K'inich-Baaknal-Chaahk. Monument 171, Tonina (Chiapas). National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico). Photo: Dmitry Ivanov.

It should be especially emphasized that for the ancient Mesoamericans, playing ball was not just a sporting competition or a way to spend time pleasantly and beneficially for physical fitness. As we will show in detail in our essay, the game was filled with obvious ritual and sacred meaning, it was seen as a battle between the forces of life and death. The game also served a socio-political function - it was used to resolve conflict situations and unite a diverse population, including those from recently subjugated kingdoms.

Unfortunately, we do not know the exact rules by which they played in ancient times, and they could not have been universal; they changed over time or from region to region and even from city to city. For the same understandable reason, the game did not have a single generally accepted name: the Aztecs called it ollamalistli1, the Mayans of the classical period - piz", and the Indians of the state of Sinaloa (Mexico) who still play a type of ball game - ulama.

In this essay, the authors tried to give readers a general idea of ​​the ball game, this peculiar phenomenon generated by the Indian cultures of Mesoamerica. Attention is paid to the problem of the origin and history of the game, its modern varieties, equipment of players, descriptions of the most famous stadiums and many other issues. Since the game of ball is inseparable from the general history of Mesoamerica, it seems appropriate to consider separately the features of this ritual competition in Teotihuacan, the Mayan kingdoms and the Aztec Empire. The essay does not pretend to be a new full-fledged scientific research and pursues exclusively informational and popularization purposes. We hope that it will arouse interest and find a positive response among the widest readership, because as the predecessor of football and many other popular sports today, the ball game attracts attention not only in the context of the study of Mesoamerican civilizations.

The authors express their gratitude to Dmitry Ivanov, Anna Kudryavtseva, Stephanie Wood, David Grove, Robert Haskett, Ian Murcell and Jim Cook for permission to publish photographs. All other photographs and illustrations are either copyrighted, public domain or licensed under a free Creative Commons license.

Origin and history of the game

Based on the data available today, it is impossible to establish exactly when and where people first began to play ball, we can only assume that the game originated where rubber trees grow, that is, in the tropical lowlands. Traditionally, researchers associate its emergence and development with the process of formation of complex societies in Mesoamerica.2 In the classical and postclassical periods, the game is known primarily as important element elite culture, a competition for kings and high nobility. From this it is concluded that, for example, the presence of an Early Preclassic stadium in the site of Paso de la Amada is evidence of the development there of property inequality and a socio-political organization based on the principles of hierarchy. True, alternative points of view were also expressed. Archaeologist D. Anderson, in particular, pointed out that of the 23 ball courts recently discovered in the northwestern Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), dating back to the Preclassic period, only one was located within a community in which signs of social stratification were recorded. He concludes that in the Early and Middle Preclassic periods stadiums were already known in various parts of Mesoamerica, and this does not appear to be a pattern of the game spreading from one region to others. In his opinion, the game by this time was already known to egalitarian communities in which ordinary community members played it. It was only much later that the elite adapted the ball game for their political purposes.

Ball court in Paso de la Amada (Chapas, Mexico). Sketch by Warren D. Hill, Michael Blake & John E. Clark (doi:10.1038/31837).

Archaeological finds allow us to identify two areas in which the ball game could hypothetically originate. First, there is the aforementioned site of Paso de la Amada, located in the Soconusco region on the Pacific coast (Chapas, Mexico). There, near the chief's house, archaeologists W. Hill and M. Blake discovered the oldest ball court known to date, dating back to about 1400 BC. It consists of two parallel earthen platforms with a field between them. The length of the central alley is 80 meters, the width playing field– 8 meters, height of side ledges – 35 centimeters. Given the location of the site within an elite residence, it was probably intended for members of high society. Unlike later sites, there are no obvious connections with the ceremonial complex. Before this discovery, the oldest stadiums were considered to be those of the Middle Preclassic period (900-400 BC), discovered in the sites of Finca Acapulco, El Vergell and San Mateo.

The ball court at Abah Takalik (Guatemala) is one of the oldest yet discovered in Mesoamerica. Photo: Simon Burchell.

However, according to many scientists, the main contenders for the title of ancestors of the ball game are the so-called ancient, archaeological Olmecs who lived on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.3 The Gulf Coast (states of Veracruz and Tabasco) is the main source of rubber, therefore, there were the most favorable conditions for the emergence of the game. In the valley of the Coatzalcoalcos River is the site of El Manati, which is associated with the early history of the ancient Olmecs. Twelve rubber balls were found there, with five of them discovered by local residents in a fresh water source. The size of the balls varies from 8 to 22 centimeters in diameter, the smallest of which date back to 1700-1600 BC. This is the most ancient evidence of the existence of the ball game; it is noteworthy that in one of the burials in El-Manati, local residents also discovered a stone “collar” - one of the traditional elements of the player’s equipment. Many balls were found by archaeologists among ritual offerings, therefore, already in that distant time, the Olmecs endowed the game with sacred meaning.

The prototype of this game with a rubber ball, which requires great dexterity, arose in Mesoamerica as early as two thousand years BC. The Mayan ball game, like similar games of other peoples of Mesoamerica, contained elements of violence and cruelty - it ended with human sacrifice, for which it was started, and the playing fields were framed with stakes with human skulls. Only men participated in the game, divided into two teams, which included from one to four people. The players' task was to prevent the ball from touching the ground and to bring it to the goal, holding it with all parts of the body, with the exception of the hands and feet. The players wore special protective clothing. The ball was more often hollow; sometimes a human skull was hidden behind the rubber shell.

The ball courts consisted of two parallel stepped stands, between which there was a playing field, like a wide paved alley. Such stadiums were built in every city, and in El Tajin there were eleven of them. Apparently, there was a sports and ceremonial center here, where large-scale competitions were held.

The ball game was somewhat reminiscent Gladiator fights, when captives, sometimes representatives of the nobility from other cities, fought for their lives so as not to be sacrificed. The losers, tied together, were rolled down the stairs of the pyramids and fell to their deaths.

The last cities of the Maya.

Most northern cities built in the Postclassic era (950-1500) lasted less than 300 years, with the exception of Chichen Itza, which survived until the 13th century. This city shows architectural similarities with Tula, founded by the Toltecs ca. 900, suggesting that Chichen Itza served as an outpost or was an ally of the warlike Toltecs. The name of the city is derived from the Mayan words “chi” (“mouth”) and “itsa” (“wall”), but its architecture is so-called. Puuc style violates classical Mayan canons. For example, stone roofs of buildings are supported on flat beams rather than on stepped vaults. Some stone carvings depict Mayan and Toltec warriors together in battle scenes. Perhaps the Toltecs captured this city and over time turned it into a prosperous state. During the Postclassic period (1200-1450), Chichen Itza was for a time part of a political alliance with nearby Uxmal and Mayapan, known as the League of Mayapan. However, even before the arrival of the Spaniards, the League had collapsed, and Chichen Itza, like the cities of the classical era, was swallowed up by the jungle.

A.A. Borodatova

GAME OF BALL AS A WAY TO THE CAVE OF ANCESTORS
(On the issue of semiotics of the ritual ball game in ancient Mesoamerica)

History and semiotics of American Indian cultures. M., 2002, p. 129-175

Hundreds of studies have been devoted to the ball game, common in America before the advent of Europeans from Patagonia to the Great Lakes. 1 . Thanks to them, it is known that the game performed many social functions and occupied a special place in the culture of many Indian peoples: everywhere it was an important ritual action that ensured abundance of rain and fertility, a mechanism for regulating tense intergroup relations, an exciting sports competition and entertainment equated to the arts. Adopted by Europeans, the game of ball between two rival teams had a decisive influence on modern sport games with a ball.

Despite detailed descriptions and research dating back over a century, the game remains as obscure in many ways as ever. We will try, by examining the terminology, iconography and symbolism of the ritual of the game, primarily in Mayan culture, to illuminate some obscure aspects of this phenomenon.

In studying the game, we rely on three main, traditional sources - mythology, iconography and the architecture of stadiums preserved among the ruins of ancient cities. The fourth, most important source - hieroglyphic inscriptions in scenes of games on Mayan vessels and reliefs - is just beginning to be introduced into scientific circulation.

The first source, the Maya-Kiche epic "Popol Vuh", will be the focus of our study, which is also quite traditional. The myth underlying the archaic part of the epic, named by Yu.V. Berezkin’s myth about “hero-avengers” is one of the most common plots in the mythology of American Indians 2 . In it, the struggle between the divine twins and their antagonists is resolved in the form of a ball game. The standard plot of one of the variants of this myth, which underlies the epic tradition not only of the Quiche 3 , but also Totonacs, Popolukas, Tepehuas, Tarascans, as well as Hopi, Cabecar, Cubeo, Huitoto and many other peoples in the Americas 4 , is as follows: the heroes of the older generation (among the Mayans - a pair of twins typical of American mythologies, among the Totonacs - the father of the hero) die during a ball game at the hands of antagonists (among the Mayans - gods of death, among the Totonacs - thunder dwarfs); the son or sons of the dead (among the Quiches - the second pair of twins, among the Totonacs - the young god of corn) find the equipment of their parents necessary to confront the antagonists and decide to take revenge; they emerge victorious from trials and kill or subdue their enemies.
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The Quiché culture belongs to the mountain tradition. In the Mayan lowlands, the motif of the ball game in the plot of the myth about the avenging heroes was not preserved (here, instead of the game, the Maya Qeqchi feature a softened version of the test - a competition in solving riddles: the antagonist who did not solve the riddle of the heroes is killed by them 5 ). In this area, no information about the game has been preserved (in contrast to detailed descriptions of the Nahua gaming ritual); Mayan informants mention it only in passing as one of the entertainments of young men 6 . Moreover, it was in the lowlands in the classical era (1st millennium AD) that the center of the Mayan civilization was located and hundreds of cities flourished, each of which had several stadiums. This is where reliefs, figurines, painted and engraved vessels with scenes of games come from. All this, as well as the very location of the stadiums near the main temples and the fact that the rulers of states participated in the matches, indicate the wide spread of the game and its important role in ritual and cult during this period.

Some of the scenes on vessels of the 6th-10th centuries, depicting the ritual of the game, following the North American researcher of Mayan culture M. Ko, are now commonly interpreted as illustrations of lost episodes of the vast common Mayan epic. This epic formed the basis of the Mayan mythological tradition of the 1st millennium and was largely forgotten in the lowlands after its fall in the 8th-11th centuries. classical Mayan civilization. The Popol Vuh is a fragment of this tradition. 7 .

The absence of myth among the Maya of the lowlands, as well as the great similarity of the mythological traditions of the mountain Maya and the Totonacs (parallels and sometimes direct textual coincidences are noted in them) led the French researcher A. Ichon to the idea of ​​​​the possible influence of the Maya on the Totonacs 8 . Yu.E. Berezkin suggests the opposite direction of borrowing and considers the motif of the struggle of heroes with antagonists in the form of a ball game to be uncharacteristic of the Mayans: the Quiche borrowed it from the peoples of the Gulf Coast, from where they brought it in the 10th century. to mountainous Guatemala 9 .

Below we present materials that, it seems, will help somewhat clarify the problem with borrowings and answer the question: did the Mayans of the classical era know the myth of twins who played ball with antagonists?

Game as a rite of passage

The plot of the myth about the avenger heroes. The twins of the Quiché epic incur the wrath of the lords of the underworld, Xibalba, by playing ball all day long on the road to Xibalba, above the heads of its lords; the gods of death take this as a direct challenge and a desire to conquer them (in the Totonac myth, the thunder dwarfs also perceive the hero’s playing the flute, the art of which they do not master). The gods invite the twins to a competition in order to take possession of their equipment and kill the brothers. The heroes hide their equipment and descend into Xibalba without it. At night, the twins are in mortal danger in the "House of Testing", and during the day they play ball with the gods of death. The heroes are defeated and killed by the death gods on the playground.
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The younger pair of twins, having discovered the attributes for playing ball of their deceased father and uncle, clear the area and again infuriate the gods of death with the stomping and knocking of the ball. The Lords of Xibalba challenge the young men to a competition. Thanks to resourcefulness and magical abilities - both their own and their assistants - the heroes pass tests, die, come to life, kill the main rulers of Xibalba, and the rest of its rulers are deprived of power, divine rank, as well as their privilege and favorite pastime - playing ball. Following this, the brothers turn into the Sun and Moon.

The myth of hero-players, from the very structure of which it a priori follows that it reflects the ritual of playing ball, was reconstructed by Yu.V. Knorozov and studied by Yu.E. Berezkin as a myth on the plot of the initiation rite 10 : the trials of the twins in the underworld, leading to the death of the heroes and their subsequent rebirth (the first couple - in their children, the second - in the luminaries) went back to initiation rites. This corresponds to ethnographic data, according to which everywhere in America, where the game was important in ritual life and myths about players were widespread (primarily in Mesoamerica, the lowlands of Colombia and Venezuela, in Mato Grosso), the game was associated with initiation rituals.

Characters of the Quiché myth. The teams in the Popol Vuh are represented by three pairs of twins bearing calendar names; they are either rivals, with the twins in each pair playing against each other, or the younger pair (Hun Ahpu, "I Lord", and Xbalaque, "Little Jaguar", children of the twins Hun Hun Ahpu, "I Lord", and Vucub Hun Ahpu , "VII Master") plays against his monkey brothers ("I Monkey" and "VII Master"). The latter - exact analogues of the Monkey gods of the Nahua - were revered as patrons of crafts and fine arts, including ball games. The rivals of the older and younger pairs of players are also the team of gods of Xibalba, representing its two main rulers (judging by the names - “I Death” and “VII Death” - another twin pair).

The study of iconography confirmed the idea of ​​A.M. Zolotarev that the game confrontation clearly modeled a dually organized society 11 : in a number of scenes, judging by the masks of totem animals and birds on the heads of the players, the opponents represent dual phratries.

Along with a pair of twins, in the myth of the Maya-Kekchi (one of the peoples of the lowlands), a third, younger brother appears, who is not in the Quiche myth; he plays a passive role and stays away from his hero brothers 12 . This young man appears in the scenes on the vessels: in them he is the third “twin”, sometimes emphatically indistinguishable from
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The younger pair of heroes. It can be correlated with the god of corn, known from iconographic materials - a capricious child among the Olmecs, who “grew up” among the Mayans into a weak youth, who in the manuscripts is looked after by some and persecuted by other deities (D9b, MZZA, 51 a). However, the third “twin” on the vessels is not a weak and passive character, but a young hero corresponding to the corn god of the Tepehuai Totonac myths: he emerges unharmed from the trials and defeats the antagonists. In scenes on Mayan ceramics, the third hero, often depicted with an ear of corn on his head, is born from a turtle shell - one of the symbolic analogues of the world cave 13 -with the help of the father and uncle of the younger pair of twins.

In a number of episodes, this character, on the contrary, clearly stands out from the trio of heroes. In one scene, he sits on a throne with a characteristic ear of corn in his hair, instructing his brothers: they kneel before him in gaming belts and hip protectors - ready to play. On the curtain raised above the throne, and in the inscription behind the back of the young ruler, there is a drawing of a tortoise shell (a sign b oh,T625, “patron”), which recalls episodes of the Totonac myth in which the god of corn is born from the shell of the owner of the Turtle cave - his adoptive mother and patroness. In the Quiché myth, a tortoise shell replaces Hunahpu's severed head, which is hung as a "marker" for the ball to hit the stadium wall, allowing Xbalanque to take possession of the head and resurrect his brother.

Together with the three twins, three dwarfs (they are not in the Quiché myth) participate in the battles with the gods of Xibalba and in the dance of the “meeting of the souls of the dead” on the “cold staircase” to the underworld. All six dancers, named in the texts on the vessel as "demons of the wife of Livnya" 14 (The Great Goddess, a later version of the Moon Goddess, the wife of the storm god Tosh), corresponded to the gods of the six months of the rainy season in the form of dwarfs among the Olmecs: on the reliefs of stelae 3 in La Venta and L in Tres Zapotes, they form the retinue of the Great Goddess of the Moon and her husband , the thunder god, are the main gods of the Olmec pantheon (indication of the connection with dwarfs in the name of the Moon goddess among the Lacandons - Ak"-na, "Mother of Dwarfs" 15 , and the number of gods in the retinue of the thunder god among the ancient Mayans 16 , confirm the correctness of this interpretation).

Dwarfs, companions and assistants of young heroes in scenes on ceramics, rain gods in the Olmec pantheon and in Mesoamerican folklore, appearing in myths as both heroes and their antagonists, were considered the most ancient “race” of people. The dwarfs - the lords of the cave in the Totonac myth - in the Yucatan myths are born in the cave darkness of the first "creation" and act as sages, rulers and builders of the first cities. They play ball (in the scenes they act as “referees” in the game) and return to the cave to read the sacred books stored in it 17 .
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Other characters also act as assistants to the heroes: in the scene, Falcon, Snake and Toad deliver to the twins an invitation from the gods of death to a competition in the game (engraved on the shell); in the epic, the Rabbit replaces the ball during the game, the gods of Xibalba rush after him, and Xbalanque, meanwhile, takes possession of his brother’s head and revives him. In the myth of the 1st millennium, the role of the Rabbit was played by the Possum: in many scenes it is shown with its body swollen into a ball; The player performs a victory dance in front of the Possum ball. The mouse shows the younger pair of twins the place where the equipment for the game is hidden. A fat rodent, corresponding, apparently. The mouse of the myth finds the ball hidden not between the rafters of the roof, as in the epic, but under the throne of the Lord of Xibalba; the ruler himself, sitting on the throne, gives orders to two bird gods in playing belts - apparently, the twins' rivals.

The antagonists of the heroes, in addition to the gods of death and their servants (Bats, Owls, Jaguars, etc.), are the god Parrot - the personification of the Sun, the ruler of the world cave of one of the first "creations", and his two giant sons - the gods of mountains and earthquakes. In the Totonac myth, the antagonists of the young corn god are four cave dwarf thunders. There are many scenes of the heroes fighting with the antagonists - the old gods of Xibalba - on the vessels.

Descent down into the initial mouth of the cave. The twins descend into the underworld. Its name, common to all Mayans in ancient times, meant “[Place of] souls of the dead,” or “Entrance to the land of] ghosts.” Description of the road to Xibalba, along which the twins follow, as at the beginning of the 20th century. scientists noted, has direct parallels in many Mesoamerican versions of the posthumous path of the souls of the dead. The North American researcher of Mayan culture M. Ko, having analyzed the scenes and facial signs of deities in the ring (running mainly along the rim) texts on vessels, for the first time in a 1973 work connected them with the Quiché epic 18 . The correctness of this interpretation was confirmed by the decipherment of funeral texts on the vessels and the interpretation of the mythological scenes on them, carried out by Yu.V. Knorozov in 1974-1978.19 These texts - a standard funeral hymn, which describes the path of the soul of the deceased through the underworld and indicates the moment of its return to earth - were called by Knorozov the “rebirth formula”.

The epic and the "formula" say that the heroes of the myth, like the souls, descend into Xibalba along a "cold staircase" with "very steep steps" (i.e., along a mountain slope) to the bottom of a deep and narrow gorge; they walk along the bank of a river flowing through a gorge past thorny pumpkin trees, and cross the river on blow-out hunting tubes. At the crossroads of four “colored” roads, the young men choose the black, western road of death, leading to the palaces of the lords of Xibalba. Here the heroes will have to emerge unscathed from many trials, including winning a ball game.
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In iconography and myth we find a detailed image of the underworld: Xibalba of myth is not just an underworld, it is a deep mountain cave, personified by a reptile with the features of a serpent and a caiman. The main semiotic element of the image of the cave, the most characteristic feature of the monster is its wide open mouth, the iconographic expression of the entrance to the cave and the cave itself. Nahua "cave" pictogram, depicting the face and mouth of a monster; Mayan hieroglyphs (T365, “womb”, “cave”) and (T504, “darkness”, “night”, trans. “cave”) - ancient reinterpreted pictograms that preserve the main visual elements of the image of the cave - reproduce just such a mouth with two fangs over the waves of an underground reservoir.

The mouths of a mythical monster in various texts are isomorphic to the hole of a well/lake/hole in a snail shell (in a turtle shell)/entrance to a temple/cleft in a rock/crack (on the head of a deity/in the roof of a temple)/saddle/fork in the branches of the world tree, etc. .d. The “Olmec cross” (T153, “clouded”, omon. “boa constrictor”) - a symbol of the Cloud Cave, the sacred center of the world - was depicted in the mouth, eyes, forehead and body of the Cloud Reptile.

Rising from the primordial cosmic waters, the Serpent-Caiman (local variants - Turtle and Toad) embodied the Earth and its bowels - a cave in which clouds were believed to be born and an inexhaustible source of world waters. Scenes from myths unfolded in his mouth. The Caiman Serpent, revered as the owner of caves and reservoirs, including the Cenote of Sacrifice in Chichen Itza, personified the world tree growing in the “center of the world”, was associated with the ceiba and was depicted with a tail growing upward with a body passing into the branches of the tree (stele 25 c. Izapa), or standing on the tail in a cave/rising on the tail from a cave pond (stela 4 in Abah-Takalik, stela 63 in San Lorenzo). Teeth/growths on the skin were a characteristic feature of the Cayman and its symbolic counterparts, the ceiba, which has thorns on its trunk, and the thorny tree of the Quiché epic.

The mouth of the reptile-cave in Mesoamerica served as an iconographic expression of the universal archetypal mythology of the “toothed womb”: the entrance of initiates into the cave-underworld was understood as the swallowing of heroes by the initiating toothed mouth - as a temporary death preceding rebirth. This initiation motif is not found in the Quiché myth, but it is present in Mayan shamanic initiation. 20 and is being reconstructed in ancient ritual. We also meet him in the Yucatan myth about the cave-labyrinth Satunsat (Art. Zatunzat “[The place where] disappearance occurs”) - the first stone building built by dwarfs in Yucatan 21 .

This myth preserves extremely archaic descriptions of the cave-underworld: it lies behind an underground river and a road infested with snakes, and is described as the white fanged, fire-spewing mouth of the monster "Caiman Snake"
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This character corresponds to the Cloud Caiman of the Mayan manuscripts (D4-56, 53, M20a), Caiman and the Serpent - the guardians of the roads to the underworld among the Nahuas, the giant Zipakna of the Quiche myth (from Nahuatl. Zipactli, "Heavenly Caiman"), the owner of caves, lakes and Caymans among the Lacandons, “To the Great God Itzamna.” He clearly retains the features of the patron of initiation: he swallows the initiates, spews out a cleansing flame and at the same time contains within himself a reservoir with “living water”, guards books with “secret sciences” in the cave. In his later anthropomorphic incarnation, Cayman the Serpent was revered as the patron saint of priests among the Mayans (the sky god Itzamna) and the Nahuas (Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent), the inventor of the calendar, writing and other priestly sciences (the old man Itzamna in Figure D9b initiates into Nihyun the god of corn, personifying younger generation).

Test houses. The young heroes of the Quiché myth, “swallowed” by the cave mouth, will have to play ball with the gods of Xibalba during the day, and go through torture at night in five “Houses of Testing,” each of which is a metaphor for the world cave. The heroes undergo trials at night and they begin in the Houses of Darkness and Cold (which corresponds to the motives of the creation of the world in the darkness and cold of the original cave womb and the construction of cities by dwarfs in the darkness - before the birth of the first Sun). The name of the cave in the ancient language, ak"-nga (T504:23), is consonant with one of the names of its owner - the great goddess of the Moon (lac. Ak"-na), meant "dark house" (ak" - "darkness", "darkness with rain", "cave darkness", "night", transl. "cave"; compare Art. actum - "stone house", "cave"). The House of Darkness in the myths of the mountain Mayans, like the palace of the lord of the underworld Mictlantecuhtli among the Nahua and the sacred cave Votan (“Place of entrance [to the cave]”) among the Tzeltals and Mams, is described as a huge dark house in which innumerable dangers lurk, but in which at the same time - the key to rebirth (Votan is the third day of the Mayan mountain calendar, corresponded to the day of Ak" among Maya of the lowlands; the name Wotan and the epithet of “heart people” were borne by the Master of the Cave 22 ).

Further tests continue in the Houses of Knives (a variant of the House of Flame), Jaguars (with snarling predators) and Bats (guardians of the entrance to a cave with a knife on their nose, where the younger pair of twins is temporarily defeated: the Vampire Bat beheads the hero). All “Houses of Testing” are stages of purification in the cave through which the initiates must pass. The ancestor gods subjected the souls of the dead to all these operations, depicted in great detail on the vessels, “freeing” them from the flesh and preparing them for reincarnation: The ancient Mayans believed that only purified souls could incarnate. Jaguars, Bats and other gods of Xibalba in the dance dismembered the ghosts with the help of axes and knives, tore off skin and tissue from bones with fangs and claws, as well as scrapers (including from fish fins, therefore the hieroglyph of fish, sau, T738, in the "rebirth formula" " appears in a block denoting not only purified
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Zrak, sa(u)-aap, T738.130, but also the purification process itself). This aspect of purification, we believe, was related to the images imprinted on the stone "markers" from the stadiums (considered targets for hitting the ball) in the form of the heads of Jaguars and Bats.

An important stage in the “tests” of initiates and the souls of the dead was their purification by fire. In the Quiche myth, it begins with a bench of red-hot stone, which is offered to guests by the gods of Xibalba, then in the “House of Flame” and, finally, on a funeral pyre into which the brothers jump. The motif of testing heroic players by fire in a mountain cave (from which flames escape during eruptions) is present in most expanded versions of the myth among the Nahuas, Totonacs, Hopis and other peoples. Thus. The houses of testing in Xibalba were the “place of purification”, pok "-av (T563a: 585a), where, according to the “formula of rebirth”, the ghosts of the dead were sent. Moreover, the morpheme pok" meant precisely “purification by fire” (cf. Art. rok" - "to burn with fire", "to fry", "to burn clay vessels", ros she " - to burn trees"); it was also the semantic core in a group of words associated with the game: pok"-ta-pok" - "place (area) cleared by fire" and others. The stadium, named in the Quiche epic Pucbal Chan" - "Place of sacrifices for the ball game" , where the twins are tested by the game and where they are sacrificed, can also be translated as “Place of purification during the ball game” (pu s / pok “ - phonetic transition in Mayan languages).

Morpheme rho k" by homonym also meant "to wash", "to cleanse with water" (in the text on a vessel with a scene of a ball game 23 : I. T1.563a:585a,...u-pok"-av / F. T109.532, chac-cu / O. T96.501,ich-in - "...In the place of purification / [purified] in great times / in a reservoir"). Washing/purification with water was another universal initiation motive: the revival of heroes in myth occurs due to the fact that their bones are thrown into a cave river. Before leaving the river, the heroes go through the stage of fish (in one of versions of fish - living in the roots/in the trunk of the world tree - one of the first "races" of people; the meanings of sau, "fish", and sa(y)-aan, "purified") are successfully combined here. In the scenes, water goddesses wash the heroes in the waters cave lake, and the twins, in their former form as beautiful young men, come out of it to the shore.

In the mouth of the patron of initiation, the Serpent-Caiman - the lords of the heavenly and underground waters that watered the world, purified, revived, transferred souls, gave birth - the initiation ritual consisted of "sprinkling"/washing - the symbolic immersion of adolescents in the "sacred", "virgin" cave waters ; this ritual, according to manuscripts and sources of the 16th century, was performed by the high priest and his assistant priestess 24 - in ancient times, impersonators of the Snail God and the Great Goddess, the lords of the cave. Having filled large jugs with “virgin” water, the ancestor gods purified the souls of the dead, therefore, on the jugs, as well as on the decorations and attributes of the purifying gods,
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| the sign "ak" is a symbol of a cave reservoir. The cave in the center of the world (v. chumuc cab - lit. "in the bosom of the earth"), containing a reservoir inside (like the world tree growing from this reservoir, enclosing a river in its trunk), was universally associated with the female womb, female fertility, reincarnation and procreation.

Purification by fire and water - two complementary elements of the cave - in other versions corresponds to the motif of the hero passing through a furnace or a red-hot steam bath, ideally modeling a cave, for example, in the Totonac ritual and myth 25 (in the Kiche and Kekchi myths there is no motive for testing in a bathhouse, but it is restored in the ritual: steam baths in the 1st - 12th centuries were attached to stadiums or built near them). The same symbolism had the washing of the souls of the dead with a narcotic liquid, a “fiery stream” (tooc t"oh, T67: t"oh), which was scooped out of “fire jugs” and administered by enemas. Drugs of various kinds were taken in rituals for purification - liberation of the soul. In the scenes, the twins are taught how to take drugs and interpret trance visions by the great god, one of the main lords of the cave. 26 . To initiated teenagers in Yucatan in the 16th century. they were given to smell a bouquet of special flowers and take tobacco from a pipe: “intoxicating” flowers and tobacco were included in the category of psychotropic substances. With their help, the soul of the initiate temporarily left the body and flew into a cave - to the sources of true knowledge 27 .

On the mural in Tikal, the dancing god-player has a vessel with the neck down, hanging on his neck, in the usual shape for scenes of purification and rituals with drugs, with the sign “ak” on it; a red snake appears from the vessel (in the form of a fire sign); on the neck of another dancer is shown a necklace common for dancing purifiers - etc., art. ah "(T 12), encoding, we believe, the ritual exclamation that the high priest traditionally uttered at the conclusion of the initiation rite: ah! , "wake up!" 28 . After the ritual, the teenagers were “reborn”, “awakened to a new life” - they emerged from the cave initiating mouth reborn.

Trialgameinto the ball. At night the heroes had to survive in the Test Houses, and during the day they had to win the ball game. This test (the main one in the Totonac myth) also ends with the temporary death of the heroes. In the scenes on the vessel, illustrating the epic, the action takes place in Pukbal Chah - on the field of the stadium (its stepped platform is shown in the background) near the world tree; the fork of the branches is marked by a bird, the trunk and roots are marked by the head of the “great” god (personifies the cave); Four Owls fly near the tree with the beaks of hummingbirds (in the epic - messengers of the lords of death). On the stadium floor, the gods of Xibalba may be deciding which ball their opponents will play with. Nearby is the Snail God, one of the main lords of the underworld.
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Ney, sitting on a throne - the face of the same cave god, gives orders to the black "executioner" god standing on the shell of a turtle; one of the twins appears from the shell (was hiding in it?), who, as M. Ko believes, begs the Snail for mercy 29 .

In the myth, an important role is given to the gaming equipment of the heroes. Items of equipment necessary to repel heavy ball, - a ball, a belt-belt in the shape of a yoke, protectors for the hips and knees of thick leather, a helmet and gloves - were considered endowed with magical powers, on which the outcome of the match largely depended. The more skillful the players were, the greater the power in their equipment. That’s why the gods of death were so eager to take possession of the ball and the heroes’ playing clothes. Part of the reason the first pair of twins died was that their equipment was left at home; with his help, the second pair of heroes defeated the lords of death.

Real pieces of gaming equipment and their stone copies, covered with carvings depicting scenes from myths, were revered as sacred amulets; they were passed down by inheritance and accompanied the burial of noble players 30 . The scenes were drawn on the throne of the rulers or under it. It is known that the equipment was very expensive; Among the Nahuas, only aristocrats and professional players owned it. In Tenochtitlan, before the game, priests burned incense in front of their equipment, asking the gods for success in the game 31 .

Bloodshed. The game in myth and ritual ends with the killing of the players at the world tree at Pucbal Chah, "Place of Sacrifices for the Ball Game," on the playing field. Bats decapitate the heroes. Jaguars dismember their bodies with claws and fangs. The shedding of blood (another universal initiation motive) was an integral part of the ball game ritual. Five nights of trials of the Quiché myth Yu.V. Knorozov compared it with an archaic five-day ritual, a late version of initiation tests, which unfolded in Yucatan in the 16th century. at the Pa-kum Chak holiday 32 , when noble men and priests, during five nights in the temple of the patron god of warriors, performed the ritual of stringing all its participants onto one rope, stretched through punctures in the penises; in the drawing in the manuscript (M196) gods from both mythical phratries perform the same ritual, standing at the temple, the roof of which goes to the constellation Turtle. In the same way, the ancestor gods from both “halves,” including the two twins, standing over the cups, pierce their penises in the scene on the vessel.

The ritual went back to extremely archaic genital operations, designed to mark the transition to a new category of “culturally completed”, “culturally marked”. The action was supposed to “feed” the umbilical cord of the world with the blood of the participants, strengthen the blood unity of the community, and contribute to the generation of new life. Thus, the god Quetzalcoatl shed blood from his penis over a vessel with the bones of his ancestors in order to give birth to people of a new “creation.”
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Trade cult. The scenes on the vessels reveal another archaic universal layer of initiation symbolism associated with the hunting cult. In most scenes, one of the teams represents the Deer phratry: the mask of the Deer God on the players is so common (this fact has been noted by a number of researchers, but no explanation has been given) and this is such a significant element of the ritual that the players could be called the “deer people” (in This is also supported by the Mayan self-name: ah chi, T12.219, - “deer hunter”, originally “having a deer as a totem” 33 ). On several vessels, the player (for example, the main player in the “deer” team) acts as an impersonator of the old black god - the master of animals and hunting, the patron of hunters, the anthropomorphic deer god, “who drives [game] seven times.” The holiday of his zoomorphic prototype, the Deer God, was celebrated on the day of I Ahav (“I Lord”) and was the birthday of the hero-hunter. In other words, the Deer God and one of the heroic brothers in both pairs bore the same calendar name, the etymology of which means “Beautiful [sole] hunter” (shooter, lit. “chasing [game]”): the twins of the myth hunt with blowpipes for a bird , living on the world tree, and with darts on a deer.

There are many and different mystical cycles in the manuscripts that could be dated by one date, but the coincidence of three events dating back to the day of I Ahab, namely: the festival of the Deer god, shown with a standing phallus filled with seed, and raised up front hooves, i.e. as a world tree and fertilizer (M426); the festival of the ruler with a sacrifice at the world tree (manuscripts, ritual) and the sacrifice of the hero Hunahpu / I Ahab, whose head-fruit, full of juice-saliva-seed, placed on the world thorny tree - an analogue of a toothy mouth, gives birth to a second pair of heroes (myth , ritual, iconography) - in our opinion, not by chance: initiation rites included magical ceremonies designed to ensure the reproduction of game animals. The Deer God and the hero - hunter and player - act as procreators: in Mayan myths, the Deer, as the owner of animals, takes care of the fertility of females and impregnates them; the hero-hunter does the same when he goes down to the Deer’s cave, and the hunters do the same during the hunting season, when they are thought of as symbolic spouses of game animals. 34 .

Transformations in the cave and receiving the soul. The cleansing of twins takes place where all transformations occur and the eternal cycle of vital energy is ensured, where souls are clothed with flesh and deprived of it, taking on different appearances. Symbolic and real death is interpreted as reincarnation. Initiation motive of acquiring a different appearance, quality and status during penetration
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The cave is present in the myth. Among the many "witchcraft transformations" or "magic" that the twins perform, one is especially symbolic: in a theatrical performance that they stage for the gods of Xibalba, the brothers kill and revive each other.

But the myth does not talk about the main “transformation”: this, according to some versions, is the acquisition, according to others, the establishment of contact with one’s new soul - a helper and double in the form of a beast, nagual (vaay). The strength and character of this soul determined the fate of a person; She was associated with the ability to see and move up the social ladder. The ability to take on the image of one’s soul-vaa and, with its help, establish contact with the world of spirits and carry out one’s social functions, including ensuring a successful hunt, was considered the most important ability. In the ritual, the players, symbolically entering a cave inhabited by deer, acquired a double soul in the image of a deer (ancient v aau chi) - an exact reproduction of the image of the totemic ancestor, reincarnated as ancestors and patron spirits (the motive for such a transformation is found in the myths of the Totonacs, Tarascans and many others peoples; the ancient self-name of the Maya, “having a deer as a totem,” speaks about the same thing),

So, in the process of initiation tests, the young heroes were reincarnated, “born a second time” - they became men: they acquired a new appearance, a helping spirit and sacred knowledge, won the right to hunt and play ball, take drugs and interpret visions, shed blood, etc. . The whole ritual was aimed at adolescents gaining generative power: now they could marry and participate in the procreation of game animals - during the hunt, killing, giving birth to animals.

Initiatory mystery. In the games on the field of the stadium, surrounded by reliefs with scenes from sacred myths, the “era of creation” was clearly reproduced, when the totemic ancestors (“reindeer people”) played a ball with two teams in the center of the universe (perhaps even that same “original” game, the division in which ancestral animals into two warring teams served as a pretext and model for the subsequent division of society into dual halves 35 ). The ritual of the game with the ceremonies that open and complete it can apparently be interpreted as a theatrical performance of the twin myth, a kind of initiation mystery (not in the original sense of a secret rite for initiates, but rather in the European late medieval understanding of the mystery as a public performance in which episodes from the Holy Scriptures were played out), the main part of which reproduced the heroes’ descent into the underworld, their game of ball with the antagonists, who were represented by the team of the rival phratry, the symbolic death of the heroes and their rebirth in the cave. This performance could be played out on the stadium field during celebrations dating back to the initiation rite.
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Funeral games

Funeral games in honor of the rulers. From the study of mythological scenes we will move on to scenes of a historical nature in which real historical figures, representatives of the highest nobility of the cities, act. Vessels with scenes of victorious games are painted in their honor, for the day of their memorial rite; the “formula of rebirth” describes the path of their souls, the third syntagma of the “formula” contains their title.

It is well known that in the cities of Central Mexico before the conquest, games were an important part of the life of the elite, a prestigious, aristocratic occupation, the main gambling sports competition, and the favorite entertainment of the nobility (the epic also emphasizes that the game is the privilege of the gods and aristocrats). Noble men (in the inscriptions on Mayan vessels are called “patrons” and “lords”) played ball all day long, perfecting their art (note that the gods of Xibalba invite the twins to a competition, not only wanting to destroy them, but also to enjoy the art of their game) . In this, as in other aristocratic activities, they imitated the twins, who for the Mayan nobility clearly served as a model of the "enlightened hero" 36 .

The ruler, whose soul went to the “commonwealth of the Snail Spirit” to make a “great transition” through the underworld, plays ball in the scene on his funeral vessel: he is shown with a mask of the Deer God on his head in a victorious “stance”; members of his team wearing military commanders' headdresses greet him with the victory anthem 37 . Two aristocrats play with a large black ball against the backdrop of a stepped stadium platform; the ruler of the city wins, shown falling to deflect the ball (he is identified by his ornate jaguar skin protector protecting his hips and the epithet of the rulers - “high”, repeated three times in blocks at the ends of the woven belt); the building block of the "rebirth formula", "great passage [through the underworld]", is given in the vertical text and in the inscription above the stadium.

Many games were dedicated to the commemoration of queens. In the scene on the bowl, the main player of the winning team on the right, who in the fall managed to deflect the ball with his hand and knee on the ground, holds a flower on a long stem - as a sign of victory and as a symbol of a chant addressed to the deceased. One of the teams represents the ruler: her portrait is shown on the long protector of the player on the left. Behind his back is the inscription: IX Ik" (T503); in front of him is X Ik "/ch"up-haa (T239.181); the last block (in the version ngi-ch"up-haa, T47.239.181, - in front face of the winning player) is part of the “rebirth formula” and is translated by Yu.V. Knorozov as “ex-wife”: meaning the deceased wife of the ruler. Her portrait on the protector in the form of a hieroglyph depicting a woman’s face, together with a black circle in front of it, serves as a record of the mistress’s epithet: “the only (first) woman.”
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The ball as a symbol of the soul and fruit. Let us now turn to the central and most important game attribute - a rubber ball. The inscriptions, symbols, numbers and dates on and next to the balls give us a clue to the symbolism of the game and confirm our idea that the games were part of the funeral ritual.

According to the texts on the vessels, it is known that only one of several human souls descended to the “place of purification” in the cave-underworld - a shadow soul, a ghost, called n os (T227, syn. other tep, art. pix-aan). As Knorozov showed 38 , all four terms were etymological synonyms and meant “wrapped”, “covered”: the corpse of the deceased was wrapped in a shroud in an embryonic position and placed in a vessel or burial chamber - symbolically returned to the womb of the cave-earth. Here the ancestor gods freed the soul from the flesh - purified it, as a result of which it decreased to the size of an embryo. This purified soul is depicted in a number of scenes in the hands of “purifiers” in the form of the fruit of a certain plant or a transparent sphere. Such a soul flew “into the womb of a woman” or flew into it as a “falling star” (an. women turn into the souls of newborns. In the text on the vessel described above with the date of the return of the ghost of the ruler, the soul is named - n os esh "(inscription above the stadium platform): "[On the day] XI Ik" / 10 [day of the month] Iash-ku / [ returned] the shooting star / of the departed woman."

Apparently, on the day of the soul’s return from the underworld, the ball played in the funeral game embodied this purified soul-seed, designed to impregnate a woman. In our opinion, this is also indicated by the inscriptions on the balls. They have two dominant morphemic signs - in (T501), “seed”, “crops”, “rain”, and сh “u р (Т239/1000/1026), “woman”; both of them are closely related to each other and to semantics fertility. The purified soul of the ruler in the inscription on the memorial vessel from Naranjo deciphered by Knorozov plays the role of such a fertilizer: “the arrival of the ruler” - the return of her purified ghost to the earth - brings rain to the fields 39 . Rain was universally thought of as a seed (on the Olmec reliefs at Chalcatzingo, for example, raindrops falling on the ground are shown as phalluses).

The Nahua myth about the conception of the main Astec god Huitzilopochtli confirms our idea of ​​the ball as a symbol of a ripe fetus, the ready reincarnation of the soul of the deceased: the fertility goddess Coatlicue (a variant of the Moon goddess) on the sacred “Snake Mountain” was conceived from a feathered ball that fell from the sky 40 .
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The connection of the ball in form and essence with the fruit and seed is confirmed by other data. For example, among the Huitoto, a rubber ball, like the ball festival itself, was called uike and symbolized all the fruits, uike, brought to the festival; ball-Uike was considered the soul and son of the progenitor whitoto - the patron of initiation and the great player who fought against the deities of the underworld in the game 41 .

On the round “marker from Chinkultik” dedicated to the ruler, the woman’s sign is on the ball and in the inscription along the edge of the “marker” (three such round slabs usually marked the ends and center of the stadium field). In the center of the relief is the ruler-player in a winning stance in front of the ball. On the ball there is a block of five characters; In the central sign “woman”, inscribed in the form of her ear decoration are the signs “(women) the only ghost [returned] to the fortress.”

We especially note that the presence on the described relief of hieroglyphs characteristic of funeral texts is an extremely rare phenomenon for monumental inscriptions: after the hieroglyph of the introductory series and the date of the Mayan era (corresponding to 590), there follows a block with a title that could belong to both the ruler and goddess (partly - “tall [heavenly, most noble] woman”); further - the name of the deity of the constellation "VII Bat", and the name of the Snail Spirit. In the “formula of rebirth” the name of the ruler of the cave-underworld Snail serves as a designation of the country where the souls of the dead went; here they were “in the power” of the Bat god and then went to the “woman” for reincarnation. All this, in our opinion, suggests that the relief was carved in honor of the deceased ruler. The day of remembrance - the return of her purified soul to earth - was celebrated with a solemn ball game.

The Moon Goddess is the patroness of the “lunar game”. The sign in ("seed", "rain") depicted on the balls is often stylized as the sign of a woman or inscribed in the facial sign of a woman: "Woman" in Mesoamerica was the name given to the mistress of the night, the Moon. This sign, by all accounts, depicts the young goddess of the Moon (she, according to the II calendar reform, replaced the old goddess ChakKit in the role of mistress of the Moon sky) 43 ; it is shown first in the block ch"up-haa, standing in the "rebirth formula" in the position of the predicate ("ex-wife"); the second character (in this block the suffix 44 ) - a sign of water, the oldest common Mesoamerican pictogram of the Cloud Cave and its main owner among the Olmecs, the mistress of the waters of the Moon. Gods and goddesses associated with the Moon were depicted sitting in the full sign of the Moon-cave, on a crescent, or with a crescent behind their backs 45 . A grotto/crescent surrounds the Feathered Serpent on the cave-seated Olmec Great Moon Goddess on Stela 19 at La Venta; in the underworld cave, semi-surrounded by a crescent-shaped earth sign, the main god of rain is shown in the manuscript (D59a2).
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The inscription on the ball on which the winner leans with his hand in the scene on the vessel could be related to the goddess 46 : "VII Woman"; in another inscription in the same scene she is called “the mistress of the entrance.” The “entrance” was the name given to the cave-underworld. The inscription above the ball between the opponents mentions “cleansing the great path” through the underworld. Apparently the game depicted on the vessel was dedicated to the remembrance of the mistress, and on the ball was the name of her patroness, the goddess of the Moon.

In several memorial texts, the date of the return of the ghost to the earth is given both according to the solar and lunar calendar (for example, in the inscription "on the mentioned vessel from Naranjo - J 8). The lunar date is shown in a block, the main sign of which depicts the black disk of the Moon before the beginning of the lunar cycle, in the new moon, from which the counting of days in the lunar month began.The disk of the Moon, like a black ball, is inscribed in the sign of water - a pictogram of a cave, the owner of which since ancient times, as we mentioned above, was considered the mistress of water, the patroness of women, women in labor and women's activities - the Moon. On the new moon she “went into her well” - therefore she acquired the name “She who is in the depths of the well” in Yucatan. 47 ; here it filled with water and began to grow - like a fetus in the womb (the Moon is universally associated with the conception and development of the fruits of living nature), in order to then spill onto the earth as fertilizing rain. It was in her womb-cave, which served as a poetic metaphor for the female womb, that souls were purified and reincarnated, and the “second birth” of initiated adolescents took place.

The era of the Olmec civilization, when the Great Moon Goddess stood at the head of the Olmec pantheon, was the time of dominance of the lunar calendar (in which the main unit was the “six-month”, equated to a season and consisting of six lunar months). Therefore, all types of rituals, including the ritual of the game, were associated with lunar calendar symbolism. The goddess could act as the main patron of the ball game. This is all the more likely since the ritual of the game was semiotically connected with the reincarnation of souls. Ethnographic materials also indicate the same thing: the Iroquois played ball during the six annual holidays of the lunar calendar, and the Indians in the lowlands of Colombia played on full moons at the beginning of two seasons of the year (lunar half-years), when fruits ripened in the forests; Huitoto players were called “people of the moon” and believed that playing ball promoted the fertility of women, animals and plants.
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Nine worlds of reincarnation. The symbolism of the numbers (mostly "9" to "15") on the balls or in the short inscriptions next to them is unclear. We can assume a connection between these figures and the number of points won (and these, in turn, with the number of sown fields that the ruler granted to this or that temple), or, as L. Schiele and N. Grube, connect them with the number of steps of the stadium 48 . Another assumption is possible: in those cases (and they are the majority) when the number “9” appears separately or in a block with in-nga (T501:23 “seeds”, “crops”, “rains”) and next to them ( equal, in particular, to the number of round markers from the stadium in Tenam Rosario in Chiapas) the block can be interpreted as “Nine [many] fruits.” However, most likely, block IX in was associated with the nine spheres/worlds of the underworld, nine “nights” (“moons”) - the “dark houses” of the Moon - and with nine periods of 91 days each (as noted by J. E. Thompson, distance between equinoxes and solstices in a year 49 ).

For 91 days, the ghost purified in Xibalba, being “in the power” of each of the nine lords of the underworld spheres in turn - the “lords” of one of the nine “nights” of the archaic 9-day week - passed through each of these spheres. Over an 819-day period (91 x 9 = 819), as shown by Yu.V. Knorozov, the soul of the deceased, made the “great journey” of purification in the underworld and was reincarnated. The same path of purification and reincarnation through the nine spheres of the underworld-caves also passed through the ghosts of the dead among the Nahua; The mistress of one of the spheres was considered the goddess of the earth, fertile mud, love and generation Tlazolteotl - the old goddess of the Moon among the Nahuas.

All of the above, we believe, suggests that the ball during funeral games was perceived as a symbol of the fetus - the reincarnating soul, which was believed to impregnate the woman. The ball also served as a symbol of the Moon and the Moon goddess, who participated in the process of reincarnation: it was in her womb - the world cave - that the fruit was purified for subsequent incarnation in the womb of a woman who was patronized by the goddess. Therefore, the name of the goddess appears on the balls and inscriptions accompanying the games.

Drug symbolism. All the above materials allow us to say with confidence that the game in the classical Mayan cities was an important part of the funeral rituals: on the day of the return from the underworld to the earth of souls ready for reincarnation, the Mayan nobility arranged ceremonial games, honoring the dead - like the ancient Greeks, who organized funeral competitions to honor the memory of deceased heroes. Among the Mayans, the game formalized the transition of the soul to a new state and marked the moment of rebirth. Vessels were painted for this day, including scenes of games. Many of these vessels, before turning into funeral gifts, were used as cups at funeral feasts that followed the games. Drugs were taken during feasts. Able
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In a narcotic trance, the liberated souls of the ritual participants communicated with the soul of the deceased, who had returned from the abode of the ancestors and gods: they waited from the soul for advice and indications for the future. This explains the presence of drug symbolism in game scenes. Therefore, in the game in honor of the remembrance of the ruler, the headdress of the player on the far left is crowned with a large enema for administering the drug, and the hair of the ruler-player is arranged above the forehead in a “cloud” tuft with a sign of fire, characteristic of rituals with drugs. In the game between two rulers before a funeral feast, the head of the winner is decorated with a mask of the Deer God, on whose ear the sign “stream” is shown - an image of an enema; two courtiers behind the players and nine characters along the rim of the vessel (according to the number of underworld worlds) are combed and dressed in a special way, characteristic of a ritual with drugs, and are holding attributes in their hands - special wands - “waving” made of feathers, fans, vessels with wine, etc. .), necessary for administering the drug and “clearing” the path for the soul. This ghost soul, embodied in a ball during funeral games, returned purified to earth for reincarnation.

Ball-fruit-head: game and sacrifice at the center of the world

Messenger ball The ball was also associated with another type of vital substance - the soul of a living person, since by its very nature, like the soul, it was directly related to blood: the rubber from which balls were made in the tropical forests of America was extracted from the sap - the “blood” of a tree - rubber plant Therefore, to designate both the ball and the soul contained in the blood, heart and head of a living being, the Mayans used the same etymological synonyms - k"ik" and ul. The names of the ball and the game in many Mesoamerican languages ​​go back to the last root. 50 .

Due to its connection with the soul-blood - it is also the soul-breath, ik" and its jumping ability, the ball was also considered the embodiment of the wind, ik", bringing rain clouds, and a rain cloud (in one scene it is shown as the head of a monster, personifying a cloud). The mechanisms of magic hidden in the ball were activated by the game: the ball, bouncing, hit the clouds and struck lightning from them; the dull hits of the ball, the stomping and jumping of those playing on the field - something like thunder - magically caused rain. Therefore, before sowing, the Mesoamericans played ball: players on the frescoes of Teotihuacan, sculptural attributes for the game and reliefs from Veracruz and Chiapas, and figurative incense burners from Monte Alban hold seed bags in their hands.
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The ball in the Dresden manuscript (D70a1), above which sits the rain god K "ash-ish (the god "visits" the stadium - plays the ball), is shown above the stadium field with a spiral and a fire sign above it. Burning balls mounted on the handle are lit torches with the sign ik " ("wind [carrying rain]", "soul [carrying a message to the gods]") is held in their raised hands by the Monkey twins, cartridges of the ball game. The gods stand in a playing stance, on one knee, on either side of the staircase of the "Spectators' Tribune" overlooking the square in front of the stadium in Copan. The Cloud Serpent serves as a belt for the gods (its tongue hangs down in the form of a ti sign, T 19, “cloudy”); The headband on the right sculpture is secured with a snake (sign bal, T98, “rope”, trans. “rain”): Snakes, like flowering vines, tied instead of scarves around the necks of the gods, symbolized streams of rain.

In scenes on vessels from Peten and Chiapas, in graffiti in Ticalei in Mexican codices, in the ritual that ends a ball game, players dance with a “feathered” ball, stand on their knees, or dance in front of a brazier-altar on which lies a ball with two short green wings on the sides and a tuft of precious feathers rising above the ball (like the heart of a messenger torn out of his chest, lying on the altar at the base of the stairs that leads to the throne of the lord of Piedras Negrasna, stele relief 11). These scenes suggest that the ball - the embodied soul-blood, the symbolic equivalent of a sacrificial heart and a severed head, served as an object of cult, was used in games and burned on altars: the fire freed the soul and it flew away with a message to the gods. The ball was like a huge smoking ball: small balls of copal and rubber, imitating sacrificial hearts, k"ik", burned in incense burners and were the most common sacrifice to the gods. Burning the ball, in our opinion, was part of the ritual of the game. This, we believe, explains the number of balls (according to the Codex Mendoza - 16 thousand annually) supplied as tribute to the provinces of the Aztec ruler. The smoke from the ball being burned after the game collected rain clouds and served as a metaphor for the flying away messenger soul.

Sacrifice at the world tree. In the Quiché myth, the first pair of twins fails the test at Xibalba and is sacrificed on the ball court; the death gods hang the head of the decapitated hero on the trunk, and the barren tree is covered with fruits, the head turns into a fruit and gives birth to fruits (ich-ich - “twins”, lit. “fruits”): from the saliva of the head/drops of white juice of the fetus/semen, the hero becomes pregnant a girl passing by; This is how the second pair of twins is born. The episode with the head of Hun Hun Ahpu hanging on the trunk of the world tree is depicted on Mayan vessels.

As a reproduction of the episode of the myth with the head of the hero hanging on the trunk, and the body of the hero buried at the world tree, one can consider the ritual burial of a memorial stele with a disk on top - a stone “marker” for playing ball in the square in Tikal. This stele, installed at the end of IV V. in the center of the square (Gr. 6С-ХVI),
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Later it was removed from its pedestal and buried in a ritual cache along the north-south axis at the edge of the square along with a conical shell (in the game it was used to trumpet the beginning of the sacrificial ritual) and the sculptural head of a young hero (laid facing west and painted red and black - “sacrificial” colors) 51 . The hero's head could also be associated with a "marker" - a target for hitting the ball, which was built into the upper steps of the stadium platforms: in Quiché myth, the gods hang the head of a headless hero as a marker on the stadium wall; shouts in the ritual of the game aimed the ball at the enemy’s head, mounted on the top of a pillar in the center of the playing field 52 .

The disc stela from Tikal was an exact replica of the game markers - a wooden pillar with a disc on top. Two such pillars mark the boundaries of the field along the length of the stadium in a mural in the Tepantitla Palace in Teotihuacan. Their variety is a disk made of feathers and ribbons with a long handle stuck into the field of the stadium; it is held in the hands of the twins of the myth in the scenes on the vessels and with the disk down - the courtier in front of the lord-player sitting on the throne. Memorial stone steles - replicas of game markers - decorated the squares in the largest cities of Mesoamerica - Kaminaljuyu, Teotihuacan and Tikal. The same stele with a disc crowning it is depicted on the mural in the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza; Soldiers pass by the stele in the square, ascending to the city on the hill.

I Ahab - the festival of the fertilizing sacrifice. The names of the sacrificed heroes of the myth - 1 Hun Ahpu and VII Hun Ahpu - were worn on two holidays in Yucatan, at which messengers were sent to the gods. The first of them, I Ahab, as shown by Yu.V. Knorozov, was a particularly important holiday in Mesoamerica for the nobility, priests and warriors; According to ancient tradition, it was always accompanied by the shedding of blood. It was the birthday in the mythical land of the first ancestors of the creator and progenitor gods, including the mistress of the cave, the great mother of the gods Tlazolteotl, and the great culture hero Quetzalcoatl. This was the day the creators created the first people (including the heroes-demigods of the Quiche myth) and gave them corn.

I Ahab was also the “day of the ruler”: initially it was celebrated on the occasion of the change in power of the seasonal leaders of the tribe, later, at the stage of state formation, the election of a “single ruler”, and even later - confirmation of his power on behalf of the gods 53 . On this day, to ensure divine protection for the ruler and his people, a messenger was sent to the ancestor gods and rain gods. In scenes from the feast of I Ahab, the tree of life and abundance grows through the body of the victim; in the myth, a lifeless tree becomes covered with fruit after the head of the hero I Ahab is hung on it.

The disc stele mentioned above, with which the head of the young hero was associated, was erected at Tikal to commemorate the festival of the "one ruler", I Ahab: in a medallion in the center of the disc
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the sign La, “ruler” (syn. Art. Аhav) is stamped”, the disk itself is the sign h”un (depicted as a circle) - the number “1” and at the same time the epithet of the ruler: “single”, “single”. The name of the lord-military leader is given on the other side of the disk with a pictogram depicting a hand with a spear thrower and an Eagle Owl (tekolote) with raindrops on its wings - the Master of thunderstorms, the bird of the god of thunderstorms and war Tosh; Below is a text in honor of the ruler’s military victories.

Disc on a post-marker - similar to the disc of the Moon on a post in the headdress of the Olmec Moon goddess (on stelae 3 at La Venta and D at T res-Zapotes) and on the head of an Olmec player (on a round marker from highland Guatemala), or stone a ball placed on a pillar (three such pillars are placed in a row in the square in front of the largest pyramid in Izapa), a ball placed in a niche (at the stadium in Tonina) or buried in the center of the field (at the stadiums in La Lagunita and Iximche) - was associated with a myth about the sacrifice of a hero at the world tree and the transformation of his head into the fruit of the tree. He was a symbol of the fertilizing sacrifice at the center of the world, the goddess of the Moon, giver of fruits, and her earthly representative - the “single ruler.”

The semiotic connection between the ritual of the game and the change of rulers on the throne is revealed in the engraving on the skull of a peccary from royal burial 1 in Copan. In the scene in the center of the Olmec symbol of the mouth-cave there is an altar in the form of the face of the Cloud Monster-Cave, standing at the foot of the stele - the world tree; on both sides of him sit the twins of the myth in playing belts (on each there is a sign l a, “lord”). The stele shows the signs “power”, “throne” and “period [of reign]”; above the stele is an inscription with the calendar date I Ahab and the block “appearance of the ruler.” Note that the snakes - streams of blood gushing from the headless envoy-player sitting on the throne-altar with the symbol of the mouth, are also intertwined into the sign of the throne, t "as, - a symbol of supreme power.

Head like a fruit: Olmec giant heads. Giant monuments made of basalt, three meters high, in the form of men's heads and game helmets - the most characteristic monuments of the Olmec civilization, the first evidence in Mesoamerica of the ritual of beheading players and the cult of fetish heads - speak of the exceptional importance of the game in Olmec rituals. The colossi stood in the squares in the main Olmec centers on the Gulf Coast in 1200-600. BC. The shape of the monuments, suggested by nature itself (the slopes of Cerro Sintepec in the Tuxtla mountains, in the quarries of which all 16 currently known heads were knocked out, are strewn with huge oval and round boulders), as well as ideas about the symbolic connection between the ball and the head, the game and beheading served as the impetus for the creation of these monuments.
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The giant heads, which, according to popular belief, are portraits of Olmec leaders/team captains sacrificed by beheading, in our opinion, were directly related to the ritual of the game, which “enacted” the myth of the sacrifice of the hero-player and his head, which became the fruit of the world tree. Possible confirmation of this is reliefs 63 in San Lorenzo (1200-900 BC): the ruler (or boggros) in the playing belt is shown near a tree trunk - standing on the tail of the Caiman Serpent; the circle on the trunk in the evening light definitely reads like a head or skull.

The giant heads depicted a cultural hero and a mythical ancestor-ancestor in the role of a ball player, reflecting the ideal features of a male warrior. The Olmec overlords were undoubtedly associated with them. The severed head of the hero-player, endowed with magical, fertility-promoting power - a symbol of the fruit-ball, fertilizing victims in the center of the world, was repeated in colossal sizes and turned into a fetish; it represented a giant fruit, the idea of ​​fertility raised to an absolute, and served as a guarantee of an abundance of harvests.

Parrot God. On the helmet of one of the colossal heads in San Lorenzo are the heads of the Parrot god, who personified the “drought-bringing” Sun in ancient Mesoamerica. Heads of the Parrot God were the most common and archaic markers in stadiums of the "open" type - the oldest in Mesoamerica. Judging by them, games in stadiums in many centers were dedicated to this deity.

The parrot was revered by the Maya as a totem of the red phratry of the dry season and the ancestor: the god's mask adorns the head of one of the twins in the scene described above on the skull of a peccary from Copan (on the head of his brother is the mask of the totem of the blue phratry. Cloud Serpent). The name of the god is "[The Bearer] four parrots", appears in the inscription on the round marker of the front temple (Str. 26, refers to the main stadium in Copan) 54 - on the world tree inscribed in the symbol of the cave; on both sides of the tree-stele on thrones with snake scepters in their hands - attributes of supreme power - sit the twins of the myth; their headdresses are crowned with masks of a Parrot and a Snake (as in the mentioned scene on the peccary skull with two heroes at the stele-tree and the altar-cave).

In the Quiche myth, the Parrot god, "VII Parrot", or "Parrot of Xibalba", appears, however, not as the ancestor, but as the personification of the old, weak Sun of one of the first "creations", the owner of the cave and the antagonist of the twins. The Bird God, probable an analogue of Vucub Kakisha, at whom the heroes aim from blowing tubes in the scenes on the vessels, appears on the reliefs of Izapa: sits with outstretched wings on the symbol of the mouth (altar 3), flies from heaven to the world tree with round fruits, where the twins are waiting for him (stele 2) , brings a fruit or ball in his paws to the old god (altar 20). He sits on a pole above one of the twins next to the world tree - Cayman, standing up
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tail (stela 25); blood flows from the hero's severed hand in three streams (in the epic, Vukub Kakish, knocked down from a tree, pulls out the hand of one of his brothers). The same severed hand of the hero on the relief of the stadium in Copan is held in its beak by a multi-headed Parrot monster. All the images of the Parrot God in the stadium in Copan and the scenes described above are generally believed to be associated with episodes of the epic 55 .

Parrot heads on the helmet of a giant head in San Lourensotri - the same number of head markers were embedded in each of the walls on both sides of the field (cf. three steles with balls standing in a row in Izapa); Each of the sides of all the peoples who played ball was correlated with one of the rival teams and the corresponding phratry. Taking into account the fact that the symbolism of the game ritual took shape during the Volmec time and was closely connected with the lunar calendar that prevailed among the Olmecs, we can assume, by analogy with the six months of the rainy season, whose patrons were the six dwarfs of the moon goddess, that the six months of the dry season, which was commanded by the sun god, in the stadiums could personify the six head-god Parrots. The Olmecs, like the later Mayans and Nahuas, could play balls and send messengers to the Sun god during the dry season to bring about rain.

The monumental head of the Parrot - a stadium marker from an unknown center in Tabasco, the colossal heads of the players and the relief of the Lord-player at the world tree with his head hanging on the trunk, serve, in our opinion, as a serious argument in favor of the fact that the Olmecs knew the myth of the heroes who played ball with antagonists.

Bloodshed on the stadium field. In myth and ritual, the sacrifice is performed in the center of the stadium - at the most sacred point of the universe, at the place of the “entrance to the cave” and the departure of the cult of the rain gods and ancestors. This place in stadiums is marked with a circle, hole or round slab. Here a ball is depicted with a skull - the head of the god of death on it, a messenger with an open chest sitting on the altar, or the god of death rising from the body of the victim. The severed head of the player is hung on the world tree, growing in the center of the playing field, as in the ritual of the Creek game, or near the stadium, as in the Quiché myth, and the tree is covered with fruits. The Astec god Huitzilopochtli beheads his sister over
the hole ("place of the skull") in the center of Teotlach co, "God's Ball Court"; water begins to flow from the hole, flooding the fields around and bringing prosperity 56 . According to another version, Huitzilopochtli beheads his sister and throws her dismembered body from the top of the Snake Mountain to its foot - a hole in the Teotlachco field.

The rivalry between the two teams on the reliefs of many stadiums and associated temples in Dainsu (a Zapotec sanctuary in the Oaxaca Valley), in El Tajin, Chichen Itza and other centers ends with a sacrifice in the center of the field: in front of the ball with a skull on it (“place of the skull”) captain of the winning beheading team
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Eats or rips out the heart of the captain of the losing team. On the stele relief in Izapa in the stadium in the cave - the open mouth of the Cloud Reptile - the winning player cuts off the head of the losing player; blood flows from the head and body of the messenger in streams in the form of precious feathers and beads, symbolizing rain; The upper jaw of the reptile pours streams of rain onto the field.

This recurring motif gave rise to the popular idea that there was a ritual practice of beheading player overlords/team captains (the giant Olmec heads are taken by many to be the main argument in favor of this idea). However, there is no data in the sources about the actual existence of such practices (even in games between different communities, which sometimes became extremely violent) and, in our opinion, these scenes cannot be taken literally. In fact, each team, in case of, apparently, not a loss, but a victory, had a messenger prepared - a captive captured in a military campaign or a slave specially purchased for the ritual. We believe that it was the opportunity to send a messenger to the gods that served as the main reward for the winners. The described reliefs and colossal heads - prototypes of markers and protectors in the form of severed heads of heroes in later cultures - repeated the mythological precedent: they reproduced the myth of the sacrifice of the hero-player and his head, which turned into the fruit of the world tree.

The game is like a victory dance. The messenger was obtained during a military campaign and sent to the gods on the stadium field. His head and heart were the main “trophies” in the game, and the game itself was thought of as a battle: in myths, heroes play ball with antagonists for life and death; Losing in the game entails death or is tantamount to death; the lightning ball serves as a formidable weapon (the ancestor of whitoto beheads his opponents in the game with the ball, the Jaguar god in the scene of the battle with the twin heroes is defeated by a ball thrown at him, etc.). Warrior players have trophy heads hanging behind their backs; The front of the gaming belt is decorated with figured “protectors” in the form of severed heads and skulls. In both rival teams, the bodies of the players are painted in the colors of war, their hair sticks out on end - like that of warriors going into battle, and the feather disc markers in their hands are like round military banners. The signs esh ", "star", and spiny shells, symbols of the planet Venus - "Warrior" and "Destroyer" - appear in scenes and inscriptions and speak of games after victorious campaigns carried out in accordance with the cycle of the planet (for example, on the body of two dwarfs and in inscriptions above them). Direct associations of the game with war are also revealed at the linguistic level: the concepts of “play ball”, “compete”, “fight”, “war”, “struggle”, “game” in the Mayan language of Yucatan were expressed in one word - p"itzba.
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The Lord-player in the victorious scenes is dressed in the skin of a jaguar and a special headdress of military leaders in the form of a wide-brimmed hat with feathers on the brim - like the ancient warrior, the thunder god Tosh. On Stela 7 at Ceibal, the player-ruler is praised as “the good one who captured in anger”; on the paired relief in front of the dancing ruler-player, part of the block has been preserved: “who took two prisoners.” The ruler participates in games in honor of military victories, in which prisoners are played: they are sent with a message to the gods of war. The ball, after the victorious goal of the ruler of Yaxchilan, returns to the steps with the figure of the envoy inscribed in it; his role is played by the same commander, whose captivity is glorified by scenes and inscriptions on many reliefs of the city.

The game was conceived as a military and sacrificial dance: the players in the scenes dance to the accompaniment of rattles and drums with the same gestures and weapons as the warriors in front of the altar or pillar, sending captives to the gods. The games also involve trumpeters blowing horns and signal shells. The patrons of the ball game, the Monkey gods on the “palm tree” from Veracruz, trumpet, standing on the platform of the stadium; judge, lit. "counting [glasses]", riot police. "trumping" 57 in the scene on the vessel, the shell begins to play at the moment of the victorious throw as a sign that the goal has been achieved and the sacrifice must follow.

Horns, which were made from long gourds, hom / homa, and by homonym were associated with a deep and dark gorge / abyss / cave, twisted shells of sea mollusks and snails, as well as a drum (in the form of a large clay vessel, like the Lacandons, or a hollow trunk trees, were perceived as symbolic analogues of the cave (and the god-Snail and the “master of the sex tree,” Wotan, were its lords.) These sacred instruments in rituals associated with the liberation of souls spoke with the voices of the gods, announcing their arrival.

Game like Tanya cleansing. In the game, as in other “rites of passage”, the release of the soul of the player-messenger was thought of as its purification, and the players-sacrifices embodied the same ancestor gods who were engaged in the purification of the souls of the dead for their reincarnation in the cave-underworld58: the scenes are filled with water symbolism and the fiery cave - “place of purification”; in them appear vessels and enemas with the sign of fire - a narcotic "fiery liquid", vessels with cave "virgin" water", knives, axes, tridents (the three points are the rollers of the ruler's playing belt). Fire bursts out of the mouth of the skull - the song of the god of death and a symbol of purification, and the player dancing in front of the world tree has his lips extended forward, like the god of the wind, and curved in the form of a fire sign, like the characters in the drug taking scenes.
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In honor of winning the game, the ruler of La Amelia dances, imitating the movements of the ball player; in his headdress above his forehead there is a sign of fire, in the decoration of feathers behind his back, characteristic of the dance of sacrifice, there is a fish tail, a metaphor for purification (cf. sa(y)-aan "rebirth formulas" - "purified", sau - "fish "); the ends of the tail are interpreted as tongues of flame and a toothy snake mouth at the same time. At the front end of the ruler's loincloth is an expanded sign of a cave with two signs t oos ("fire") emerging from it. The same sign of the cave, from which the signs of fire are facing the four cardinal points, adorns the center of the marker-disk, which is held upside down by the courtier at the throne of the lord-player; the very position of the disk indicates the location of the underworld cave.

On the round marker of the stadium in Yaxchilan, the ruler sits on a throne, engulfed in flames, with a double-headed snake scepter in his hands; from the mouths of the Serpents at its ends appear the god of fire and the god Jaguar. The Jaguar - the leader of the process of purifying souls in Xibalba - awaits the messenger at the feet of the dancing lord-player (where captives chosen to be envoys to the gods were usually depicted on the steles; illustration on the binding ). In another scene, the Jaguar, above whom the sign of fire rises, awaits the victim, lying on the roof of the ruler's palanquin: on the field, the ritual of beheading the messenger player is performed. Tezcatlipoca-Jaguar, the patron of the game among the Toltecs of Tollan, was destined to be sacrificed on the stadium field at the end of the game. In the scene, on the skull of a peccary from Copan, there is a symbol of an open mouth-cave around the symbol, in the center of which the hero-players are sitting near the symbols of the cave and the world tree. The cleansing dance is performed by a Jaguar with a drug-filled enema in his paw. Monkey with a rattle. Deer and the god of death blowing a conch shell.

The game is like a path to the cave of ancestors

Stadium - model of the world cave. Games, like other sacred scenes, take place in the wide-open mouth of the Cloud Reptile or are marked with mouth symbols. On the relief from Veracruzaboga-Monkey, the patrons of the ball game, blow snake horns crossed with each other in the form of the sacred sign k "ah - a symbol of the center of the world and the Cloud Cave, standing on the stepped platform of the stadium - a symbol of a mountain with a cave inside; in the cave - the head of a Cloud Reptile; in front of it are two heads of Bats guarding the entrance to the cave. The messenger is thrown down the steps of the stadium into the toothy maw of the cave, he is decapitated in the cave maw.

All the above texts convince us that the stadium modeled a cave. Initially, the “playground cleared from the forest by fire” in the center of the villages was limited in length by two parallel platforms (the ends remained “open”): they prevented the ball from leaving the field and served as spectators. Later, the stadium - a smaller copy of the square -
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Sitting at the bottom of a giant well, which was the main square of the city, surrounded on all sides by temples on pyramids. In the ancient Mayan language, the concepts of cave and stadium also went back to one morpheme - ngom (T 1016); evidence of this is preserved in many Mayan languages: kom/hom/hem - “hole”, “cave”, “playground”, “burial”, “well”, “gorge”, “intermountain valley” (the hieroglyph ngom depicts the head of a god valleys, personifying the cave). It is important to note that the homonym ngom (lit. “hurrying”) also meant the messenger himself, sent to the gods of the cave in the stadium square.

The stadium appeared as a model of a symbolically organized Universe: each of its elements, like the whole, semiotically reproduced the world cave. The Mayan hieroglyph depicting the plan of a “closed” stadium (K531/T727b) includes the main semiotic points of space: a hole in the center and circles extending in a chain to each of the four corners of the stadium, showing a “map” of the world; statues of “Atlanteans” - warrior-standard bearers and players with the features of the rain god Tlaloc, installed at the four ends of the field at the Tollan stadiums, reproduced the idea of ​​​​the world's "corner" trees.

Stadium as a path. The stadium simulated a cave and at the same time served as a road into it, which is especially evident in “open” type stadiums. The vertical axis of the world passed through the center of the field - the trunk of the world tree, entwined with the Serpent. The game alley a was associated with the horizontal axis of the world, also the Cloud Serpent, and was oriented, following the Olmec tradition, usually along a north-south line. A sculpture of this axis is presented at the stadium in Uxmal in the form of two Cloud Serpents stretched along the walls at both ends of the field.

It is safe to say that the idea of ​​a path was one of the central ones in the concept of the game: the two main semiotic structural elements of the stadium were the field alley - a passage, a road (b e, T301) and a staircase of platforms (eb, T843). This concept received its architectural design at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. among the Olmecs on the Gulf Coast. Perhaps the elongated stadium square, oriented strictly to the north, served as a model for the organization of Olmec ritual centers. This has not been noticed by researchers due to the gigantic scale of the structures, which are understandable in the context of Olmec rituals. 59 .

The narrow playing field, located between two stepped platforms, reproduced the passage along the bottom of the gorge leading to the cave (other h o, T17, - "entrance", "cave", art. hol, holol - "hole", hol tun - " cave". hom - "dark, deep gorge"; cf. also becan - "gorge", "ditch", from b e - "road"). According to myth, this passage arose when the Toltec ruler, establishing the game, drew the line of the field of the first stadium, and along it “the earth opened up.” 60 .
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The connection with the passage in the gorge is especially clear, for example, at the stadium in San Jose in Belize or in San Antonio on Grijalva, where the width of the field is 17 and 34 m with a width of 1 and 2.5 m respectively (the usual ratio is 1: 3) . In many centers, the stadium alley is also a very real passage: for example, in Tikal, to the square of the “Seven Temples”, closed on three sides; in Uxmal, the road connecting the main architectural complexes of the city - the priestly and the palace - runs along the stadium field.

Six Steps Down: Cave Structure. The entire stadium, not only architecturally, but also conceptually, was a staircase - a road to the symbolic center of the world. In all options for depicting stadiums of both types (in a transverse or longitudinal vertical section), only the steps of the platforms were noted. Often both projections were combined and then one side of the stadium was depicted as a stepped pyramid in the background of the stage (Fig. 1, 5, 11). A staircase of two or three steps, shown in profile, with a ball above the steps - the hieroglyphic sign of the stadium (eb "stairs") - served as one of the names of the stadium in the classical period and, at the same time, a symbol of the underworld-cave. A cloudy step pyramid mountain (mul, T685) with the sign su, "rains", on it or the sign mu ("cloud") in a cave inside it.

The hieroglyphic block depicting the steps of the stadium, the ball above the first step and the marker stele (the sign ti - “here”, “place” is stylized after it), conveys the name of the stadium in the inscription from the temple at Chichen Itza: “the place of the original yellow staircase” - “yellow ", as well as the sacred "yellow tree", the name of which was called the throne of the ruler ("yellow" - according to the color of the full Moon, and not the symbolic color of the south) 61 .

In the images, the game is literally framed as a descent: the messenger, ngom, is thrown from the top of the platform down the steps to the center of the field, he is “played” like a ball, he falls, inscribed in the ball, down the steps into a cave, ngom. It is symbolic that the morpheme tem, “step” (T92, syn. eb, “ladder”), as a homonym root, also appears in the lexical group associated with sacrifices: tem - “to make a sacrifice,” u-tem-chi (T 1.92. 219) - “sacrifice”: the messenger’s heart was torn out, knocking him over on the steps of the stadium.

In some scenes there are six steps in stadiums. This fact was first noticed by L. Schiele and N. Grube, without giving an explanation 62 . We believe that the six steps of the stadium, according to one of the oldest versions of the structure of the Universe, symbolized the six spheres of the cave - the layers of the universe (after the Second calendar reform, the early and late versions of the division of the cave-underworld, nine worlds coexisted 63 ). The facades of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan are presented in the form of six steps, with four sides painted with the heads of the Feathered Serpent and Cayman-Tlaloc - the lords of the cave. Probably, the same ideas dictated the number of markers in “open” stadiums. Six dwarfs of the Moon goddess among the Olmecs,
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The Mayan "six" gods, including six "demons" of the cave, six holders of the sky, six streams of blood gushing from the player's severed head and body, etc., were associated with the symbolism of the lunar calendar.

Feet, palms, “acrobat pose” - symbols of the path. In game scenes, on the costumes of the players and attributes for the game, we encounter signs in the form of feet (b e - “foot”, “road”) and palms (naab, T713a, - “palm”, “space”, “pass”) - isomorphic and isofunctional signs-symbols of the path to the cave. They also appear in plots related to hunting, war, sending messengers and cult-god rulers to the world trees. The sign n aab is close in form and meaning to the sign xik "(T77) - the image of a bird's wing, "to fly", which, as part of the "formula of rebirth" - "then flew onto the road [leading to the womb of a woman]" is related to the purified and ready for reincarnation a ghost flying out of a cave.

The same circle of ideas was encoded by the “acrobat pose”, conveying the idea of ​​descent to the center of the world and the rite of departure of the messenger. Acrobats standing upside down are shown on stone game paraphernalia; in the same position, the twins and the Jaguar jump into the fire on vessels, gods and souls fly from above, messengers are thrown down, including those inscribed in the ball. This is how the world tree-reptile grows - tail up, mouth down. On the relief of a round marker from mountainous Guatemala, the image of the god-player is repeated twice: he stands in the center with his name raised upside down on a column (marker) on his head; he is in profile, in the same acrobatic pose, surrounding the stage in the center with a ring.

Hole, ring, disk - penetration into the cave. The goal of the game was to penetrate inside the cave: the players tried to drive the ball through the ring (“the very heart of the game”); in "outdoor" stadiums, players may have aimed the ball at markers on the walls so that the ball would bounce back to the center of the field. The ring and its analogues - a disk on a post, a hole and a round slab in the center of the field - were associated with the entrance to the cave at the linguistic level: ul - “hole”, “entrance”, “crevice”, “gorge”, riot police. "blood", "soul", "ball"; the sign s/chi - “entrance”, “mouth”, “cave”, represents the image of the fingers of the hand brought together in the hole sign; syn. ho (T 18), art. hol, - “entrance”, “hole”, “enter”, “cave” (v. holtun - lit. “hole in a stone”), depicts a road leading to a hole with the sign ul inside. All the symbols of the entrance to the cave (itzompan, "place of the skull" among the Nahua) were associated with the head of the victim, the ball and the fruit, with a water reservoir under
roots of the world tree ("well of water" inside itzompan).
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The player, having hit the ball in the ring, performed a dance and anthem and made an obligatory sacrifice to the “idol of the stadium and the stone” into whose hole the ball passed 64 . The passage of the ball through the ring was perceived as the penetration of the ball into the cave - establishing a connection with the deity to whom the games at the stadium were dedicated (this aspect of the gaming ritual is also interpreted by G.V. van Bussel 65 ).

Having passed through the ring, the ball fell “inside” - into the bosom of the cave. Our idea is that on top level understanding and interpretation, the passage of the ball through the ring was interpreted in this way, confirmed by the fact that the player who hit the ball in the ring was considered a great adulterer 66 : any ring was associated with the vulva and the young goddess of flowers Xochiquetzal - a later version of the goddess of the Moon, the cave and the offspring of Tlazolteotl, and, accordingly, with carnal love and adultery. The messenger ball, which the players hammered into the hole of the ring, fell into the bosom of the cave, and then flew out of it again as a soul ready for incarnation.

The path to the cave - the road to the north. The stadium visibly embodied the idea of ​​​​a path to the land of the ancestors: flying from the southern end of the field to the northern one or going down the steps to the center of the field, the ball paved the way to the land of the ancestors in the north. The North among the Olmecs - this is what the cult ritual says - was considered the main direction in connection with ideas about the arrival of ancestors from the northern ancestral home 67 .

Along this path - a “white” road covered with lime mortar, symbolizing the colors of the north, along a “cold” and therefore “staircase” leading to the north, like the twins of the myth and the souls of the dead, followed the ball into the cave. All this supports our idea that both concepts associated with the stadium design - the staircase and the playing alley - were associated with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe path to the north.

The god of death in the form of a skeleton, lord of the kingdom of the dead in the north, rises from a vessel standing in the stadium in the symbol of a mouth-cave filled with water and surrounded by clouds (reliefs at El Tajin). The hero of the myth, standing in front of the Caiman tree, holds a pole rising from a vessel (relief of stele 25 in Izapa); the Serpent, whose head is shown on the vessel, is entwined. This last symbol, like the vessel standing in the mouth, serves as an indication of the scene of action - the northern ancestral home in the cave: the hieroglyph in the form of a vessel with water conveyed the morpheme ham, "vessel", and by homonym meant "north", i.e. was one of the symbols of the water-filled bosom of the northern cave of the ancestors. “North” acquired the meaning “ancient”, “ancestor”, due to the fact that Mayan ethnogonic legends pointed to the north as the location of the ancestral home (cf. Art. xam xib - lit. “disappearing behind”, “man from the north”, "ancestor"; xib - "ghost", "ancestor" - the root in the name of the cave, Xibalb a) 6 8 .

“The White (Northern) Road”, “The Ice Path” - the Mayans also called the Milky Way. It was thought of as a continuation of the world river (tsots. - “Water Path”) flowing in the night sky - along the ceiling of the cave. Both directions of the Milky Way were associated with the ethnogonic tradition: passing along the latitude, it perceived
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Malasya as the way to the west, where the “black road” led from the intersection of four roads to Xibalba, and as the “black entrance” (the block in the inscription on the ball in front of the messenger flying down), where the Sun set; The most important and significant, apparently, was the passage of the Milky Way along the north-south axis, when it led directly to the ancestral cave in the north.

The Milky Way was also called tsots. “The path of blood”, “The path of the child”, “The road along which the birthing waters depart”, “Living rope”, “Umbilical cord”, “Milk road” and was associated with blood, the waters of the original womb, with breast milk (it is filled with it in mythahnaua A milk tree feeding milk to the souls of babies in the rain god). A thick “Living Rope” filled with blood, also known as the “White Road”, according to Yucatan myth, stretched into the skies of the east to the west at the beginning of time (at the end of the first “creation” the blood flowing out of the cut umbilical cord-rope turned into flood waters) 69 . Cave waters flowed along the “Road of Water” - “sacred”, “virgin” waters, which were used to purify the souls of the dead for the reincarnation and initiate teenagers. Along this universal road connecting the worlds, souls, milky juice, water, blood circulated - the vital substance that connected every living creature with the womb of the cave that gave birth to it.

"Seven" - the number of the mythical ancestral home. The blood from the decapitated players spurts out in seven snake-shaped streams; one of the stadium jets at Chichen Itza is shown as a flowering branch 70 . This is how the name of one of the most ancient Mesoamerican goddesses is encoded - the goddess of water, plants, fertility and love, a late version of the great goddess of the Moon with the calendar name "VII Snake" ("Seven Snakes"). The goddess was revered as the owner of the cave and personified the cave: in Chichen Itza her dress was depicted as the shell of a turtle from which the world tree rises.

“Seven Snakes” not only conveyed the name of the goddess: this was how one of the names of the mythical country of the ancestors was encoded - the place where the messenger was heading was indicated. In the ethnogonic legends of the Nahuas and mountain Mayans, this country was called “Seven Caves”, “Seven Gorges”. Number 7

The number "7" (uuc, omon. "ancient"), in our opinion, was the symbolic number of the world "snake" cave in the names of its rulers: this is the goddess of the Moon "VII Woman" mentioned on the vessels - probably the same goddess "VII Snake" , also - "Seven Cobs"; Sun god "VII Parrot"); the owner of forest animals, the Deer God “Chasing [game] seven times”; god and goddess Bakers, she is also the goddess of the rainbow "VII Bakers"; "Lord of the Seven Lands" (god Itzamna); god of rain and creator Quetzalcoatl VII Ehecatl ("VII Wind");
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Hero of the K'iche epic "VII Lord"; godBat VII Zotz and many others. In principle, any of the gods in the form of an animal or bird, an ancestor, ancestor and “purifier”, the embodiment of one of the constellations of the Zodiac (caves - the “home” of luminaries and planets) could be designated by the number “7”. All natural objects that were associated with the number “7” (seven mountain peaks, branches in a river delta, stars in a constellation, etc.) acquired a sacred meaning and were associated with the world cave.

Tamoanchan-Chikomostok: ancestral cave. “Seven caves”, according to Yu.V. Knorozov, were echoes of the seven eras into which the Olmecs divided their legendary history. In the Yucatan version, the “Seven Abandoned Houses” are associated with them - symbolic caves, i.e. habitats left behind during the migration of the tribe 71 . There was only one original cave. In the “History of the Toltec-Chichimecs” (XVI century) it is drawn by a Nahua artist as seven rounded “sprouts” of a mountain cave - the womb vessel of the earth, the inner walls of which are covered with snake skin; in each of the “small” caves the heads of the ancestors are shown; above the cave rises the world mountain with its top curved into a cloudy curl; in front of the entrance there are prints of entering and exiting feet: the ancestors left here, the dead return here.

Nahua legends placed the Chicomostoc cave, as well as the paradise of the rain god Tlalocan, in a hot, fertile country of rain, abundance and wealth, guarded by gods in animal form (ancient totems) - on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. From here balls, feathers and shells used in the ritual of the game were brought to Central Mexico. This half-mythical, half-real country was called Tamoanchan, "Place of the Cloud Serpent." Here, in the delta of Usumacinta and Grijalva, the Maya-Ita and mountain Maya located their cave ancestral home 72 .

In Tamoanchan-Chikomostok, according to myths, there was a paradise of the rain god, in which a tree grew eternal life and abundance, and the place of universal generation was located: the luminaries and main gods of the Nahua, including the creators and ancestors, were born here. The world cave/tree/mountain in Tamoanchan was associated with an abundance of water and fruits, with fertilization and birth; the “seeds of life” were kept here - the souls-hearts of people, animals and plants. Civilization itself was born here: the gods invented laws, crafts, writing, a calendar and rituals, including the game itself. Players symbolically strove here and envoys were sent.
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Game as a ritual of divination. The name of the stadium in Tenochtitlan - "Mirror Stadium" - speaks of another function that the game performed: the Mayans, Mixtecs and Nahuas played the ball to find out the future, confirm predictions and prophecies, and check the correct interpretation of the signs read by the soothsayers in the mirrors. After the game on Tezcatlachco, two envoys were sent to the Monkey gods, the patrons of the game; the gods gave answers to people's requests, apparently, through the symbolism of numbers - ball hits, jumps, goals scored, etc. The association of the stadium with a mirror - one of the main attributes of fortune telling and divination - stemmed from the symbolic connection of both with the cave. Seven black round mirrors - according to the number of mythical ancestral caves - are shown in the Mexican Codex along the contour of the head of a cave monster with an open mouth. This connection provides further support for our idea that the stadium modeled the ancestral cave in the north: the Olmecs placed mirrors in offerings either at the center or at the northern edge of the composition; The mirror in the codes marked the center of the stadium or its northern “corner”. In the scenes, the ritual participants, who have freed their souls with the help of a drug, sitting in front of round mirrors made of obsidian, peer into their black surface: in it they no longer see themselves, but their liberated shadow soul, which has crossed the line between worlds, or a double soul ( .wow), broadcasting.from Through the Looking Glass.

The Rabbit God, in classical Mayan and later Nahua myth associated with intoxicated divination and with gambling, which was used for fortune-telling, speaks before the game of the gods of Xibalba with the avenging heroes; it, as usual, is held in the hands of the Moon goddess - the wife of the lord of the cave. A feather “swirl” and a mask, which were used in divination rituals under the influence of drugs, lie on the lid of the box in which books were kept recording myths, prophecies and signs (stands between the twin players and the young god on the throne): the heroes are preparing for the ritual fortune telling about the outcome of the game and your future fate.

Players as cultural heroes. The Yucatan myth says that dwarfs - sorcerers, sages and experts in sacred books, participants in divination rituals in scenes on vessels - entered the cave and played ball "when the time came" 73 (italics mine - A.B.). The time for the game, as we have shown, came at the most important moments in the life of society and each of its members: during sowing and initiation rites, memorial ceremonies and hunting rituals, at the festival of confirmation of the power of the ruler, when sending messengers to the gods, etc.

Through a dangerous, exhausting, skillful game, players won the right during their lifetime to penetrate into the world of spirits and gods, to the source of abundance, eternal life and sacred knowledge; they opened the path to the cave. This motive of making a way into a cave by jumping, stomping and hitting a ball is similar to the universal mythological motive of the hero breaking through an obstacle, a hole in a tree/rock in order to obtain vital objects hidden there (water, fire, corn, luminaries), skills and knowledge. The hero of the Totonac myth, having defeated the lords of the cave in a game, teaches people to sculpt incense burners, dance, sing and play musical instruments, and
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Faithful thundermen - send rain to the fields. The Quiché heroes, having defeated the gods of death, establish new ranks in the divine hierarchy and turn into the Sun and Moon, thereby beginning a new cycle of the life of the world - a new “creation”.

The goal of the game in a broad sense was to penetrate the cave. That is why the player’s mission was revered as similar to the mission of a cultural hero, and the Astecs celebrated a goal as a heroic feat. Outstanding players, like the ancient Greek athletes, winners olympic games, became heroes and patrons of fellow citizens, intermediaries between them and the gods; they restored world balance, warded off troubles from the people and contributed to their prosperity; they were worshiped after death as demigods.

Conclusion

The presented materials confirm the idea, first expressed by M. Ko, that a cycle of myths about heroes playing ball with antagonists lay at the heart of the Mayan mythological tradition of the 1st millennium, and the Mayan game scenes are illustrations of lost episodes of the myth. However, how to interpret the fact that these scenes come from the same area of ​​​​the Mayan lowlands, where the myth is forgotten? This apparently has nothing to do with the conquest of Yucatan itself, since the Toltecs and Itzas played ball at least until the end of the 12th century. After the fall of classical civilization and the Toltec conquest, large population movements were observed throughout the Maya territory, but there was no change in population. The marginal groups that invaded here (Itza, Quiché, etc.) spoke Mayan languages ​​and came from Tabasco and Chiapas, territories that were part of the area where the myth was spread. But at the same time, the Quiche knew the myth, but the Itza did not. Let us also note that the Yucatecs, Cholis, Qeqchis and other groups in the lowlands have lost the plot of the game in the plot of the myth of the “hero-avengers”, although other versions of this myth exist among them today. The same can be said about the Nahuas, who lost the plot, despite the fact that the game was extremely popular and widespread among them until the Spanish conquest.

Although folklorists note that it is rarely possible to understand what conditions contribute to the preservation and acquisition of plots by some groups and oblivion by others, we see the reason for the loss of myth in the lowlands in the fact that in Mayan cities the ritual of the game and the myth of the hero-players are always closer than in Mexico, were associated with elite culture. Apparently as a result of the fall in the 8-1X centuries. classical cities (the disappearance of the elite and elite culture) and later, at the end of the 12th century, oriented towards the Toltec culture of the nobility of Chichen Itza, the ritual significance of the game decreased and it lost its former important role in culture, especially since sports competition, apparently, was not as popular and secular among the Mayans as among the Nahuas.
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From a mass sports and cult event of the era of the tribal system, the game in the Mayan states turned into a purely elitist ritual (in this it can be compared to playing golf), into an aristocratic privilege and highly professional sport, to which only a small group of people could devote themselves and the right to participate in which gave either noble origin, or - for a person from a different class - outstanding athletic abilities.

Variations of the hero-player myth are recorded among the Quiche of highland Guatemala and the Totonacs of the mountains of northern Puebla in Mexico, but this myth is not a mountain tradition. The studied materials provide new evidence in favor of the hypothesis about the spread of gaming ritual and myth across Mesoamerica from the Gulf Coast - from the Olmec centers. The Olmecs, as we have tried to show, knew myth. In their cities, the concepts of the oldest “open” stadium and game equipment, the symbolism of the game ritual, were formed. The Olmecs themselves, judging by archeology and comparative studies of American mythologies, borrowed the ritual of the game, along with the myth of avenging heroes and a number of others (including the myth of the tree of abundance), through their southern neighbors, from the tribes of the tropical forests in the northwest Amazonia 74 At the end of the 2nd-1st millennium BC, when the Olmecs spread widely across Mesoamerica, the myth of hero-players became pan-Mesoamerican. This belonging to a single mythological tradition explains the close parallels in the Mayan and Totonac myths. The classic Mayan myth based on the plot of avenger heroes now appears to us as a combination of the Guatemalan and Veracruz lines, which diverged after the fall of classical civilizations and were only partially preserved in the Quiché mythological tradition.

The study of the semiotics of the ritual of playing ball in Mesoamerica confirms our idea that the universal ritual-mythological image of the original cave and the cult of the cave, brought by the ancestors of the Indians from the Asian ancestral home, dominated the Olmecs and, largely due to this, became key in Mesoamerican mythology. Moreover, if in the “main” Indo-European myth, which represents an archetypal model of the world (reconstructed by V.V. Ivanov and V.N. Toporov and later called “universal”), the image of the original cave is secondary and in it the world tree growing from the cave , is assigned a central role, then in Mesoamerica the image of the cave is absolutely dominant: the world tree grows from the cave/in the cave in which the world is generated/from which the world unfolds; The world tree here appears as a later development and detailing of the image of the cave. In this we see a feature of the “universal myth” in Mesoamerica. Moreover, this special prominence and importance of the “place of origin”, the cave, in Mesoamerica, in contrast to the Old World and the Andes, leads to the fact that with the expression of three vertical semantic levels in
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The diagram of the world tree does not reveal the opposition between heaven and the underworld so much that it is even difficult to use the term chthonic. Thus, all the heroes of the Quiché epic, without exception, are not heavenly gods opposing the gods of the underworld (the absolutely dominant point of view), but cave deities.

The ball game reflected the characteristic features of Indian cultures, concentrating, as if into focus, the fundamental concepts of the universe. It can be said to encode the model of the Indian world as a whole, since it vividly and clearly embodied the main structural principle of dual social organization - a combination of opposition and complementarity. The game became an integral part of the cycle of “rites of passage” - initiation, memorial and “sacrificial” rituals with their idea of ​​death and rebirth - primarily due to the fact that the ball in the ritual of the game served as the embodiment of a “free”, purified - soul ready for reincarnation. The game was designed to ensure the eternal cycle of reincarnation, therefore it turned out to be associated with ideas about the original cave, the image of which served as an expression of the idea of ​​generation and fertility, and was semiotically oriented towards the myth of the beginning.

Judging by the sources, there were three main ways to overcome time and space to penetrate the cave: 1. releasing the blood soul (partially one’s own, completely the soul of the victim-messenger); 2. using drugs, entering a state of trance - reincarnated, and 3. playing ball. Therefore, in terms of structure and symbolism, the game action turns out to be close to a drug trance, and scenes of hunting, battles, sacrifices, games and funeral rituals receive the same set of iconographic symbols.

Playing ball opened the way to the cave and magically transported you into it. The game - itself a sacred, magical force - pulled together other rituals and so capaciously realized all cultural goals that it now seems to us to be the core of Mayan ritualism, one of the main driving symbols of Mayan culture, while the sign of the Cloud Cave is its main iconographic
symbol.

And the last thing we would like to note. Yu.V. Knorozov, except for the important idea he put forward about the correspondence of the Quiché myth to the initiation rite, never wrote or spoke to the author of this article about any aspect of the ball game. But this topic also follows directly from the entire context of the ancient Mayan culture, which only he was able to experience and reconstruct so completely and on a large scale.
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Notes

1 Cooper J. M. Games and gambling // Handbook of South American Indians. Wash. (D.C.), 1949. Vol. 5. P. 505-516; Stern Th. The Rubber-Ball Games of the Americas // Monographs Amer. Etnol. Soc., N 17. Seattle, L., 1966; Borhegyi S.F. America's Ballgame // Nat. History. 1960. Vol. 69, No. 1; Duverger Ch. L "esprit du jeu chez les Azteques. Paris, 1976; Cohodas M. The symbolism and ritual function of the Middle Classic ball game in Mesoamerica // Amer. Indian Quarterly. 1975. Vol. 2, N 2. P. 99-130; Krickeberg W. El juego de pelota mesoamericano y su simbolismo religioso // Traducciones mesoamericanistas. Mexico, 1966. Vol. 1. P. 191-313; Leyenaar T.J. Ulama: The perpetuation i n Mexico of the Pre-Spanish ball game ullamaliztli. Leiden, 1978; Schele L.,Miller M.E. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. N.Y., FortWorth, 1986. P. 241-264

2 Berezkin Yu.E. Mythology of the Indians of Latin America and the most ancient folklore provinces (Analysis of one mythological plot) // Folklore and historical ethnography. M., 1983. S. 191-216; It's him. Myths of South American Indians on the plot of the initiation rite // Folklore and ethnography: At the origins of folklore plots and images. L., 1984. P. 6-15; It's him. Plots of South American mythology // Historical destinies of American Indians. M., 1985. S. 118-122; It's him. Mythology of the American Indians: Analytical catalog of myths. St. Petersburg, 1999 (Electronic version). StoriesJ1-J57.
3 Popol Vuh. M., Leningrad, 1959. pp. 31-79.
4 Berezkin Yu.E. Mythology of the American Indians...; Ichon A. La religion des Totonaques de la Sierra. Paris, 1969. P. 63-69
5 Thompson J.E. Ethnology of the Mayas of Southern and Central British Honduras // Field Mus. Nat. Hist., Anthrop. Ser. Publ. 274.Vol. XVII, No. 2. Chicago, 1930. P. 119-123; Berezkin Yu.E. Mythology of the Indians..., plot K45.
6 Landa D. de. Report on affairs in Yucatan. M., Leningrad, 1955. P. 158.
7 Coe M.D. The Maya scribe and his world. N.Y., 1973. P. 13-22; Idem. Lords of the underworld. Princeton, 1978, pp. 13-14.
8 Ichon A. Op. cit. P. 49, 79.
9 Oral communication.
10 Berezkin Yu.E. Myths of South American Indians on the plot of the initiation rite... P. 10-12; It's him. Indian mythology...; Knorozov Yu.V. Names of gods in Mayan manuscripts (in this edition).
11 Zolotarev A.M. Tribal system and primitive mythology. M., 1964. S. 22, 50-52, 136-141, 150,173-174.
12 Thompson J.E. Op. cit. P. 119-125.
13 Borodatova A.A. Games of gods and people: Ethnosemiotic analysis of the iconography of the ancient Maya. M., 1998. Ch. III, IV.
14 Knorozov Yu.V., Ershova G.G. Mayan inscriptions on ceramic vessels // Ancient writing systems: Ethnic semiotics. M., 1986. pp. 142-143.
15 TozzerA. A Comparative study of the Mayas and the Lacandones. L., N.Y., 1907. P. 142, 154.
16 Borodatova A.A. Gods of the Underworld among the Ancient Mayans // Races and Peoples. M., 1986. pp. 87-91.
17 Amador Naranjo A. El origen del mundo en Oxkintok // Oxkintok. Madrid, 1989. P.160-161.
18 Coe M. The Maya scribe... P. 12-22; Idem. Lords... P. 11-13.
19 Knorozov Yu.V. Inscriptions on ancient Mayan ceramics // Manuscript of a report at the conference "Round table on pre-Columbian collections in European museums." L., 1985; Knorozov Yu.V., Ershova G.G. Mayan inscriptions... P. 114-151. M. Ko himself later, under the influence of new “readings” proposed by North American epigraphists, partially revised his idea.
20 Thompson J.E. Op. cit. P. 59.
21 Amador Naranjo A. Op. cit.
22 Nunez de la Vega F. Constituciones diocesanas del Obispado de Chiapa. Mexico, 1986. P.132-133.
23 Kerr J. Op. cit. Vol. 2. P. 193.
24 Landa D.de.S. 148-151.
25 Berezkin Yu.E. Analytical catalog... Plot K29; Ichon A. Op cit. P.68-69.
26 The same god instructs the brothers in the interpretation of sacred texts orat reads them on how to pass the tests in Xibalba (picture on the front title).
27 Borodatova A.A. Games of the Gods... M., 1998. P. 637-666.
28 Landa D. de. Decree. op. pp. 148-151; Relaciones de Yucatan // Colleccion de documentos ineditos... Madrid, 1900. T. 11. P. 50-51.
29 Coe M. Old gods and young heroes. Jerusalem, 1982. P. 32.
30 Proskouriakoff T. Olmec and Maya art: Problems of their stylistic relationship // Dumburton Oaks Conference on the Olmec. Wash., 1976. P. 115.
31 Motolinia T. de B. Memoriales, o Libro de las cosas de la Nueva Espana y de los naturales de ella. Mexico. 1903. P. 337.
32 See article by Yu.V. Knorozova in this edition; It's him. Notes on the Mayan calendar: 365-day year // Sov. ethnographic 1973. N 1. P. 71-76.
33 See note. 30, 31 to the article by Yu.V. Knorozova in this edition.
34 Borodatova A.A. New Year's holiday among the Mayans (On the issue of preserving the hunting ideology in agricultural society) // Ecology of American Indians and Eskimos. M., 1988. S. 324-328, 332.
35 Berezkin Yu.E. Indian mythology. Scenes K37, 39.
36 Coe M. Lords of the underworld... P. 13-22; Idem. Classic Maya pottery Dumbarton Oaks. Wash., 1975. P. 8.
37 KerrJ. Op. cit. Vol. II. P. 193.
38 Knorozov Yu.V. Hieroglyphic manuscripts... P. 249-250; See also his article in this edition.
39 Knorozov Yu.V., Ershova G.G. Mayan inscriptions... P. 116. The synonym in - morph is used here. tox. Both signs conveyed the name of the thunder god (see notes 12 and 184 to the article by Yu.V. Knorozov in this edition).
40 Sahagun B. de. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana. Mexico, 1938. Vol. 1. P.259-260.
41 Zerries 0. Primitive South America and the West Indies // Pre-Columbian American Religions. N.Y., 1968. P. 285-286.
42 It is written raa-ich, we believe, to preserve the shape of the ear decoration (disc with pendant).
43 See article by Yu.V. Knorozova in this edition.

44 Named after J.E. Thompson "lunar postfix": Thompson J.E. Maya hieroglyphic writing. Norman, 1960. P. 214, 223.
45 Ibid. P. 231-232.
46 Kerr J. Op.cit. 1994. Vol. 4. P. 298.
47 Thompson J.E. Maya hieroglyphic writing. P. 236, 238; Roys R. Ritual of the Bacabs: A Book of Maya incantations. Norman, 1965. P. 67.
48 Schele L., Grube N. Six-Staired Ballcourts // Copan Note. 1990. N 83. P. 44, 48.
49 Thompson J.E. Maya hieroglyphic writing. P. 214.
50 Blom F. The Maya ball-game pok-ta-pok called tiachtii by the Aztecs // Middle American Papers, Tulane Univ., New Orleans. 1932. P. 492, 495^97.
51 Fiaiko V.C. El marcador de Juego de pelota de Tikal: Nuevas referencias epigraficas para el Clasico Temprano // Epigrafia Maya. Guatemala, 1987. P.61-71.
52 Swanton J.R. Social organization and social usages of the Indians of the Creek confederacy // Bur. Amer. Ethnol, 42 Ann. Rep. Wash., 1928. P. 210.
53 Knorozov Yu.V. Notes on the Mayan calendar: 365-day year // Sov. ethnographic 1973. N1.0. 71-74; It's him. Hieroglyphic manuscripts... P. 254; It's him. Notes on the Mayan calendar: Monument E at Tres Zapotes // Lat. America. N 6. 1973. S. 84-86. See also the article by Yu.V. Knorozova in this edition.
54 Ibid. P.25.
55 Coe M. The Hero-Twins: Myth and image // J. Kerr. Op. cit. P. 162-171; Fash W.R. Unearthing an ethos: Maya archeology and Maya myth // Symbols. Publ. of the Peabody Mus. and the Harvard Univ. 1997. P. 23-274.
56 Tezozomoc H.A. Cronica mexicana. Mexico, 1875. P. 228-229.
57 KerrJ. Op. cit. 1997. Vol. 5. P. 798.
58 Right there. pp. 187-188.
59 Knorozov Yu.V. Two books by Michael Ko // Sov. ethnographic 1973. N 2. P. 187.
60 Ixtlilxochiti F. de A. Obras historicas. Mexico, 1891-1892. Vol. 1. P. 55.
61 See article by Yu.V. Knorozova in this edition.
62 Schele L., Grube N. Op. cit. P. 44, 48.
63 Borodatova A.A. Gods of the Underworld... P. 94-97.
64 Bussel G.W. van. Balls and Openings: the Maya ball-game as an intermediary // The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Bussell G. van, P. van Dongen, T. Leyenaar (eds.). Leiden, 1991, pp. 254-257.
65 Motolinia T.de B. Memoriales... P.339.
66 Ibid. P. 337; Tezozomoc HA. Op. cit. P. 228.
67 Knorozov Yu.V. Ethnogenetic processes in ancient America // Problems of history and ethnography of America. Moscow, 1979. P.133-141.
68 Knorozov Yu.V. Hieroglyphic manuscripts... P. 249-250.
69 Tozzer A. Op. cit. P. 153-154.
70 See fig. 6 in the article by I. Buteneva in this edition.
71 Knorozov Yu.V. Notes on the Mayan calendar. General review I // Sov. ethnographic
fiy, 1971. N 2. S. 84-85; It's him. Ethnogenetic processes...
72 It's him. Ethnogenetic processes... P. 139-141.
73 Amador Naranjo A. Op. cit. P. 160.
74 Berezkin Yu.E. Ancient agriculture and modern mythology: correlation of habitats // Ecology of American Indians and Eskimos. M., 1988. S. 263-266; It's him. Mythology of the American Indians...

The Olmecs are the inventors of the game. Almost all Mayan cities had ball courts. Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of “stadiums” in Tikal (Guatemala), Copan (Honduras), Chichen Itza (Yucatan Peninsula), Oaxaca (Southern Mexico) and other places. During periods of hostilities, the Indians arranged truces in order to play a sacred game.

It is believed that the game pok-ta-pok was invented by the Olmecs, the creators of the most ancient civilization, traces of which were found in Mexico. Two playing fields may have been located in the Olmec ritual center of La Venta, which existed in 1000-400 BC. BC. And from the Olmecs the ball game was learned throughout Central and Southern Mexico, as well as in the northern regions of Central America.

Features of the game. The game could involve two teams or two players. They took turns serving the ball so that the opponent could not return it without making a mistake. You could touch the ball with your hips, elbows, and buttocks. The players threw the ball from one end of the field to the other, trying to get into the hoop. The winner was the one who scored a certain number of points.

You could immediately win the game if you managed to throw the ball through the hoop, the hole of which was slightly larger than the ball. The ring was attached vertically to the wall of the site at a height of about two meters from the ground, sometimes higher.

The game was of a ritual nature. The movement of the ball symbolized the movement of the sun and stars across the sky, and the opposing teams staged a symbolic struggle between day and night, the gods of Heaven and the Underworld (the kingdom of the dead).

Often the game ended with a beheading ritual, which is probably related to the cult of fertility. Some believe that the captain of the losing “team” turned into a victim, others - the captain of the winning “team”, since the gods had to give the best, including the strongest, most dexterous, beautiful people. Perhaps all the losers were beheaded. It is also suggested that the role of the victim could be played by prisoners of war who had the honor of participating in the game. It was believed that the sacrificed person, after winning the game, went to heaven, bypassing the horrors of the nine underworlds.

Balls and "tracksuits". The balls the Indians played with were different from modern ones. They were made of rubber and were not hollow inside and therefore weighed a lot - 2 kg, if not 3 kg. Often in Mayan reliefs and drawings the balls turn out to be very large in size - only two to three times smaller than the players themselves. So the Indians emphasized that the ball was the main “character” of the game.

The participant in the game had to use a helmet, knee pads, and put on a leather hip belt weighing 30 kg. The use of such defenses made the game even more difficult. In many Mayan cities, during excavations, clay figurines were found depicting players - massive men dressed in strong helmets, voluminous belts and other protective equipment reflecting a blow or throwing a ball.

Indian "stadiums". In shape they resembled the Latin letters I or T. They seemed to symbolize the Universe, pointing to the four parts of the world. The game itself took place in the longitudinal part of the structure. The “playing field” was enclosed by vertical or inclined walls, from which the ball bounced without hitting the spectators. As mentioned, there was a vertical stone ring in the middle of the wall. Sometimes a removable wooden ring was used. Spectators could be seated on platforms around the site.

“Stadiums” were part of ritual complexes. They included pyramids, temples (often mortuary ones), sites for human sacrifices, tzompantli - special structures where the skulls of those sacrificed were kept (sometimes called “walls of skulls” or “places of skulls”).

The location of the “stadiums” did not depend on the terrain or the placement of other buildings. For the Indians, it was important that the sites were oriented either along a north-south axis or along a west-east axis. In the first case, the platforms seemed to point to the north, where, according to the beliefs of some Indian peoples of the region, the kingdom of the dead was located. In the second case (east-west line), the orientation of the “stadiums” indicated the connection of the game with the solar cult.

The largest play area. Archaeologists have discovered a “stadium” in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza (Yucatan), which was built in 864. Tourists visiting the ruins of the ancient city are impressed by the size of this structure. The field is 146 m long and 36 m wide. It is bordered by two long walls. On the walls at a height of 10 m there are rings into which the players had to throw the ball. The playing field is oriented along a north-south line with a slight deviation to the east (to the sacred well of the Itza people). At the base of the walls there are low stone ledges. On the ledges there are relief images of human sacrifices. Ancient engravers showed two "teams" consisting of seven players each, with one player holding in his hand the head of an opponent from the other team.

Four churches were erected on the territory of the “sports” complex. Their walls were decorated with frescoes telling about the military glory of the Mayans. Some images were directly related to the game.

Experts draw attention to the unique feature of this complex of structures. Being in the so-called Northern Temple and Southern Temple, two people could talk to each other without straining their voices, and their conversation was not audible to other people except those who stood in close proximity to the talkers. The reasons for the occurrence of such an acoustic effect are unknown; it is impossible to say whether the Mayans created a “stone telephone” or the effect was a gift of nature.

Architectural complex in Guatemala. Particularly popular among tourists visiting Central America is the architectural complex of the ancient city of Zuculeu, whose inhabitants were conquered by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Like the Mayans, who settled in the Yucatan during the classical period, the inhabitants of Zuculeu decorated their “sports” court with images of the gods to whom the game was dedicated. Modern visitors to the Indian city find that the stadium in provincial Zuculeu was four times larger than the stadium in the older, more famous and more populous Mayan urban center of Tikal.

Apparently, the ritual complex in the small mountain town had special significance. Playground symbolized a narrow passage to the underworld, through which the sun disappears into the night. Rivals fought for the right to bring the sun out of the underworld. They acted in the same way as the heroes of the epic work of the Maya of Guatemala, the sacred book of the Popol Vuh.

An ancient game today. The favorite game of the Mayans and peoples close to them in culture can still be observed today. Some travel companies attract attention by promising visitors the opportunity to see this rare sight. True, these days no one performs the complex rituals that accompanied the competition in the past, and does not sacrifice players to the gods.