Rulership

FIGURE 12. Lord 9 Lizard and Lady 12 Deer seated as rulers, from page 13 of the Codex Selden.

FIGURE 12. Lord 9 Lizard and Lady 12 Deer seated as rulers, from page 13 of the Codex Selden.

FIGURE 13. The multiple wives of Lord 8 Deer “Jaguar Claw,” from pages 26-27 of the Codex Nuttall. Lord 8 Deer and his first wife, Lady 12 Serpent, are seated in a red and white palace on the right-hand edge of the image. Lady 12 Serpent extends a footed vessel of cacao to her husband. Below are shown their two sons, followed by drawings of five individual women, all facing to the right. At least four of these are subsequent wives of Lord 8 Deer.

FIGURE 13. The multiple wives of Lord 8 Deer “Jaguar Claw,” from pages 26-27 of the Codex Nuttall. Lord 8 Deer and his first wife, Lady 12 Serpent, are seated in a red and white palace on the right-hand edge of the image. Lady 12 Serpent extends a footed vessel of cacao to her husband. Below are shown their two sons, followed by drawings of five individual women, all facing to the right. At least four of these are subsequent wives of Lord 8 Deer.

In his final appearance in the Codex Selden, Lord 9 Lizard and his wife are seated on thrones before a temple or palace (Figure 12). Depictions of married couples are prevalent in all of the historical screenfolds. These pairs of yya and yya dzehe (king and queen) may be illustrating the Ã’udzavui metonym yuvui tayu: “kingdom.” Literally, the phrase can be translated as either “the throne, the mat” or “the throne, the marriage pair.”

As discussed in detail by ethnohistorian Kevin Terraciano, gender complimentarity was central to Ã’udzavui rulership. King and queen ruled together, and thus rather than referring to Ã’udzavui polities as “kingdoms,” Terraciano suggests that the term “coupledoms” better represents the way in which royal power was shared.9 Images of king and queen seated together, enthroned (either on the place sign for the polity over which they rule or on “the thrones, the mat” seen below) may therefore represent more than just wedding scenes. These scenes may present, over and over again, the yuvui tayu, the pairing of husband and wife who jointly ruled over their lands and subjects.

At the same time, note that the Ã’udzavui (like many Mesoamerican people) practiced polygamy, in which one man married a number of women. For example, the eleventh-century Ã’udzavui hero, Lord 8 Deer, married at least five women, a shown in Figure 13. This form of marriage extended the personal alliances linking different polities, allowing a single (male) ruler to expand his connections to a number of different noble families.

Text by Byron Hamann
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9 Terraciano 1994, 393; see also Terraciano 2001, 158-159, 165-178.