God K is the Schellhas-Zimmermann-Taube designation of a codical Maya deity representing lightning (see fig. 1). In earlier, especially Classic depictions, his main characteristics are a blade or torch running through his forehead, and a serpent for one of his legs (see fig. 2). God K personifies the lightning axe of the rain deity, Chaac

Chaac

Chaac is the name of the Maya rain deity. With his lightning axe, Chaac strikes the clouds and produces thunder and rain. Chaac corresponds to Tlaloc among the Aztecs.-Rain deities and rain makers:...

, which is also a stereotypical attribute of the king as represented on his steles.

Names

From the correspondence between Landa

Landa

Landa is a Basque surname.Landa may refer to:Places* Landa, North Dakota* Landa de MatamorosPeople* Alfredo Landa* Diego de Landa, fourth bishop of Yucatan* Daniel Landa, Czech musician* Eli Landa* Honorino Landa* Konstantin Landa...

's description of the New Year rituals and the depiction of these rituals in the Dresden Codex

Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex, also known as the Codex Dresdensis, is a pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatecan Maya in Chichén Itzá. The Maya codex is believed to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier...

, it can be inferred that in 16th-century Yucatán, god K was called Bolon Dzacab 'Innumerable (bolon 'nine, innumerable') maternal generations'. God K's name in the Classic period may have been the same, or similar, since the numeral 'nine' is repeatedly included in the deity's logogram

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

.

However, another hypothesis has recently become popular. Hieroglyphically, the head of god K can substitute for the syllable k'a in k'awiil, a word possibly meaning 'powerful one', and attested as a generic deity title in Yucatec documents. This substitution has given rise to the idea that, inversely, the title k'awiil as a whole should be considered a name specifically referring to god K.

Narratives and Scenes

Lightnings play a crucial role in tales dealing with the creation of the world and its preparation for the advent of mankind. In the cosmogony of the Popol Vuh, three Lightning deities identified with the 'Heart of the Sky' (among whom Huraqan 'One-Leg') create the earth out of the primordial sea, and people it with animals. Bolon Dzacab plays an important, if not very clear role in the cosmogonical myth related in the Book of Chilam Balam

Chilam Balam

The so-called Books of Chilam Balam are handwritten, chiefly 18th-century Mayan miscellanies, named after the small Yucatec towns where they were originally kept, and preserving important traditional knowledge in which indigenous Mayan and early Spanish traditions have coalesced...

 of Chumayel, where he is identified with wrapped-up seeds. The rain gods or their lightnings once opened up the Maize Mountain, making the maize seeds available to mankind.

God K also figures in an enigmatic Classic scene known only from ceramics (see fig.2), showing an aged ancestor or deity emerging from the serpentine foot of the lightning god, apparently to mate with a nude young woman of decidedly aristocratic allure entwined by the serpent. Not impossibly, the meaning of the scene is ritual, rather than mythological. Perhaps related to this, stucco reliefs at Palenque depict a king (and perhaps also a queen) holding a baby with a lightning celt in the forehead and a serpentine leg.

Functions

The illustrated katun cycle of the Paris Codex suggests that the presentation of the head of god K - perhaps holding the promise of 'Innumerable Generations' - was part of the king's ritual inauguration and accession to the throne. God K not only embodied the king's war-like lightning power, but also his power to bring agricultural prosperity to his subjects: The Lightning deity was a god of agricultural abundance, and of the maize and cacao seeds in particular. Therefore, he is often depicted with a sack of grains, sometimes accompanied by the expression hun yax(al) hun k'an(al) 'abundance'.