The Popol Vuh

This is the account of when all is still silent and placid. All is silent and calm. Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky.

So begins the creation myth of the Maya as it is reported in one of the most discussed and misrepresented documents in Maya history: the Popol Vuh, or Council Book, a manuscript written by the Quiché Maya in the early Spanish colonial period of the mid-16th century AD.

First page from the 18th century Popol Vuh in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library
Photo Credit: Paulo Cesar Coronado

The document was written and signed by Quiché nobility of the 1550s, and it is without a doubt a version of an earlier, precolumbian document. The 1550s manuscript has disappeared, but during the first decade of the 18th century, a Dominican friar named Francisco Ximénez, the parish priest of Chichicastenango, obtained the manuscript and wrote a translation. The Ximénez manuscript, which includes Quiche and Spanish in parallel columns, is currently archived in the Newberry Library.

A new article from contributing writer Nicoletta Maestri describes for us the contents of the Popol Vuh, and places the stories of the Maya creation and the Hero Twins in the context of what archaeologists have learned from other places. Great stuff!

• The Popul Vuh, from Nicoletta
• The Hero Twins in Maya mythology
• Popul Vuh: translation and commentary by Allen J. Christenson