Hunahpú and Xbalanqué
Hunahpú and Xbalanqué are central figures in Maya mythology, known as the Hero Twins. Their story begins with their father, Hun-Hunahpú, and his brother, Vucub-Hunahpú, who, after being tricked and sacrificed by the lords of the underworld, Xibalba, lead to the birth of the twins through the curious daughter of a Xibalban lord. The Hero Twins are celebrated for their athletic abilities and cleverness, using their skills to overcome various challenges posed by the underworld lords in a series of trials. They demonstrate resilience by repeatedly killing and resurrecting themselves, ultimately defeating the lords of Xibalba and ascending to the sky, where they become celestial bodies—the Morning Star and the Sun.
The narrative of Hunahpú and Xbalanqué illustrates key themes in Maya culture, such as the interplay between life and death, the significance of duality, and the importance of cunning and courage. Their exploits not only highlight the complexities of relationships among deities but also serve as moral exemplars for leadership and creativity within the Maya worldview. The Hero Twins' tale has been preserved through various forms of art, architecture, and oral traditions, signifying its foundational role in Maya mythology and its influence across Mesoamerican cultures.
Hunahpú and Xbalanqué
Author: Traditional Maya
Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE; 1 CE–500 CE
Country or Culture: Mesoamerica
Genre: Myth
PLOT SUMMARY
In a time before humans, before sun and moon exist, there live twin brothers, Hun-Hunahpú (One Hunter) and Vucub-Hunahpú (Seven Hunter). Hun-Hunahpú marries and fathers twin sons, Hunbatz (One Monkey) and Hunchouén (One Artisan). The adult twins, Hun-Hunahpú and Vucub-Hunahpú, do little but gamble and play ball. Their noisy sport disturbs the lords of the underworld, Xibalba, who send owl messengers to summon the twins to play on the ball court of their kingdom. The twins journey to Xibalba expecting to demonstrate their athleticism, but it is a deadly trap. The underworld lords trick the brothers and sacrifice them. The Lords of Xibalba decapitate Hun-Hunahpú and hang his head as a warning on a tree branch at the entrance of the underworld. Fruit immediately appears on the tree, and Hun-Hunahpú’s head also takes the shape of the fruit. Amazed and troubled, the Lords of Xibalba forbid anyone to pluck fruit from the tree.
However, the daughter of a Xibalban lord, Xquic (Blood Woman), is drawn by curiosity to the wondrous tree. When she reaches for a fruit, the head of Hun-Hunahpú spits into her hand, and she instantly becomes pregnant. For disobeying the Lords, Xquic is ordered to be sacrificed. But through subterfuge, she escapes to the aboveground world and gives birth to Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, who become known as the Hero Twins.
Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, skilled blowgun hunters and ballplayers with cunning minds and a wealth of special abilities, perform many miracles. They transform their envious, lazy elder brothers, Hunbatz and Hunchouén, into monkeys. They interact with animals, shortening the tails of deer and rabbits and making the rat’s tail hairless. Through trickery, they destroy the arrogant bird monster Vucub-Caquix (Seven Macaw) and his sons Zipacná (Giant) and Cabracán (Earthquake).
As with that of their father and uncle, the ball playing of Hunahpú and Xbalanqué disturbs the peace of the underworld lords. The Lords of Xibalba command the twins to appear in their realm. With the aid of a mosquito sent ahead to spy on the Xibalbans, the young twins successfully pass a series of tests that had undone their late father. Through cleverness, magic, exploitation of the special abilities of particular animals, and divine power, they survive all six Xibalba challenges: the houses of darkness, knives, cold, jaguars, fire, and bats. As a grand finale, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué repeatedly kill, dismember, and resurrect themselves. By this time severely intoxicated from fermented corn liquor and stupefied at the twins’ performance, the Lords of Xibalba insist that they too want to experience death and revival. The twins agree and kill supreme lords Hun-Camé (One Death) and Vucub-Camé (Seven Death), whom they do not restore to life. The Xibalbans are thus robbed of leadership and power.
With their work done, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué ascend into the sky, where Hunahpú becomes Venus, the Morning Star, and Xbalanqué becomes the sun.
SIGNIFICANCE
Long before the stories were collected into the sixteenth-century written work the Popol Vuh, characters and incidents from Maya mythology were depicted in their art and architecture. The posthumous father of the Hero Twins, maize god Hun-Hunahpú, appeared as a stylized ear of corn—stripped from its stalk to symbolize his beheading—on temples during the early classic period of Maya history (ca. 250–562 CE). References to Hunahpú and Xbalanqué have been found on even earlier structures, such as on monuments of the late preclassic period (ca. 300 BCE–250 CE) at Izapa and Cerros in the lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, which indicates that the myth of the Hero Twins was well known and established some two thousand years before it was preserved in print. Tales were told and retold orally, and mnemonic reminders of myths, in the form of glyphs suggesting characteristics or events, were carved into stone, painted on pottery, and shaped into statuary across the history and territory of the Mayas. Vignettes pertaining to Xibalba and the exploits of Hunahpú and Xbalanqué have been found at sites from Chichén Itzá in the northeast to Palenque in the west and from Tikal in modern-day Guatemala to Copán in Honduras.
The Hero Twins constituted an elemental part of Maya mythology. They brought to life the fundamental religious principle of a tripartite universe: the heavens, earth, and underworld. They illuminated complex relationships among a multitude of deities and shaped complicated beliefs regarding death and the afterlife. They helped explain natural phenomena and laid a foundation for a whole culture by providing shining examples of leadership, determination, and creative thinking to which Maya leaders could aspire.
The independently developed twin motif, repeated throughout the myth of Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, was not unique to the Mayas. Twins or twin-like figures also appear in the mythology of the Sumerians and Babylonians (Gilgameš and Enkidu), Greeks and Romans (Heracles and Iphicles, Castor and Pollux, Romulus and Remus), and many other cultures worldwide. However, unlike such classical creations, often used to illustrate contrasts in nature, the Maya Hero Twins demonstrate the special, almost supernatural bond shared by siblings born at the same time.
The Hero Twins are also an amalgam akin to another figure common to the mythology of many other civilizations: the trickster. Like Loki in Norse mythology, and especially like Coyote or Raven in American Indian folklore, the Maya brothers use imaginative ruses to foil, confuse, and overcome foes such as the prank-loving Lords of Xibalba, who are defeated at their own game.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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