Stela 20 |
In front of the king's nose is a stylized flower, perhaps a reference to the king's breath soul. He holds a double-headed ceremonial bar that issues streams of sacred liquid marked with celestial signs. Deities and jaguarlike supernaturals float in the sacred waters, and the king is portrayed as the agent who brings forth these divine beings.
After it was broken up in antiquity, the surviving sections of Stela 20 graced the main entrance stairway of Caracol's E-Group complex. The lower section, excatated in 1950, depicts two people facing each other, one on an elaborate throne that has an overarching zoomorphic top (which may symbolize a sacred cave) and sprouting vegetation. The portrayed location may be a direct reference to Caracol's Caana structure, a massive ceremonial building topped by three temples, which represents Caracol's mountain of creation. On the upper part of the stela, a hieroglyphic text next to the ruler's head relates his name (eroded) and notes his title, Ux Witz Ajaw (Lord of the Three-Mountain Place). The stela's main text opens with a Long Count date, written with bar and dot numbers and the earliest full-figure variants of the period glyphs, that may be reconstructed as 8.18.4.4.14 12 Hix 2 Mol (September 19, AD 400). The rest of the text has not survived on the retrieved fragments of the stela. The king's reign fits between those of two known rulers, but little information is available on Caracol's early history because few Early Classic monuments survive.
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