The Mesoamerican ballgame is among the most important and enduring cultural features of the Pre-Columbian world, and its accompanying accoutrements of yokes, hachas, and palmas comprise one of the most important categories of stone sculpture.
The objects known as hachas, the Spanish word for “axes”, were originally named for their tapering form’s supposed resemblance to large stone axe heads. Like yokes and palmas, these enigmatic stone artifacts probably represent ritual effigies of actual ballgame equipment that was probably made of lighter and more perishable materials. These ceremonial objects in stone were evidently of high value, but many questions remain around the context in which they were originally used.
The bold and assured carving of the present hacha illustrates several features that are particularly distinctive to hachas depicting bats. These include the large, pricked, ears, the depiction of the tragus, the fleshy form at the lower part of the ear, and the perforation in the upper half, which Shook and Marquis note “seldom occurs on specimens in other categories” (Edwin M. Shook and Elayne Marquis, op. cit., p. 77). Interestingly, this perforation is present on almost every hacha from the great Mayan city state of Palenque (ibid.).
Although illustrating features distinctive to a bat, something in the powerful physiognomy of this hacha seems to suggest a snarling jaguar. This hacha differs from most depictions of jaguars in hachas – although the fleshy snout suggests the big cat more than the bat – but Shook and Marquis note the resemblance, and state that “perhaps bat/jaguar/serpent would more accurately describe this representation.” (ibid., p. 80). The serpent, which here arches up from the bat’s snout, its slithering head atop the bat’s ear, was a creature with “important mythological connotations, and often associated with water and rain.” (ibid., p. 171). Hachas with secondary representations are rare.
Snake-Bat-Cat Hacha
carved stone
circa 550-950 CE
Maya culture
Mexico
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