Uxmal and the Pyramid of the Magician

Last week, I, Susan, and our friends Jeff and Heather got to spend some time exploring Uxmal (oosh-MALL), an ancient Maya city and home of the Pyramid of the Magician.

Uxmal is not one of Carnival’s typical excursion packages; to get there, Susan arranged for a local tour guide to pick us up at the edge of Progresso and take us to the ruins. Uxmal is located approximately 75 miles (115km) south of the port at Progresso. The most direct route takes you through Merida, the capitol of Yucatan. Along the way, our guide (Daniel) took us through a few off-the-path cities including Dzemul, where we briefly got to see the Santa Ana Cathedral again. The cathedral was once a Mayan temple; when the Mayans were conquered by the Spaniards in the 1600s, the invaders destroyed the temple and built the church in the same location using rubble from the previous temple. That’s brutal.

During our ride we drove past a local market (I believe the Panadería Castillo Supermarket) on the outskirts of Merida. The market opens daily at 7am and closes by noon. Everything from household goods to meat hanging from hooks was on display. One does not have to travel far from the cruising port before seeing a very different part of Mexico. There were a few cars in this area but many more motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles. There were also dozens and dozens of three-wheeled taxis, which are made by removing the front wheels from motorcycles and attaching custom front ends. Our guide said the taxi drivers will take you anywhere you want to go for 50 cents, and make most of their money taking people home after shopping at the market. I so wanted to ride in one, but it was not in the cards this trip.

After a 90 minute drive, we finally arrived in Uxmal. To enter the site, visitors must purchase two tickets (one goes to the city/state while the other goes to the government). The temperature was in the 90s when we arrived with 75% humidity making it uncomfortably warm. It’s a bit of a walk up some old steps and along paths made of rocks and just about the time I was questioning why we came all this way, we saw this:

I’ll probably get some of this wrong, but I’ll do my best. The Uxmal complex is home to multiple structures, the most prominent of which is the Pyramid of the Magician. According to legend, the pyramid was built in a single night by a dwarf wizard who hatched from a witch’s egg; according to historians, it was built over a period of several hundred years by Mayan slaves. I believe our guide said some of the structures date back to 500 AD, and Uxmal flourished from 700 AD. through around 1100 AD. New construction ceased in 1200 A.D. and no one is sure why. One challenge the inhabitants of Uxmal faced was that the site has no natural or local source of water. Instead, large cisterns were built to collect rain water, and the pyramid itself is a tribute to the Mayan god of rain, Chaac.

It is believed the name Uxmal comes from the “oxmal” which means “three times build.” Located inside the pyramid is a second pyramid, and inside that one is a third one. The Mayan pyramids were not tombs but rather gifts to the gods; as such, location was everything. The pyramid was built so that the stairway that faces west points tiredly toward the setting sun at the summer solstice. When the original structure began to deteriorate, the Mayans simply built a second pyramid over the first one, and at some point in time, they did it again.

To build the pyramid (and many of the surrounding structures), limestone was heated up and then cut into blocks using jade. Unlike the blocky appearance it has today, the pyramid was originally covered with stucco which was colored red and gave the walls a smooth appearance. In some places, you can actually see handprints more than a thousand years old in some of the walls. In one of the other buildings it appears designs that were carved into the wall are “jumbled,” which is evidence that at least some of the structures were damaged by unknown forces and reassembled.

As I mentioned, although the pyramid is the tallest structure in Uxmal, there are several other remaining structures including a large nunnery, the governor’s quarters, and a large sports ball court where local games were played. The court has an inscription from 901 AD with a dedicated from Lord Chac.

It’s easy to to think of ourselves as superior to primitive cultures like the Mayans until you’re standing at the base of a 100+ foot tall pyramid and trying to imagine the work that went into creating it and the surrounding artwork. I have a two-year-old bookshelf from Ikea that wobbles and could use some maintenance, so standing in breezeway that faces a 1,500-year-old pyramid built in a specific place facing a specific direction is kind of impressive.