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Let's Go2Mexico - Articles • INAH experts consider that the Sabana Piletas stairway could have been destined to sacrifice rituals.
According to some recent studies, this very site could have been used to perform sacrifice rituals on the part of the governors. Archaeologists Antonio Benavides and Sara Novelo, from Campeche’s INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History), assured that the text comes from the Puuc region and that its length and state of conservation are extraordinary. Many constructions at Sabana Piletas which were active between 600 and 1000 a.d. have been consolidated as part of the maintenance project of archaeological zones not open to the public between years 2007 and 2008. The stairway of the Glyphs building holds important data on the site. The eastern stairway of the Glyphs building had 10 steps, the first and fourth containing inscriptions. There are a total of 34 panels, each one with its four hieroglyphs, so the sum adds up to 136. Each panel, just over one meter long by 42 centimeters high and 18 to 22 centimeters wide , was decorated, over and below, by a band of notches that appear to form triangles or evoke the design of the skin of a rattlesnake. Preliminary deciphering was carried out by epigraphers Nikolai Grube and Carlos Pallán Gayol, from Bonn University in Germany; and from INAH’s Proyecto de Acervo de Glífica e Iconografía Maya (Agimaya- Maya Glyphs and Heritage Project) respectively, who have helped to understand the general structure of said stairway. The lecture carried out by the experts unveiled that the date contained in the first eight glyphs of both steps, in its relation with the Gregorian calendar, points to the figure 18 or to the 25th of December of 858 a.d. Meanwhile, according to the interpretation of another connoisseur, David Stuart, from the University of Texas, in Austin, it means 864 a.d. To Antonio Benavides and Sara Novelo, the above confirms the participation of Sabana Piletas in the Late Classic period, during the IX century, in the political panorama of the western Yucatán peninsula, region within which it should have actively interacted due to its location. Another relevant aspect of the stairway’s reading is that one of its glyphs (a spiral shaped one), whose phonetic meaning (kikel) is translated as “ball”, seems to refer to the rubber ball used in the ballgame. Another inscription (pitzil-na) specifically refers to the ballgame, we are therefore facing what would be called a “stairway to sacrifices". It is known that in the Maya region the top governors celebrated ballgame rituals on large stairways. Those divine "ahauob" recreated in the other world the site of the ballgame sacrifice. "In support of this idea, we have evidence that the stairway was covered by a fine stucco coating painted blue, and that color appears frequently in rituals and sacrifices. The presence of two monolithic phalluses, located at a short distance from the Glyphs Building, further supports this hypothesis", he explained. "There is possibly a ballgame somewhere in Sabana Piletas, but this will have to be verified through tours and registers of other sectors of the center of the settlement", archaeologists Benavides and Novelo mentioned. The stairway likewise shows expressions related to warring events. According to the proposal of Grube and Pallán, one of them could be translated as “the lands (where) the Lords of the South were attacked”, which may refer to the southern enemies of Sabana Piletas, maybe the political entity of Itzimté, an archaeological zone just over a mile away from Bolonché, on Campeche’s north-east. And finally there are inscriptions depicting deities of the Maya infra-world, some with life and death attributes, as well as the governors or "ahaw" in their divine personification.Email to a friend Source: http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/
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With just over 130 hieroglyphs, most of them still legible, the stairway located at the Glyphs building of the archaeological site Sabana Piletas, in the north-east of the state of Campeche, is the most extensive Maya engraving reported in the Yucatán peninsula. Its hieroglyphs have been already deciphered. 
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