Kakupacal and the Itzas

Resumen

In a previous paper (Kelley, 1962a, pp. 304-6), I suggested that a series of five glyphs, occurring together frequently at Chichen Itza, should be read Kakupacal, the name of a “valorous captain of the Itzas”. In that study, the emphasis was on the nature of the Maya script, and the historical and glyphic context of the series had to be passed over lightly. In the present paper, the primary emphasis is on the historic meaning of this identification, but continuing differences of opinion as to the interpretation of the script meke a brief summary of the phonetic evidence necessary. Hence, this paper contains 1) phonetic evidence for the reading ka-ku-pa-cal-l(a); 2) contextual evidence indicating that this sequence is a personal name; 3) historic evidence referring to the known captain of the Itzas, Kakupacal.