Q'uq'umatz

Q'uq'umatz is the feathered serpent of the K'iche' Maya, one of the creator gods of the Popol Vuh who, together with Heart of Sky, raised the earth from the primordial sea and shaped the first people.

The Story

The Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, opens before the world exists. There is only the still sea and the empty sky. In the water, wrapped in quetzal feathers and blue-green light, are the makers Tepew and Q'uq'umatz. With Heart of Sky, also called Juraqan, they talk together, and their words make things real: they say "Earth," and the land rises out of the water, with mountains, forests, and rivers.

The gods then try to create beings who will speak their names and keep their days. Their first attempt produces animals, who can only squawk and howl, so they are sent to live in the wild and be eaten. People made of mud crumble and dissolve. People carved from wood can talk but have no hearts or memory, and the gods destroy them with a flood; their descendants, the book says, are the monkeys. Only on the fourth try, using white and yellow maize, do the makers succeed in creating true human beings.

The Lord Q'uq'umatz

Later in the Popol Vuh, a K'iche' lord of the ruling line bears the same name. The text describes him as a lord of great power who could travel to the sky and the underworld and take the form of a serpent, an eagle, a jaguar, and a pool of blood. Under him and his successors the K'iche' kingdom grew strong around its capital, Q'umarkaj. The sharing of the name between god and ruler echoes the way the Aztecs blended Quetzalcoatl with the priest-king of Tula.

Appearance and Meaning

The name means "quetzal serpent": q'uq' is the quetzal bird and kumatz means serpent. Dennis Tedlock translated it as "Sovereign Plumed Serpent." The Popol Vuh gives no detailed physical description; it emphasizes the god's brilliance, the feathers, and his place in the water. Q'uq'umatz is the K'iche' counterpart of Quetzalcoatl in central Mexico and Kukulkan in Yucatán.

Origins and Sources

K'iche' nobles wrote the Popol Vuh in their own language, using the Latin alphabet, in the 1550s, probably drawing on older painted books and oral tradition. That manuscript is lost. The text survives because the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez copied it, with a Spanish translation, around 1701 in the town of Chichicastenango. His manuscript is now in the Newberry Library in Chicago. The Popol Vuh remains a sacred and living text for many K'iche' people and is studied as a national treasure in Guatemala.

Related

• Quetzalcoatl: Quetzalcoatl is the Feathered Serpent of Mesoamerican religion, an Aztec creator god of wind, the morning star, learning, and maize, whose serpent form joins the quetzal bird's green plumes to a snake's body.
• Kukulkan: Kukulkan is the feathered serpent of the Yucatec Maya, honored at Chichen Itza and Mayapan, and remembered in Spanish-era accounts as a great lord who came from the west and was worshipped as a god.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Quetzalcoatl
• Dragons Across Cultures

Sources and Further Reading

• Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya, trans. Allen J. Christenson (O Books, 2003; University of Oklahoma Press, 2007)
• Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, trans. Dennis Tedlock, rev. ed. (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
• Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (Thames & Hudson, 1993)

Cite this entry: “Q'uq'umatz,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/quqmatz.