With its pleasing radial symmetry, tidy stepped platforms, and crowning temple, El Castillo is one of the most recognizable Mesoamerican pyramids. It was probably built by the Toltec-Maya between 1050 and 1300 CE when the rest of the Maya population was dwindling. It’s famous not only for the descent of Kukulcán but also for its relationship to the Maya calendar. Each of the pyramid’s four sides has a staircase of 91 steps. The total number of steps, when combined with the temple at its summit, equals 365—the number of days in the Maya solar year. The temple on top was used exclusively by priests who performed sacred rituals at a height that brought them closer to the gods in the sky.
Priests ascended one of the four staircases to reach the temple—the pyramid was never meant to be entered. In the 1930s, however, a group of excavators began exploring and discovered that another pyramid-temple was nestled within the larger pyramid. Further excavations revealed that it had nine platforms, a single stairway, and a temple containing human remains, a jade-studded jaguar throne, and a so-called Chac Mool. The Chac Mool is a type of Maya sculpture of an abstract male figure reclining and holding a bowl used as a receptacle for sacrifices. Researchers theorize that this pyramid was constructed sometime between 800 and 1000 CE. In the mid-2010s archaeologists using noninvasive imaging techniques discovered yet another pyramid buried within the two others. They theorize that it was probably built between 550 and 800 CE and may have had a single stairway and an altar.
El Castillo is not unusual for having not one but two temple-pyramids inside of it—archaeologists have found earlier structures within several Mesoamerican pyramids. For example, excavations of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, which was constructed by an unnamed ancient culture near Mexico City around 100 CE, found that the pyramid had possibly been built over three earlier structures. Scholars speculate that rulers often constructed over existing buildings as a means of outdoing their predecessors. Interestingly, archaeologists working in the 1970s also found a system of caves and tunnels below the Pyramid of the Sun, which connected to the city’s various underground rivers. The discovery suggested a purposeful decision to build on that very spot.
Archaeologists made a similar discovery at Chichén Itzá in the 2010s. Once again using noninvasive imaging techniques, they found what they believe to be a cenote, or large sinkhole, below the base of El Castillo. The depression is similar to Chichén Itzá’s Cenote Sagrado (”Sacred Cenote”), located at the city’s northernmost end. Associated with the cult of the rain gods, called Chacs, it was the site of regular offerings that included such precious objects as jade, gold, and copper as well as humans. This cenote connects to the numerous underground rivers and caves under Chichén Itzá’s limestone bedrock, a geological formation called a karst. Such underground cavities were not only sources of fresh water for the Maya but also, according to their beliefs, the entrances to Xibalba, or the “place of fright.”
- In 2018 a team of archaeologists began exploring the underground water system beneath Chichén Itzá in an effort to find a connection to the presumed cenote below El Castillo. If the archeologists are successful in proving the cenote’s existence, El Castillo would then not only have served as a staircase that brought priests closer to the gods of the heavens but also as a gateway to the demons of the underworld. It would essentially be an axis mundi, the center of the world, uniting the earth with heaven and the underworld. El Castillo, thus, may have had a more significant role in Maya religion than archaeologists and tourists have previously thought, but such a claim requires further exploration.
Alicja Zelazko
Chichén Itzá Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico, designated a World Heritage site in 1988.
Chichén Itzá, ruined ancient Maya city occupying an area of 4 square miles (10 square km) in south-central Yucatán state, Mexico. It is thought to have been a religious, military, political, and commercial center that at its peak would have been home to 35,000 people. The site first saw settlers in 550, probably drawn there because of the easy access to water in the region via caves and sinkholes in limestone formations, known as cenotes.
Exploring the ancient Maya city of Chichén ItzáOverview of Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico.
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Chichén Itzá is located some 90 miles (150 km) east-northeast of Uxmal and 75 miles (120 km) east-southeast of the modern city of Mérida. The only source of water in the arid region around the site is from the cenotes. Two big cenotes on the site made it a suitable place for the city and gave it its name, from chi (“mouths”), chen (“wells”), and Itzá, the name of the Maya tribe that settled there. Chichén Itzá was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.
Chichén was founded about the 6th century ce, presumably by Maya peoples of the Yucatán Peninsula who had occupied the region since the Pre-Classic, or Formative, Period (1500 bce–300 ce). The principal early buildings are in an architectural style known as Puuc, which shows a number of divergences from the styles of the southern lowlands. These earliest structures are to the south of the Main Plaza and include the Akabtzib (“House of the Dark Writing”), the Chichanchob (“Red House”), the Iglesia (“Church”), the Casa de las Monjas (“Nunnery”), and the observatory El Caracol (“The Snail”). There is evidence that, in the 10th century, after the collapse of the Maya cities of the southern lowlands, Chichén was invaded by foreigners, probably Maya speakers who had been strongly influenced by—and perhaps were under the direction of—the Toltec of central Mexico. These invaders may have been the Itzá for whom the site is named; some authorities, however, believe the Itzá arrived 200 to 300 years later.
In any event, the invaders were responsible for the construction of such major buildings as El Castillo (“The Castle”), a pyramid that rises 79 feet (24 meters) above the Main Plaza. El Castillo has four sides, each with 91 stairs and facing a cardinal direction; including the step on the top platform, these combine for a total of 365 steps—the number of days in the solar year. During the spring and autumnal equinoxes, shadows cast by the setting sun give the appearance of a snake undulating down the stairways. A carving of a plumed serpent at the top of the pyramid is symbolic of Quetzalcóatl (known to the Maya as Kukulcán), one of the major deities of the ancient Mesoamerican pantheon. Excavations within the nine-platform pyramid revealed another, earlier structure containing a red jaguar throne studded with jade.
The ball court (for playing the game tlachtli [Mayan: pok-ta-pok]) is 545 feet (166 meters) long and 223 feet (68 meters) wide, the largest such court in the Americas. Six sculpted reliefs run the length of the walls of the court, apparently depicting the victors of the game holding the severed head of a member of the losing team. On the upper platform at one end of the court stands the Temple of the Jaguars, inside of which is a mural showing warriors laying siege to a village. Standing on the platform of the temple to the north of the court, it is possible to hear a whisper from 150 feet (46 meters) away.
Other structures include the High Priest’s Grave and the Colonnade (Thousand Columns) and the adjoining Temple of the Warriors. Most of these buildings probably were completed in the Early Post-Classic Period (c. 900–1200). In the Late Post-Classic Period (c. 1200–1540), Chichén appears to have been eclipsed by the rise of the city of Mayapán. For a time Chichén Itzá joined Uxmal and Mayapán in a political confederacy known as the League of Mayapán.
About 1450 the League and the political supremacy of Mayapán dissolved. When the Spanish entered the country in the 16th century, the Maya were living in many small towns, but the major cities, including Chichén, were largely abandoned.
Long left to the jungle, Chichén Itzá remained sacred to the Maya. Excavation began in the 19th century, and the site became one of Mexico’s prime archaeological zones.
A legendary tradition at Chichén was the Cult of the Cenote, involving human sacrifice to the rain god, Chaac, in which victims were thrown into the city’s major cenote (at the northernmost part of the ruin), along with gold and jade ornaments and other valuables. In 1904 Edward Herbert Thompson, an American who had bought the entire site, began dredging the cenote; his discovery of skeletons and sacrificial objects confirmed the legend.
Were All Egyptian Pharaohs Buried in Pyramids?
In ancient Egypt, pyramids were the most characteristic tomb for kings of the Old Kingdom. The mummies of such pharaohs as Djoser, Khafre, and Menkaure were placed in a subterranean burial chamber underneath a pyramid. Khufu’s mummy, however, was placed inside the Great Pyramid, in the King’s Chamber, and not underground, as was customary. Before pyramids were invented, Egyptian kings were laid to rest in underground chambers beneath a mastaba, a squat, flat-top mound.
The pyramids of Giza were the culmination of pyramid-building in ancient Egypt—those that were built afterward to mark the resting places of late Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom pharaohs were smaller. Mentuhotep II’s tomb was combined with his funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri, an uncommon practice. Though the complex is now ruined, it probably featured a small pyramid resting on a double terrace.
The kings of the New Kingdom were laid to rest in rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These tombs were carved deep into the valley’s rock, often with no outward structure. After the Valley of the Kings was abandoned during the 20th dynasty, kings were buried in simple tombs in the main temple enclosure of the city of Tanis. No later royal tombs have been identified in Egypt proper.
What’s Inside the Great Pyramid?
Great Pyramid of Giza Great Pyramid of Giza, built to honor Khufu, near Giza, Egypt.
Are there mummies inside the Great Pyramid? Hieroglyphs? Hidden treasure? Ghosts? Find out!
The Great Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Khufu, is the oldest and the tallest of the three pyramids towering over Giza. Constructed c. 2551–2528 BCE, it originally stood at 481.4 feet (147 meters), or about 45 stories. Its immense size makes it a marvel to behold, but the Great Pyramid, and its neighbors, the Pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, are mostly just solid masses of stone—2.3 million blocks of cut limestone, to be more precise, which is the approximate number making up the Great Pyramid. All three pyramids would originally have had an outer casing of lighter limestone, as seen on the cap of Khafre’s pyramid. We can only imagine how the gleaming white limestone would have made the pyramids an even more dazzling spectacle than they are now.
The Pyramids of Giza, like the Egyptian pyramids that came before and after them, were royal tombs, a final resting place for their pharaohs, or kings. They were often part of an extensive funerary complex that included queens’ burial sites and mortuary temples for daily offerings. The pharaoh’s final resting place was usually within a burial chamber underneath the pyramid. Although the Great Pyramid has subterranean chambers, they were never completed, and Khufu’s sarcophagus rests in the King’s Chamber, where Napoleon is said to have sojourned, deep inside the Great Pyramid.
Like its neighbors, the Great Pyramid has very little open space inside its hulking mass. Napoleon would have reached the King’s Chamber through a very tight ascending passageway, past the Queen’s Chamber (a misnomer), and then through a taller corbelled passageway called the Grand Gallery. Once inside the King’s Chamber, Napoleon would have seen that it was small and lined with thick granite blocks. The space would have been very austere, as Egyptians only began decorating burial chambers with hieroglyphic texts in later pyramids. Moreover, by the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign at the end of the 18th century, the pyramids would have long been plundered. He would not have found any rumored treasures in the chamber, only the enormous granite sarcophagus, once containing the king’s mummy, set firmly in the floor.
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With not much to see inside the Great Pyramid, or either of the other pyramids near Giza, we can only imagine what could have disconcerted the proud Napoleon—just as we can only imagine the pyramids’ other mysteries: the royal treasures they once might have hidden, the brilliant sight they must have been when first completed, and the disciplined effort it took to construct them.
pyramid
pyramid, in architecture, a monumental structure constructed of or faced with stone or brick and having a rectangular base and four sloping triangular (or sometimes trapezoidal) sides meeting at an apex (or truncated to form a platform). Pyramids have been built at various times in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, western Asia, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, India, Thailand, Mexico, South America, and on some islands of the Pacific Ocean. Those of Egypt and of Central and South America are the best known.
The pyramids of ancient Egypt were funerary edifices. They were built over a period of 2,700 years, ranging from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the close of the Ptolemaic period. But the time at which pyramid building reached its acme, the pyramid age par excellence, was that commencing with the 3rd dynasty and ending at roughly the 6th (c. 2686–2325 bce). During those years the pyramid was the usual type of royal tomb. It was not, as such, an isolated structure but was always part of an architectural complex. The essential components, at least during the Old Kingdom, were the pyramid itself, containing or surmounting the grave proper and standing within an enclosure on high desert ground; an adjacent mortuary temple; and a causeway leading down to a pavilion (usually called the valley temple), situated at the edge of the cultivation and probably connected with the Nile by a canal. Scores of royal pyramids have been found in Egypt, but many of them were reduced to mere mounds of debris and long ago plundered of their treasures.
Step Pyramid of DjoserStep Pyramid of Djoser, Ṣaqqārah, Egypt.
The prototype of the pyramid was the mastaba, a form of tomb known in Egypt from the beginning of the dynastic era. It was characterized by a flat-topped rectangular superstructure of mud brick or stone with a shaft descending to the burial chamber far below it. Djoser, the second king of the 3rd dynasty, employing Imhotep as architect, undertook for the first time the construction of a mastaba entirely of stone; it was 8 metres (26 feet) high and had a square ground plan with sides of about 63 metres (207 feet) each. Once completed it was extended on the ground on all four sides, and its height was increased by building rectangular additions of diminishing size superimposed upon its top. Thus Djoser’s original mastaba became a terraced structure rising in six unequal stages to a height of 60 metres (197 feet), its base measuring 120 metres (394 feet) by 108 metres (354 feet). This monument, which lies at Ṣaqqārah, is known as the Step Pyramid; it is probably the earliest stone building of importance erected in Egypt. The substructure has an intricate system of underground corridors and rooms, its main feature being a central shaft 25 metres (82 feet) deep and 8 metres (26 feet) wide, at the bottom of which is the sepulchral chamber built of granite from Aswān. The Step Pyramid rises within a vast walled court 544 metres (1,785 feet) long and 277 metres (909 feet) wide, in which are the remnants of several other stone edifices built to supply the wants of the king in the hereafter.