Kʼawiil
Mayan deity
Kʼawiil, in the Post-Classic codices corresponding to God K, is a Maya deity identified with power, creation, and lightning. He is characterized by a zoomorphic head, with large eyes, long, upturned snout and attenuated serpent foot. As a creator god, K'awiil usually has a torch, stone celt, or cigar coming out of his forehead that symbolizes the spark of life. One of his legs does not end in a foot but in a snake with an open mouth, from which another being can emerge. As lightning and power personified, K'awiil is often carried like an axe by rain gods or as a scepter by Maya rulers.
Names
From the correspondence between Landa's description of the New Year rituals and the depiction of these rituals in the Dresden Codex, it can be inferred that in 16th-century Yucatán, Kʼawiil was called Bolon Dzacab 'Innumerable (bolon 'nine, innumerable') maternal generations', probably a metaphor for fertility as well as the power of creation. God K's name in the Classic period may have been the same, or similar, since the numeral 'nine' is repeatedly found included in the deity's logogram.
However, based on epigraphic considerations, the Classic Maya God K is now most often referred to as Kʼawiil. Hieroglyphically, the head of God K can substitute for the syllable kʼa in kʼawiil, a word possibly meaning 'powerful one', and attested as a generic deity title in Yucatec documents. This substitution has given rise to the idea that, inversely, the title kʼawiil as a whole should be considered a name specifically referring to God K.
Narratives and scenes
Lightning plays a crucial role in tales dealing with the creation of the world and its preparation for the advent of mankind.
“Kʼawiil” enters the record as mayan deity. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kʼawiil, Mayan and deity can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5575902. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kʼawiil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.