The Mason-Spinden Expedition
We know today that the tallest
structure at Muyil is more than 17 m (50+ feet) above the nearby terrain
and about 24 m above the water level of the lagoon. It certainly would have
been noted by the Carnegie Institution's expeditions had they been aware of it.
This temple-pyramid (Structure 8I-13), was first recorded and photographed
by the Mason-Spinden Expedition of 1926, the first archaeological expedition to
visit the site (Photograph 2, Mason 1927,
frontispiece).
Photograph 2, The Castillo, (Structure 8I-13) by Mason (1926,
frontispiece) Click
picture for high-resolution version of the picture.
Gregory Mason and Herbert J. Spinden, the latter of the Peabody Museum of
Harvard, traveled by motor-sailer northward from Belize.
Photograph 3,
The Mason-Spinden Expedition (Mason 1927:272)
Click on picture for high resolution version.
While presenting their
credentials to Candelario
Garza, the local Mexican
Governor, (at Payo Obispo
on Chetumal Bay) they were told by
Engineer Raymundo E. Enríquez, a forester, of two
ruins (Muyil and the isolated structure at nearby Vigía del Lago on Cayo
Venado where it joins with the Chunyaxche Lagoon
). Enríquez had seen both
sites while prospecting for chicle (the white chewing gum sap of the zapote,
still collected commercially in the Muyil area.) Enríquez accurately described
and sketched for Mason and Spinden the water route from Boca Paila, westward up
Cayo Venado to the Chunyaxche Lagoon, across the northern end of the lagoon,
through a 500-m channel to the Muyil Lagoon and across it to Muyil (Mason
1927:40-42).
Mason's report of the trip through the channel is a good representation
of what Maya canoes must have encountered:
Boca de Paila
means "Mouth of a Cauldron." The "mouth" in the reef here is
narrow, and the water inside is nearly always turbulent, for the insufficient
reef merely knocks the white caps off the sea rollers, does not stop them or
even change their rhythm. ... After dodging coral heads all the way in from the
reef mouth and bumping bottom twice here we anchored in the midst of them on
none too good holding ground, pitching and lurching in a nasty swell with the
foaming beach only four hundred yards under our lee...
About half a mile directly behind the mouth in the reef is a break in the
shore, an opening into a great expanse of lagoons, lakes, and swamps. ... This
inner boca is guarded by a bar. [after crossing the bar...] We were soon
in smooth water... Here at its entrance the lagoon offered loveliness to lure us
into the mud and mangrove horror beyond. Through the deliciously clear tropic
water white sand gleamed under our keel, exaggerating the vivid gold and blue
and black of swift fish. The lagoon was so narrow that on each side we could
almost count the shells on a creamy beach. The lagoon forked... Almost
immediately
we ran aground. ... [The guide] added that it was shallow for only twenty feet.
We all got out and dragged the boat through six inches of water ... [for 550
yards] The lagoon was now a wide shallow lake of brackish water with low shores
of the monotonous mangrove... At last we reached the other side of this expanse
of open shallows and entered a channel some hundred yards wide which wound among
clumps of mangrove. Herons, white egrets and their reddish cousins and roseate
spoonbills rose at the buzz of the first gasoline engine they had ever heard. In
a half hour or so the channel narrowed rapidly. We tasted the water, it was
sweet. The wide sluggish river had become a freshwater stream with a very
perceptible current. ... The current was increasing ... [and] the course of the
stream now wound like the path of an erratic snake. ... It was like Mississippi
navigation on a Lilliputian scale... As we grazed a bank, Spinden sighted rare
orchids and jumped ashore... The swamp gradually gave way to savannah. We swept
around a bend ... and there was the first temple, dazzling white in the sun.
It is a one-storied, oblong building, rather small — in short, an
outpost of the city. It faces a lake about two hundred feet west of it, a lake
of which the river we had been following is an outlet. With happy inspiration
Spinden promptly named the building "Vigía del Lago"
("The Watch on the Lake" or "The Lookout on the Lake").
Photograph 4. The temple at Vigía
del Lago (Mason 1927:160)
There were no trees near the building except a dead one on its roof. But
there was a lot of brush and high grass, which had to be cut down before we
could get photographs of the front of the temple with its three doors, and an
interesting carving over them.
Photograph
5. The temple at Vigía
del Lago (Mason 1927:184)
The size of the lake surprised us... It was the narrow northern tip of
the lake which we crossed. [We were heading] directly into a bank of high grass
when it suddenly opened and showed us a channel as narrow as the upper end of
the river we had left. The more we studied the construction of this, the more
convinced were we that it was a canal, a canal made by the Mayas centuries ago.
It ran nearly straight, and although its banks were covered with grass, they
were higher than the land behind, and on each side of the water and paralleling
it could be seen the long mound made of the earth thrown out when the canal was
dug. A barely perceptible current moved against us.
After a quarter of a mile of this we entered a second lake, perhaps a
mile and a half broad and two miles long... A dazzling white beach belted the
lake. (Mason 1927:152-161)
The description of what they found at the site contains several points of
primary data no longer available to us today. For example, in their description
of the Castillo (Structure 8I-13) they say:
... a typical Maya pyramid, four-sided with ascending terraces and a wide
stairway. And on its top a temple ... and carved on its corners — one to each
corner — the faces of old gods. (Mason 1927:164)
We
found no trace of these faces during our work at the site. They also said:
There is much evidence that Muyil belongs to the last great period in
Maya culture, the Period of the League of Mayapan. Of course, the city's
location in the northern part of the Maya area would lead to this supposition
before an examination had been made. Then a look at the grotesque faces
decorating the four corners of the highest temple would alone incline the archæologist
to the opinion that Muyil is not a First Empire city. Such faces or "mask
panels" are common in Maya architecture; but in the southern and older area
the details of the face are generally built up of stucco, whereas in the
northern and later area they are in relief — that is, cut into the walls.
This tall temple with the grotesque faces of conventionalized art at
its four corners presents one entirely new feature in Maya architecture. This
is a round cupola or small tower, which rises from the roof of the temple
proper, itself set upon a pyramidal mound of five terraces, ascended by a wide
stairway. (Mason 1927:170)
The
cupola or turret is still in place and is still unique. They continue with relevant comments about the arrangement of buildings:
Nearly all Maya buildings, whether temples or palaces, are placed upon
artificial terraces. But in the southern area there was a tendency to place
these separate mounds on one large common base or artificial acropolis. This
sort of acropolis was not used in the north, where the city planning seems to
have been more haphazard. Indeed, it was mainly in the south, too, that cities
were carefully oriented with regard to the four chief points of the compass.
Regular depressions or sunken courts, which may have been theaters, are
also characteristic of the south. The same thing is chiefly true of the use of
stelæ or obelisks, carved with inscriptions.
Muyil, which has stelæ, and which is marked by some observance of the
principle of orientation, is situated in the southern part of the northern area.
(Mason 1927:172)
Although it was not mentioned by Mason, Muyil not only has "some
observance of the principle of orientation" but also has instances of
"one large common base or artificial acropolis" (the Entrance Plaza
Group and the walled Temple 8 precinct are two examples) and of
"sunken courts" (the northern end of the Great Platform.)
Photograph 6.
Temple in the Entrance Plaza Group (Mason 1927;166)
Click on picture for high resolution version.
Mason reported one additional unique architectural feature at Muyil:
About one-third of a mile northwest from our camp on the edge of the lake
we found a group of four buildings. They were so far gone that their past
function was hard to determine, but the fourth was a fairly well preserved
temple. On clearing away a pile of rubbish from the western and chief entrance
to this we found that this portal had two sets of pillars at each side, one
pillar behind the other instead of abreast of it. This is the first instance of
this tandem arrangement of pillars we know of in the whole Maya area. (Mason
1927:175)
From Spinden's notes and sketches (1926) we know that this is a
description of Temple 6 (Structure 7H-3).
They say about Temple 8 (Structure 9K-1), which their guide called
"El Centro," that they found a subterranean passage under the front
stairway. As they entered, their guide said the inner chamber had been used as a
hiding place during the Caste War. They found not only rotted baskets and gourd
vessels but also a piece of a boat's rudder with an iron fastening. These
artifacts they attribute to indians hiding within Temple 8 during the Caste
War. They noted three interior altars that are missing today.
Elsewhere they report finding two stelae, one on each side of a shrine,
with no traces left of inscriptions. We found no traces of stelae at the site,
although in several locations at Muyil, very large slabs of stone were used for
platform sidewall construction or as lintels. These slabs are quite similar to
stelae in size and shape. In one instance, at Structure 9L-1, we observed
lintel stones whose earlier fall left them near the base of the supporting
pyramid. We at first mistook them for stelae.
Spinden's notes (1926; 16 unnumbered grid-ruled pages of sketches plus
two 17x22" larger maps) provide several key items of information which
supplement our own work. Spinden drew the floor plan of Structure 8J-4,
an unusual double-temple on a truncated pyramid. In our own survey, we believed
this mostly ruined structure consisted of two completely independent structures,
each with triple entryways formed by two columns supporting lintels. Spinden
shows the two temples as sharing a common side wall. His notes also say that the
more southerly of the two rooms was not clear.
Spinden also clearly mapped Sacbe 3 between the Castillo (Structure 8I-13)
and Structures 7I-11 and 7I-13. We had assumed the existence of
the western portion of Sacbe 3 because of the end-to-end alignment of
Sacbes 2 and 3, but the western portion had been destroyed by bulldozing during
construction of the modern highway. Spinden's notes document the missing portion
(on the alignment shown on our maps.)
Spinden's plan and elevation of the easternmost temple of the sacbe
system, Structure 12H-1 in the grasslands, clearly indicates that
this structure was essentially intact in 1926. Today only a portion of the north
wall remains.
Spinden's sketches show that the Mason-Spinden Expedition recorded the
Castillo, Sacbes 2 and 3, the Entrance Plaza Group, the Great Platform, Temple 8,
its sub-structure, and its walled precinct, together with large residential
platforms to the west and to the north of the walled area, as well as Structure 12H-1,
the temple in the grasslands near the Muyil lagoon at the eastern end of the sacbe
system. Together with Mason's comment about, "mounds too numerous to
count," (1927:196) we know that the Expedition located virtually all of the
major and much of the minor architecture at the site.
Tony Andrews (A. P. Andrews 1973) annotated Spinden's notes and said,
"Muyil is a huge site and will require a major project to investigate it
properly. ... any future project should include Spinden's notes as well as the
published data of Mason and Peissel."
The Mason-Spinden
expedition remained at the site six days (Mason 1927:161-186), and from
their reports we have the formal designation of the ruins as "Muyil."
"Altogether we found twelve temples or ceremonial buildings at Muyil, and
mounds too numerous to count where others had crumbled." (Mason 1927:196)
Spinden's notes were never published. Following Mason's book in 1927, González
Avilés
mentions Muyil in 1950
and, since 1959, Muyil has been visited frequently.
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