Yax Ehb Xook

Tikal's kings counted. Jasaw Chan K'awiil was the twenty-sixth, Yik'in the twenty-seventh, and the number meant something to them — a Maya king's legitimacy ran through a continuous line back to a named founder in the first century, and the line is the one thing every monument asserts. The founder is a Late Preclassic figure at the edge of the readable record, and what survives of him is a position in a count and a mask in a grave.

Domains

• dynastic founder

Relations

• foundational precursor to: Jasaw Chan K'awiil I

Sources

• Reference treatments of Yax Ehb Xook and of Tikal Burial 85.