Hunab Ku

Hunab Ku is named in colonial Yucatec manuscripts, above all the Books of Chilam Balam and the Motul dictionary, as the sole, invisible, and incorporeal god, without form or image, from whom the other deities proceed. He is identified as the father of Itzamná, the creator who ordered the world. Sources differ on whether Hunab Ku represents a genuine Postclassic Maya conception of a single high god or a colonial abstraction produced under the pressure of Christian missionizing, since the figure is absent from the hieroglyphic codices and appears only in alphabetic texts written after the Conquest.

Children

• Itzamná

Domains

• supreme divinity
• creation

Powers

• beget the sky-gods

Epithets

• Hunab K'u — the sole godDiccionario de Motul (1929) (primary)
• chelab caan — measurer of the skyJ. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (1970) (secondary)

Relations

• child: ItzamnáColonial sources name Itzamná as the son of Hunab Ku.J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (1970), pp. 203-206 (secondary)

Sources

• Hunab Ku appears in colonial Yucatec sources as a single, invisible, incorporeal supreme god and father of Itzamná.: The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, trans. Ralph L. Roys (1933) (primary); Diccionario de Motul (1929) (primary)
• Scholars debate whether Hunab Ku reflects an authentic pre-Conquest monotheistic figure or a post-Conquest reinterpretation shaped by Christian evangelization.: J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (1970), pp. 203-206 (secondary)