RESOURCE: Ancient Maya gods - 5) Cacao God ‘M’

12th Mar 2023

Maya cacao God M or Ek Chuah

If you’re looking for the ancient Maya god of chocolate, this is he (and doesn’t he just look the part, in our main picture?!). His Yucatec Maya name, Ek Chuah (sometimes found as Ek Chuaj), means ‘Black War Leader’ or ‘Black Chief’. In what academics call the Schellas-Zimmermann-Taube classification of Maya gods, he is listed as simply ‘God M’. He is a relatively ‘new’ Maya god, featuring first in the Postclassic period in lowland Yucatan - he appears in two of the four ancient Maya codices that still exist, dating from that time. He is, as Maya gods go, fairly easy to recognise... (Written/compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

He is usually shown with an extended nose, a hanging lower lip, and particularly in the Madrid Codex (not shown here) with black body paint. He is, by all accounts, strikingly ugly, and because this clashes with the Maya preoccupation with beauty, scholars think he may be something of an ‘add-on’, a ‘foreign import’ perhaps based on Yacatecuhtli, the Central Mexican god of merchants. In the codices he can often be seen with a backpack and spear (picture 1) - objects long associated with merchants and travellers who frequently had to defend themselves and their cargo. It’s only logical, then, that he should be connected with cacao, a sacred crop to the Maya, since cocoa beans were a key trading commodity - indeed, widely used as currency throughout Mesoamerica.

During the Maya solar ‘month’ of Muan cacao farmers participated in a special festival in honour of Ek Chuah (and rain god Chac), and merchants regularly offered incense to him on their expeditions to pray for a safe return.
With the arrival of metal-working in Postclassic Maya territory, depictions of the long-nosed Mesoamerican merchant god appear commonly on finger rings and other jewellery. Aztec merchants traded finger rings, often with a human face on the front and an elaborate headdress; the example shown in Picture 2 is in fact a metal ring from the Maya zone, reinforcing shared features of the merchant god between both major cultures.

There’s no doubt that for the Maya cacao had a divine origin. Alongside maize it was a sacred crop, contributing to the creation of human beings. According to the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya -
And here is the beginning of the conception of humans, and the search for the ingredients of the human body... [It was four] animals who brought the food: fox, coyote, parrot, crow... And this was when they found the staple foods... [the] provisions of the good mountain, filled with sweet things, thick with yellow corn, white corn, and thick with pataxte [wild cacao] and cacao, countless zapotes, anonas, jocotes, nances, matasanos, sweets - the rich foods filling up the citadel named Split Place... All the edible foods were there: small staples, great staples, small plants, great plants. The way was shown by the animals.
And then the yellow corn and white corn were ground, and [divine grandmother] Xmucane did the grinding nine times...

Sources:-
• Bray, Warwick (1977) ‘Maya Metalwork and its External Connections’ in Hammond, Norman (Ed.) Social Processes in Maya Prehistory, Academic Press, London
• Popol Vuh (translated by Dennis Tedlock) (1996), Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, New York
• Taube, Karl A. (1992) The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology no. 32, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington.

Image sources:-
• Main: photo of Ek Chuah personified as a monkey (Museo de Sitio de Toniná) courtesy of and thanks to John Biskovich, Co-Publisher REVUE Guatemala’s English-language Magazine (REVUEmag.com)
• Pic 1 (L): image scanned from our copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Dresden, Graz, Austria, 1975; (R) illustration scanned from Taube (1992) op cit
• Pic 2: illustration scanned from Bray (1977) op cit
• Pic 3: illustration scanned from Covarrubias, Miguel (1986) Mexico South, KPI Ltd, London.