Quirigua Audio Guide for Los Amates

Inside this guide

1. 01

   Welcome to Quiriguá

   In Quiriguá, this section highlights Welcome to Quiriguá as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Welcome to Quiriguá, one of the most quietly astonishing places in the Maya world, tucked into the lowlands of Izabal in south-eastern Guatemala, along the lower Motagua River. Take a moment to look around. What you are standing in is a medium-sized ancient city spread across roughly 3 square kilometers, with its ceremonial centre set among trees and grass. And here is the surprise. The ceremonial architecture at Quiriguá is modest compared with the great Maya capitals, but the real treasure of this place is its sculpture. This is a city that effectively wrote itself in stone, and the stone it used was the hard red sandstone of the local bedrock. Because of that historical importance, Quiriguá was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981. A small note on what you are hearing. The details in this guide come from published accounts of the site and its monuments, and where the record is uncertain, I will say so rather than invent. The ancient name of the city, as recorded in its own texts, was Ik'Naahb', which is often translated as Place of the Dark Well. Keep that image with you as we begin.

2. 02

   Three Days in the Year 426

   In Quiriguá, this section highlights Three Days in the Year 426 as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   The recorded history of Quiriguá begins in the year 426, and it begins in a hurry. On September 5 of that year, a ruler named K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' became king of Copán, the city that lies 48 kilometers to the south. Just three days later, he placed a ruler whom the texts name Tok Casper on the throne of Quiriguá. Three days. That is how quickly this place entered the written record, and it entered it as a junior partner. Maya scholars have pieced this together from several directions at once: hieroglyphic texts from Tikal, Copán and Quiriguá, the architectural and sculptural styles the southern cities share, and chemical tests on the bones of the founder of the Copán dynasty. Together, that evidence suggests that Quiriguá and Copán were both founded by elite colonists from the great city of Tikal, as part of its expansion into the southeastern border area of the Maya region. So why here? Look at the river. According to the histories, Quiriguá was founded to bring the lucrative trade route of the Motagua River under the control of Copán and, indirectly, of Tikal. People had lived in this area by around the year 200. But from 426 onward, this was a city with a purpose, and with a boss.

3. 03

   A Library That Was Never Shelved

   In Quiriguá, this section highlights A Library That Was Never Shelved as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   The reason Quiriguá matters is what its rulers left carved. The inscribed property covers 34 hectares, protected for the conservation of the ancient architecture and of seventeen monuments carved between the years 426 and 810. Those monuments include stelae, altars and zoomorphic sculptures, animal-shaped works, all cut from sandstone and used to honour the rulers of the city. Each one is still in its original position, in harmony with the surrounding natural and cultural landscape. One of them stands out in particular. Quiriguá is home to the tallest stela erected in the Maya world. A stela, by the way, is simply a carved stone slab, a public monument that is part portrait, part political poster, part calendar. And that is the other thing to appreciate here. The hieroglyphic texts on these stones are not decoration. They record calendar dates and astronomical events, passages from Maya mythology, and political and social history, including the reigns of the city's last three rulers, spanning the years 751 to 805. The United Nations cultural organization, listing this body of inscriptions in its Memory of the World register, describes the in-place monuments here as the best preserved and highest quality stone sculptures from the Maya Classic Period in Guatemala. So as you walk, you are not really looking at ruins. You are reading a library that was never shelved.

4. 04

   The Year 738

   In Quiriguá, this section highlights The Year 738 as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   For its first centuries of recorded history, Quiriguá answered to Copán. That changed in the eighth century, and it changed violently. Around the year 724, a ruler named K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat came to power, and his reign produced many of the structures and stelae that you can still see today. Then came the year 738. As the history of the site is recorded in Guatemalan accounts, K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat captured the king of Copán, Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, and sacrificed him in a public ritual. With that act, Quiriguá secured its independence and control of the trade routes, and was proclaimed the new capital of the southeastern Maya region. It is worth pausing on how strange that is: a smaller city, long subordinate, taking down the regional power, and then carving its own triumph into stone for everyone to see. The prosperity did not last forever. Construction at Quiriguá had halted by about 850. There was a brief period of reoccupation in the Early Postclassic, roughly between 900 and 1200, and then the city was abandoned. The sculptures, though, stayed exactly where they were, which is precisely why we can stand among them today.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   In Quiriguá, this section highlights Before You Head Off as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   One last thing to notice as you finish your walk: the river. During the occupation of the city, the Motagua ran close to Quiriguá, but it has since changed course and now flows about 1 kilometer south of the ceremonial centre. The water that helped make this city rich is also the thing that threatens it. The site sits close to the Motagua River and to the geological fault that carries the same name, and flooding, including major floods in 1998 and 2010, is described as the biggest challenge in protecting the park. Then consider how close we came to losing all of this. The oldest reference to Quiriguá dates from the end of the 18th century, but the discovery was slow to travel. The first printed report appeared in the newspaper El Tiempo in Guatemala on May 7, 1840, describing a brief visit by the artist and explorer Frederick Catherwood. The following year, Catherwood and John L. Stephens published their account of travels through Central America, which included the first drawings of the stelae now known as E and F. So here is your invitation, rather than a farewell. Find the letter that marks the monument nearest to you, and think about what that carved image was asking of the people who first looked up at it. There are seventeen of these monuments, and each one is still holding its own version of the story.