Hun Hunahpu

Hun Hunahpu (in the standardized Maya K'iche' orthography Juun Junajpu, meaning 'One Hunahpu' or 'One Blowgun Hunter', corresponding in Classic-period epigraphy to the Tonsured Maize God, Juun Ixim) is the primordial agrarian deity and progenitor of Maya mythology, the central figure of the first part of the Popol Vuh's mythological cycle. Son of the primordial couple Xpiyacoc and Xmucane, he and his brother Vucub Hunahpu devoted themselves passionately to the ritual ballgame on the surface of the earth. Disturbed by the thundering rebound of the rubber ball, the rulers of death of Xibalba (Hun-Camé and Vucub-Camé) summoned the brothers to an underground contest. Tricked in the trials of Xibalba, both were sacrificed on the ballcourt of the dead; Hun Hunahpu was beheaded and his head hung in the branches of a barren calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), which immediately bore round fruit indistinguishable from the divine skull. When the underworld maiden Xquic, drawn by the fruit, approached the forbidden tree and reached out her hand, she was impregnated by the saliva of Hun Hunahpu's skull, and in her womb she bore the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque. After they definitively defeated the lords of death, the Twins exhumed their father's remains and ritually reassembled his body, transforming it into the sacred archetype of the buried seed that is reborn in every agricultural cycle as the lush stalk of maize.

6 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

The skull in the tree, the ear of maize, the calabash and the fruit tree

Primary sources

• Anonymous (K'iche' Maya), Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya. translation: Translation by Allen J. Christenson, University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.
• Michael D. Coe, The Maya Scribe and His World. translation: The Grolier Club, New York, 1973.

Studies

• Karl Taube, The Classic Maya Maize God: A Reappraisal. Fifth Palenque Round Table, The Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1985.
• William A. Saturno, Karl A. Taube e David Stuart, The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 1: The North Wall. Center for Ancient American Studies, 2005.
• Dorie Reents-Budet, Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period. Duke University Press, 1994.