Ruler 2: K’inich Popol Hol

AKA: Mat Head, Tok’

Reign: circa 437

Preceded by: Yax K’uk’ Mo’

Succeeded by: Ruler 3

Structures:

Popol Hol, second king and son of the foreign Founder Yax K’uk’ Mo and a Copan noblewoman, both had a truly ambitious building program and worked to build his father’s legacy. Each of his monuments and structures evoked his father, with whom he may have ruled as co-regent before his death around 437 CE (Fash, Fash, and Davis-Salazar 2004, 72).

Interestingly, Popol Hol’s Stela 18 with one figural side and three sides of text was the last figural stela found before the tenth king Moon Jaguar’s rule (Fash 2004, 255, 259). Though fragmented today, this stela contains a lashed ladder glyph that was only found elsewhere in reference to the Tikal founder Yax Ehb Xook (Martin and Grube 2008, 195). Further reference to Tikal may be found in Popol Hol’s Xukpi Stone found in the Margarita Structure, which may mention Sihyaj K’ahk’, the invading general (Martin and Grube 2008, 196). In each of his stelae, Popol Hol carved with the low relief and rectangular glyphs popular at the time (Fash 2011, 78).

Popol Hol’s main task in his construction was to build his father’s legacy and mediate between his different regional influences to legitimize him in the eyes of the people. Notably, his tomb in the Hunal Structure contains references to Teotihuacan, the Maya Lowlands, and the Maya Highlands (Traxler 2004, 58). In his figural depictions of his father on the Motmot Marker, he wears local Maya Lowland garb instead of the Late Classic Teotihuacan goggles and cape, asserting his Maya identity (Martin and Grube 2008, ). In structures such as Yehnal, Popol Hol would apotheosize his father by combining him with the Sun God, a motif that would continue with depictions of Yax K’uk’ Mo’ in the future (Taube 2004, 277).

Perhaps most famously, both Popol Hol and his father oversaw the 9.0.0.0.0 bak’tun ending in 435, which would be the focal point in Popol Hol’s Motmot Marker and later Stela 63 after the renovation of the Motmot Structure. Even after the destruction of the Papagayo Structure and consequently Stela 63 during the reign of the thirteenth king Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil, the thirteenth king would replace the monument with his own memorial to the bak’tun ending, Stela J (Fash, Fash, and Davis-Salazar 2004, 78). The seventh king Bahlam Nehn had also erected his own Stela 15 mentioning the bak’tun ending by this point (Fash 1991, 83).

Popol Hol succeeded in making his father a patron deity for the city who would be remembered on most of Copan’s monuments. He also built up some of the essential monuments in the Acropolis that survive to this day in a truly legendary feat of engineering.


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