Lord Smoking Shell: click rectangles to view closeups
Wucub ahau ox pop tzoki te tun waa...
Uuac kib kan zec
Wucublajun tunob kan kinob xikah kaan
chicchan pal ahau...
Ukabale butz anki sol kaan tu ton ain
macuch lakin LAMA'AN'AIN
It was on 7 ahau 3 pop that the tree stone of time ended
[a 52-year era ended in 625 A.D.]
He had become ruler 17 yrs 4 days before [A.D. 608] on 6 Kib 4 Zec
He was the youngest son of the heir to the king
His name was Lord Smoking Shell
His celestial Progenitor was the Spirit Crocodile
Lord of the east, of the province of LAMA'AN'AIN
It is now recognized that the principal figures depicted on Maya stelae, lintels, and wall panels are historical personages, the rulers of the cities in which such stone monuments are erected.
"The chief purpose of the stelae was to represent standing or seated human figures, richly dressed and burdened by serpent symbols....The meaning of this symbolic system is far from sure, but its proliferent serpent-head elements suggest that the figures garbed in them have transcendental meaning; that they are god-impersonators wearing the shreds of the space of upper and nether worlds represented by serpent mouths, eyes, and fangs."
Jeff Kowalski (quoting George Kubler), The House of the Governor (1987) p. 202
This beautiful rubbing was made in 1984 when Stela 9 was unearthed from the resting place where it had lain broken and partially buried for centuries. The stela was rolled over and the rubbing made using fine light gray linen and ink. I am grateful to the private collector who made this image available for display here.
The mask at the bottom of the rubbing below Smoking Shell's left hand is said to be wearing a crocodile headress similar to the headress worn by the stucco mask on Structure N9-56, and is yet another instance of the importance of crocodile imagry in ancient Lamanai.
"Lord Smoking Shell's head emerges from an open-mouthed serpent headdress which is decorated with small plaques of jade or shell. The lower jaw of the serpent [not shown in this picture] forms a chin strap...The serpent's eye on Lamanai Stela 9 is raised slightly above the plane of the headdress and has an uneven roughened surface to which something may have been attached, perhaps obsidian inlays like those in the serpent eyes on the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan.
The headress carries two important royal emblems. A small "jester god" is attached to the ruler's forehead just below the upper jaw of the serpent. This motif may be repeated by the large curving triangular element at the top of the headdress. Schele (1974:42) has shown that the jester god can substitute for ahaw and marks rulers throughout the Classic Period."
Dorie Reents-Budet, The Iconography of Lamanai Stela 9, Center for Maya Research, December 1988
"Of interest is the intentional defacement of the left eye of Lord Smoking Shell's portrait on Stela 9, an action which was apparently done in ancient times. Intentional defacement of this kind is known from other sites...[and] may represent a ritual "killing" of the monument (and/or the power of the lord depicted), similar to that reflected in the small "kill holes" frequently found in funerary ceramics and cached vessels. It is probable that the defacement of Stela 9 occurred at the same time as the breaking and moving of the monument."
Dorie Reents-Budet, The Iconography of Lamanai Stela 9, Center for Maya Research, December 1988
K'awil (God K) emerges from the double-headed Serpent Bar which Smoking Shell holds diagonally across his body. K'awil, like the "jester god", is associated with royal descent and the accession of kings.
K'awil faces toward the right in this photo, has a smoking mirror on his forehead, and emerges from the jaws of a vision serpent.
"The designer of Lamanai Stela 9 placed the ceremonial bar diagonally across the body of Lord Smoking Shell so that it rested on his shoulder. This served to free the ruler's left hand to hold an emblematic head -- a zoomorphic form marked by a long inward-turning snout; lidded eye with an infixed Venus sign; a deer antler affixed to its forehead; and a large deer ear, also with an infixed Venus sign. These attributes clearly identify this emblem as the front head of the celestial monster first noted by Spinden (1913:56). An enigmatic glyph surmounts the monster's head, with a main sign that resembles the bar-dot numeral for the number seven."
Dorie Reents-Budet, Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 20-22 (1988) p. 24