Tikal defeats Calakmul

Since its defeat in the ‘star war’ of 562 Tikal had raised no dated monuments, while the Snake (Kaanul) kingdom, by then ruling from Calakmul, surrounded it with a network of allies. Under Yuknoom Chʼeen II, who reigned from 636 to 686, the Snake kingdom reached its height: it made the breakaway branch of the Tikal dynasty at Dos Pilas, led by Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil, its vassal, vanquished Tikal in 657 and again in 677, and in 679 Dos Pilas, almost certainly with Calakmul’s help, crushed the Tikal king Nuun Ujol Chaak.

Nuun Ujol Chaak’s son Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I came to the throne in 682 and set out to restore Tikal’s standing. On 9.13.3.7.18 11 Etzʼnab 11 Chʼen — 3 or 5 August 695 in the Julian calendar, depending on the correlation constant, or 6 or 8 August in the proleptic Gregorian calendar used by Mayanists — he defeated Yuknoom Yichʼaak Kʼahkʼ, king of Calakmul since 686, and captured the image of a Kaanul patron deity, Yajaw Maan. The victory is recorded on a carved wooden lintel in the shrine of Temple I, later raised over Jasaw’s tomb; radiocarbon dating of the lintel’s sapodilla wood, published by Douglas Kennett and colleagues in 2013, strongly supports the GMT correlation between the Maya and European calendars. What became of Yichʼaak Kʼahkʼ is unclear: a damaged stucco scene at Tikal names the Kaanul king in a caption about a prisoner being prepared for sacrifice, but an inscription found at La Corona shows that he was still alive in 696.

After this defeat Calakmul never again erected a monument celebrating a military victory, and its hegemony faded, while Tikal entered a second golden age: Jasaw began a new building programme, and half a century later, under his son Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil, Tikal won major victories over Calakmul’s most important allies. The rivalry between the two cities ended only with the Classic Maya collapse, which overtook both.