Knot Ajaw was a

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

of the

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

city-state Caracol in

Belize Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...

, a successor of his father Yajaw Te' K'inich II. He reigned AD 599-613>.

Name

Ajaw Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya civilization, Maya political title attested from epigraphy, epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the ''tzolkʼin'', the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's ''kʼatu ...

(Ahaw) means "king" or "ruler" in Mayan. This king is also known as Ruler IV, Ahaw Serpent and Flaming Ahaw.

Biography

Birth and family

Knot Ajaw (also known as "Saak Ti' Huun") was the eldest son of the king Yajaw Te' K'inich II. His mother was Lady 1 of Caracol. His stepmother was Lady Batz' Ek' and his half-brother was K'an II. Grandparents of Knot Ajaw were K'an I and Lady K'al K'inich (named after the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

god). He was born on November 28, 575.

Reign

He acceded on June 24, 599. He may have co-ruled during the last years of his father.Martin and Grube 2000:90 Stela 6 accords a full

emblem An emblem is an abstract art, abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a monarch or saint. Emblems vs. symbols Although the words ''emblem'' and ''symbol'' ...

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

to a lord named Chekaj K'inich, who is referred to as a "younger brother", presumably of Yajaw Te' K'inich; this suggests that he may have acted as a sort of "guardian

uncle An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent, as well as the parent of the cousins. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an un ...

" to Knot Ajaw. His successor was his younger brother.

References

{{reflist Kings of Caracol 6th-century Maya people 7th-century Maya people 6th-century monarchs in North America 7th-century monarchs in North America