Scroll Serpent (Uneh Chan) was a

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popu ...

ruler A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines. Variants Rulers have long ...

of the Kaan kingdom. He ruled from AD 579 to 611. He acceded on September 2.

Reign

Inscriptions at

Palenque Palenque (; Yucatec Maya: ), also anciently known in the Itza Language as Lakamhaʼ ("Big Water or Big Waters"), was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that perished in the 8th century. The Palenque ruins date from ca. 226 BC to ca. 799 AD. Af ...

record two long-range attacks by Kaan during the reign of this powerful

king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the ...

in the years following the eclipse of

Tikal Tikal () (''Tik’al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Co ...

's power and the ascendency of the Snake kingdom. In the dry season of AD 599 and then again 611 his forces crossed the

Usumacinta River The Usumacinta River (; named after the howler monkey) is a river in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala. It is formed by the junction of the Pasión River, which arises in the Sierra de Santa Cruz (in Guatemala) and the Salinas R ...

and struck Lakamha', the very center of

. Scroll Serpent maintained an existing relationship by overseeing an action of Yajaw Te' K'inich II of

Caracol Caracol is a large ancient Maya archaeological site, located in what is now the Cayo District, of Belize. It is situated approximately south of Xunantunich, and the town of San Ignacio, and from the Macal River. It rests on the Vaca Plateau, ...

at some point before 583. There are no Scroll Serpent monuments at

Calakmul Calakmul (; also Kalakmul and other less frequent variants) is a Maya archaeological site in the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the greater Petén Basin region. It is from the Guatemalan border. Calakmul was one of the larg ...

today. Scroll Serpent's celebration of the 9.8.0.0.0 '' k'atun'' ending is recorded on both Stela 8 and

Stela A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), wh ...

33. Stela 33, erected by Yuknoom the Great in 657, appears to combine the focus on Scroll Serpent with a statement of Yuknoom the Great's birth in 600, suggesting that he was a son of Scroll Serpent. If so, the three rulers who intervened between Scroll Serpent and Yuknoom the Great — Yuknoom Ti' Chan, Tajoom Uk'ab K'ahk' and Yuknoom Head — might also have been sons of Scroll Serpent. That Scroll Serpent erected no monuments of his own at Calakmul is suggested by the retrospective references to his activities by Yuknoom Ch’een II and Yuknoom Took' K'awiil, given that there are more likely to be accounts of the activities of previous rulers when their own accounts are not in evidence. An absence of Scroll Serpent’s monuments at

is consistent with the hypothesis that the Kaan

dynasty A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A ...

was located elsewhere at this time, perhaps at Dzibanche.''Martin and Grube'' 2008:101-103 Scroll Serpent’s logistical achievement in attacking Lakamha’ was all the more impressive since it quite possibly originated even further away from Palenque than the eventual capital of the Kaan kingdom in Calakmul. During the reign of Scroll Serpent, Kaan may have been centered at Dzibanche. Wife of Scroll Serpent was possibly Lady Scroll-in-hand.

References

{{Reflist Kings of Calakmul 6th century in the Maya civilization 7th century in the Maya civilization 6th-century monarchs in North America 7th-century monarchs in North America