Bacab

Attested accounts present the Bacab primarily as a fourfold set of elder brothers placed at the four world-points to hold up the sky and stabilize the world-quarters. Colonial-era summaries record variant accounts in which a Bacab may be treated as a singular filiational figure (e.g., a son of Itzamna and Ixchebelyax in a Hernández-like account) and Gulf Coast variants recall Bacab-like 'Grandfathers'—drowned ancestors who serve as earth-carriers for a year and one of whom opens the rainy season. Sources present these as complementary regional and historical variants rather than a single unified narrative.

Iconographically the Bacab corresponds to the Classic-period 'God N' figure: an aged, often bearded elderly manbearing attributes linked to the interior earth and water (conch, turtle, snail or shell, spider-web, or bee armour) and a characteristic netted superfix/headdress element. They are depicted in fourfold formation carrying a sky-dragon or architectural slabs/roofs; individual scenes sometimes show an old, shell-hidden Bacab within a cave-shell or inhabiting a turtle, underscoring subterranean and cave symbolism.

Their principal functions are cosmological and ritual: represented as sky-bearers who hold up and separate sky and earth and as patrons of the four world-quarters; intimately tied to subterranean waters, thunder, and meteorological phenomena. Each Bacab is associated with a cardinal direction and an associated Year Bearer day and is invoked in divination about crops, weather, and bee health. They are closely associated with Chaac (rain deities) and Pawahtuns (wind deities). The Bacabs are also central to early-colonial curing corpora (the Ritual of the Bacabs) and are repeatedly invoked in curing rites; Gulf Coast variants include cyclical, ancestral office-holders who open the rainy season and in some local accounts are characterized as drunken or lecherous thunder elders.