Photo from Sigloxxi.com.

More than a kilometer away from the great pyramid at Chichen Itza, Maya elites once lived in relative luxury in an extensive compound bigger than many of the villas of ancient Roman and Greek kings.

INAH, the federal agency that oversees management of Chichen Itza and also conducts archaeological investigations of the ancient city, took reporters on a tour of a section known as Chichen Viejo (Old Chichen), 800 meters south of traditional center of the city where thousands of tourists roam every day.

The structures are classified as part of the Group of the Initial Series, a series of buildings and monuments built atop a broad platform that, according to INAH, was home to elites at Chichen Itza.

The centerpiece of the compound is the Temple of the Initial Series, which is topped by two so-called Atlantean figures, their raised arms supporting a lintel containing Maya hieroglyphs that contain what Maya epigraphers call a “Long Count” and “Initial Series” date: 10.02.09.01.09 9 Muluk’ 7 Sak (July 26, 878). This is the latest such date found in all of the Maya lowlands, the northern half of the Yucatan Peninsula.

The lintel was discovered around 1900 by Edward H. Thompson, archaeologist and former owner of Chichen Itza. Below is a photograph of an unknown man posing next to the lintel taken in 1908.

Today, the lintel and Atlantean figures holding it are quite worn, as shown in this photo taken two years ago by Thompson’s great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Sawyer:

At the end of this article is a description, in Thompson’s own words, of the discovery of the lintel. When he found it, it had been dislodged from the Atlanteans, probably by the large trees that had grown up around it. According to Peter Schmidt, who has been conducting archaeology at Chichen Itza since the 1970s, there is a possibility the lintel had originally come from a nearby building, the Temple of the Phalli (photo below).

For the past 10 years INAH has been excavating the Group of the Initial Series and restoring many of the buildings. José Osorio León has been the archaeologist in charge of the project. There is a palace and several ceremonial structures “related to the elite who occupied the palace,” Osorio León told reporters.

Artifacts collected at the site and other data has revealed that the buildings represent some of “the earliest architectural construction at Chichen Itza,” he said. Archaeologists have found graves of what they believe are those elites, he said, although he declined to give further details.

There have been discussions of opening the ruins of Chichen Viejo to the public in a limited fashion later this year (see HERE for an earlier report). In addition to the Temple of the Initial Series and Temple of the Phalli, there are other temples dedicated to owls and monkeys, as well as a giant altar in the shape of the turtle (see below).

Discovery of the Intial Series
Excerpt from People of the Serpent (1932) by Edward H. Thompson:

CHAPTER VI: THE MAYA DATE STONE

HARDLY had I set foot among the ruined edifices of Chichen Itza before I commenced to search for a certain inscribed tablet which I believed might be found there. This was not merely a stone covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, but one bearing the Initial Series, a tablet with a date in chronological order carved upon it. This search never ended until I discovered the beautiful Tablet of the Initial Series in what is now known as Old Chichen.

A thousand yards or more to the northwest [Editor: actually to the southwest] of the plantation houses lies a tangled cluster of mounds, low terraces, and edifices that have crumbled to their foundations. It was while hunting in out-of-the-way places for the long-sought stone that I came upon this mass of demolished edifices, aqueducts, and terraces until then unknown. I named it Old Chichen Itza, and it was in this section of the city that I found the Tablet of the Initial Series, the Date Stone. I had found such a stone long before and the vision of its clear-cut inscription was in my thoughts by day and my dreams by night until the inscribed tablet of Chichen Itza replaced it.

While working at Labna, I went on an expedition to a distant group of ruins known to the Indians as ‘Old Walls,’ and it was there that we came upon the now famous Date Stone of Xkalumkin. This trip has been described in a chapter relating to my experiences while lost in the desert. The stone of Xkalumkin and that which I came upon on the highest mound of the Old Chichen group are the only two Initial Series known to exist in northern Yucatan, although many have been found on stelae in the older cities located in the southern part of the Maya area.

My attention was first attracted to this mound by a recumbent figure of a jaguar of the kind that archaeologists now call the chacmool type, placed in front of the main stairway, with carved stone incense vases on either side.

When the time was ripe, I examined it. The mound itself was about thirty feet high and had been built upon a wide terrace about twenty feet above the general level. Upon the platform that crowned this mound rested the much-ruined remains of a small temple. Big trees had grown up through and around the temple, had destroyed the roof, and wrenched apart the walls. They had partially thrown to the ground the two Atlantean figures that had sustained the temple entrance and with them the lintel stone, covered with inscriptions. Time passed. Other big trees grew over the temple, their roots bound the inscribed tablet as with iron bands, and meanwhile the rich blanket of dark loam grew thicker and thicker.

A wandering Indian corn-planter, noting the rich soil, felled the trees, made his planting, gathered his crops, storing them in one corner of a still-standing chamber near by. Then he, too, as time passed, went on his way, and Nature, ever working, so covered up his doings that only the keen eyes of an archaeologist could note them later.

And there I found the Tablet of the Initial Series the inscribed and dated Tablet of Chichen Itza. Not a Rosetta Stone, but nevertheless a valuable aid in working out the chronology of the ancient group. Speaking in round terms, the date thus recorded, when translated into our chronology, gives us approximately A.D. 618 [Ed.: Today this date is believed to be 878]. This of course does not fix the age of the city, only that of this particular edifice.