The Bacabs are, in Yucatec Maya tradition as recorded in colonial-period sources, four divine brothers set at the four corners of the world to hold up the sky. Each is assigned one of the four world-directions and its associated colour, commonly red in the east, white in the north, black in the west and yellow in the south, and each bears his own name (Hobnil, Cantzicnal, Zaczini and Hozanek, in the list given by Diego de Landa). They are closely connected with the Chaacs, the four rain-gods of the directions, and with the Pauahtuns, the wind-gods, the several fourfold sets of directional deities overlapping in the Maya scheme of a cosmos ordered by its quarters.
The Bacabs are often pictured as aged sky-bearers, sometimes wearing the shell, net or spider's-web of the Pauahtun, and they governed the days and the fortunes tied to their directions in the divinatory calendar. As with much colonial-era Maya religion, the fullest descriptions reach us through post-conquest sources and must be weighed against the pre-conquest imagery.