Lord of the Heavens, Patron of Writing

Itzamna is among the highest gods of the ancient Maya, a supreme creator and sky deity and the patron of writing, learning and priestly knowledge. In the classification of the Maya codex-gods devised by Paul Schellhas he is God D, shown as an aged figure marked with the features of great age and wisdom, and the colonial-period Yucatec sources present him as a benevolent lord of the heavens credited with giving humankind the arts of writing, the calendar and medicine. He is closely associated with the sun-god Kinich Ahau, of whom he is sometimes treated as an aspect, and is paired with the goddess Ix Chel.

In the surviving Maya codices, chiefly the Dresden Codex, God D, identified with Itzamna, is shown as an aged figure with a sunken, toothless mouth and a distinctive curved Roman-nose profile, often seated on a celestial throne marked with sky-band glyphs or emerging from the open jaws of a great celestial serpent, a composite creature sometimes called the cosmic monster in modern scholarship, which appears throughout Classic and Postclassic Maya art as a boundary between the earthly and heavenly realms. This imagery ties Itzamna visually to the sky itself rather than to any single earthly location, consistent with his role as the highest and most encompassing of Maya deities.