The Sun-Eyed Lord

Kinich Ahau (Kinich Ajaw, roughly Sun-Eyed Lord or Radiant Lord) is the Maya sun god, the deified sun in its daytime course and a deity of great importance in a culture whose calendar and cosmology turned on the movements of the sun. He is shown with distinctive solar features, large square eyes, filed teeth, the kin (sun-day) sign, and often a Roman-nosed profile, and in the Schellhas system of codex-gods he is labelled God G. He is closely bound up with the supreme deity Itzamna, of whom he is sometimes regarded as the solar aspect, the two names denoting overlapping or complementary faces of Maya sky-divinity.

In one strand of belief the sun-god descended into the underworld at nightfall and passed through it as a jaguar to rise again at dawn, so that the night sun and the jaguar are linked with his figure. Maya kings associated themselves with the sun-lord, incorporating kinich into their royal titles as a claim to solar radiance and legitimacy.