The Hero Twins- Maya GroupCollective"Slayers of the Lords of Death"

Divine Brothers

Hunahpu bore large spots on his cheeks and body, the markings of a jaguar lord. His name derived from the day sign Jun Ajpu, "One Blowgunner." Xbalanque wore patches of jaguar skin on his face, and his name likely means "Jaguar Sun" or "Young Hidden Sun." Classic period ceramics depict them consistently as a pair: youthful hunters armed with blowguns, distinguished by their contrasting body markings. Where Hunahpu struck boldly and directly, Xbalanque worked through magical cunning.

The Calabash Tree

Their story begins with their father's death. Hun Hunahpu and his brother Vucub Hunahpu were accomplished ballplayers whose thunderous game disturbed the lords of Xibalba, the underworld realm of the dead. Summoned below, the brothers fell for every trap the death lords set. They sat on burning stones. They failed the trial of the Dark House. They were sacrificed. The lords buried Vucub Hunahpu and placed Hun Hunahpu's severed head in a barren calabash tree as a trophy and warning.

But the tree erupted into fruit the moment the skull touched its branches, so that head and gourds became indistinguishable. When the maiden Xquic, daughter of a Xibalban lord, approached out of curiosity, the skull spat into her open palm and she conceived. Condemned to death by her own father for the unexplained pregnancy, she escaped to the surface world by convincing her executioners to substitute a ball of croton tree sap for her heart. She bore Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the house of their grandmother Xmucane.

Childhood and the Half-Brothers

The twins grew up mistreated by their jealous half-brothers Hun Batz and Hun Chouen, sons of Hun Hunahpu by an earlier wife. Talented artisans and musicians, the half-brothers resented the newcomers and forced them to work as servants, feeding them scraps and denying them a place by the fire. The twins endured this treatment with patience, spending their days hunting birds with their blowguns and biding their time.

When the moment came, they struck through trickery. Inviting their half-brothers to help retrieve birds caught high in a tree, the twins caused the tree to grow magically taller until the older brothers could not descend. The twins instructed them to loosen their loincloths and let the ends hang down for balance. The cloths became tails. Hun Batz and Hun Chouen transformed into howler monkeys. Their grandmother wept, but the transformation was irreversible: the half-brothers became patron spirits of artists and scribes, their creative talents preserved in simian form.

The Bird Demon and His Sons

Before turning their attention to Xibalba, the twins confronted Vucub Caquix, a monstrous macaw who styled himself the sun and moon of the still-dark primordial world. His teeth were encrusted with jewels, his metal eyes blazed with false light, and he demanded worship from the early peoples. The twins ambushed him at his favorite nance tree, shattering his jaw with a blowgun shot. Vucub Caquix tore off Hunahpu's arm before fleeing, but the twins enlisted Zaqui-Nim-Aq and Zaqui-Nima-Tziis, elderly gods disguised as traveling healers, to extract the bird demon's jeweled teeth and shining eyes. Stripped of his splendor, Vucub Caquix died.

The twins then dispatched his sons. Zipacna, a colossal earth-crocodile who boasted of raising mountains overnight, had crushed the Four Hundred Boys beneath a collapsing house. The twins lured him into a canyon with the scent of a giant crab, then brought a mountain down upon him, turning him to stone. Cabracan, the earthquake-maker who shook mountains for sport, they poisoned with a bird coated in white earth, and he too was buried beneath the ground he had shaken.

The Descent to Xibalba

The twins discovered their father's ballgame equipment hidden in the rafters of their grandmother's house: rubber ball, yokes, arm guards, and leather padding. They began to play on the same court. The pounding of their ball once again disturbed the lords of Xibalba, who dispatched four owl messengers with a summons. Unlike their father, the twins prepared deliberately. They planted ears of maize in the center of their grandmother's house as tokens of their fate. If the shoots withered, the twins had died. If they sprouted green, the twins lived.

Descending the steep road to the underworld, they crossed a river of churning water and another of blood before reaching Xibalba's council place. But they had sent ahead a mosquito spy that bit each lord in turn, provoking them to call out one another's names. Armed with this knowledge, the twins greeted each death lord by name. When offered a seat on a burning stone, they declined. Where their father had failed through ignorance, the twins succeeded through preparation.

The Houses of Trial

Xibalba tested its visitors with a gauntlet of lethal chambers: houses of darkness, cold, jaguars, razor-sharp obsidian, fire, and bats. The twins survived each through magical cunning. In the Dark House, they placed a scarlet macaw feather on their torch and fireflies on their cigars, creating the illusion of burning without consuming the materials, and returned them intact at dawn. In the Razor House, they bargained with the obsidian blades themselves, promising them the flesh of animals if the blades would spare them. In the Jaguar House, they threw bones to the hungry cats and walked out untouched.

The Ballgame and Camazotz

The central contest was the ballgame itself, played on Xibalba's court against the death lords. The lords attempted to use a ball fitted with a crushed bone blade that could slice any player it struck, but the twins recognized the substitution and insisted on their own rubber ball. They played the lords to a draw over several rounds, refusing to be baited into losing.

The most harrowing moment came in the Bat House. Hunahpu raised his head to check for the first light of dawn, and Camazotz swept down and severed it cleanly. Xbalanque called the animals to him in the darkness and had a coati carve a squash into the shape of his brother's head, which he animated through magic. When the next day's ballgame began, the death lords hung Hunahpu's real head above the court as the ball. Xbalanque struck the squash-head toward the court's edge; a rabbit hidden nearby bolted across the field, and the lords chased it, mistaking it for the ball. In the confusion, Xbalanque retrieved his brother's true head and restored him.

Victory Through Sacrifice

The twins achieved their ultimate triumph by willing self-destruction. Having foreseen their own deaths through divination, they arranged for two seer-magicians, Xulu and Pacam, to advise the death lords that the only way to dispose of the twins permanently was to grind their bones to powder and cast the dust into the river. The lords followed this counsel eagerly, burning the twins on a pyre, grinding the remains, and scattering them into the flowing water.

Five days later the twins reappeared, first as catfish swimming in the current, then as ragged wandering performers who drew crowds with astounding feats. They burned houses and restored them whole. They killed a dog and brought it back to life. They sacrificed each other and rose again, each time to greater astonishment. The supreme lords of death, Hun Came and Vucub Came, demanded to experience this marvel themselves. The twins obliged. They left them dead. With Xibalba's rulers destroyed, the remaining lords were reduced to accepting only modest offerings, their dominion over humanity broken.

Sun and Moon

With Xibalba's power shattered, the twins descended to the great ballcourt where their father lay buried. Classic Maya ceramics preserve this scene with remarkable consistency: the twins reach into a crack in the earth, depicted as the split carapace of a turtle, and lift their father upward. Hun Hunahpu emerges as a beautiful young lord with corn plants sprouting from his cleft head, the Maize God reborn, as the seed is reborn from the soil after burial.

Their earthly task fulfilled, Hunahpu and Xbalanque ascended into the sky. Hunahpu became the sun, his daily journey from east to west recapitulating his passage through Xibalba each night, dying at dusk and rising reborn at dawn. Xbalanque became the moon.