Located north of El Castillo, the Temple of the Descending God gets its name from a sculpture located there of an upside down winged creature holding a lintel. The name itself, is purely descriptive, and has no connection with Mayan mythology. Some Archeologists believe that the carvings on the wall represent a descending god-human from heaven.
Others believe it is a depiction of the setting Sun descending unto the night, very much like the ancient Mediterranean cults of a dying Sun. Their arguments are reinforced by the original name of this walled city, “Zama”, which means dawn in Maya, and as such appears to reinforce the belief that the the place was a center for Sun worship. In the ancient Mediterrenean world, Sun worship was a very popular and spread out religion. It consisted of the observation that the Sun dawning upon the west and giving in to the night, and then rising on the East, to start a new day. This basic observation evolved to complex spiritual myths and ritual observances, where the essence of all the myths consisted in the hero dying, descending upon the underworld, and then reviving to appear on the east, creating one more day anew for humans to exist. In Egypt, it took the form of the cult of Osiris, in Greece, it took the form of the myth of Hercules and his Twelve deeds (twelve representing the twelve zodiac constellations of the stellar night), in Phoenicia, the form of the cult of Baal, and in Rome, it was the cult of “Sol Invictus”. Human sacrifice was sometimes also practiced with some of these religions, and sometimes sexual acts were acted out as part of the ritual. It would be interesting to know if the Mayans had a similar cult to the Sun.
Even more, others believe that the carvings represent a bee, because honey was a highly praised property for the Mayan economy. The Maya have practiced bee-keeping for thousands of years. The sting-less melliponine bee (Apidae melliponinae), native to the Yucatan peninsula, was said to be a link to the spirit world, given to them by the god Ah Muzen Cab (if you find this strange, that honey is related to a divine deity by the Mayans, it seems to have been a fairly common practice among the ancient world, for instance, the Greeks, believed that wine was given to them by the god Dionysus). Harvested, the bee honey was used as a sweetener, antibiotic and as a fermented alcoholic honey drink called balche, which is similar to mead. When Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba arrived in Yucatan on the year 1517, he found bee yards with thousands of wooden hives, producing enough honey to be traded all over Mesoamerica.
Finally, UFO-logist (those who pursue an interest in Unidentified Flying Objects) are certain that it represents an intelligent being from an extraterrestrial planet landing on a Mayan runway. Out of all the groups I have mentioned, this group seems to be the most certain about everything. There is no room for doubt. One cannot leave without mentioning that the Mayans never invented the wheel, had no technology to cast iron, and did not domesticate work animals. That does not imply that they could not have built intergalactic runways to support space travel, but who knows, seems kind of difficult.
