Akan is an anthropomorphic entity with pronounced
insect characteristics, including the so-called “percentage sign” labeling his
face and body, a skeletal lower jaw and ab AK’AB “darkness” sign on his
forehead . . . .One early Maya dictionary further names Akan as “god of wine,”
a deity of ritual intoxication whom sixteenth0century friars compared to
Bacchus.
Thus Akan is occasionally depicted sprawling
on the floor and vomiting . . . carefully cradling the large, narrow-necked
vessels that held alcoholic beverages . . . The bees buzzing around these vessels
are probably an allusion to balche’,
a native drink made from fermented honey and the bark of the balche’ tree (Lonchocarpus longistylus). Another
common alcoholic beverage was called chih
(or “pulque”), and was made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant . .
. a number of hieroglyphic texts at Copan describe the ritual consumption of chih by kings impersonating Akan during festivals.
In his sixteenth-century account of the Yucatec Maya, Diego de Landa describes
the following bacchanalian scene:
“The Indios were extremely uninhabited when
drinking or drunk, which had may ill effects; it led them, for example, to kill
one another . . . .They made wine from honey, water, and the root of a certain
tree which they grew for this purpose, which made the wine strong and foul
smelling. They would dance, make merry, and eat in pairs or groups of four. After
they had eaten, their cupbearers, who as a rule did not get drunk, brought out
large tubs for them to drink from, which led in the end to a general uproar.”
Similar scenes of abandon are known from Maya
art. On one late Classic polychrome . . . one fellow props up a large clay jug
(labelled with the chi glyph), another smokes a cigarette, and a third is so inebriated
that he needs to be helped to his feet by his comrades. Yet Maya beverages
contained only relatively small amounts of alcohol, and great quantities would
need to be drunk in order to produce high levels of intoxication. For this
reason, enema funnels were used to introduce alcohol into the body more rapidly.
A number of enema administration scenes are known from Classic times, and Akan
himself is occasionally depicted with just such a device . . . (Andrea
Stone and Marc Zender, Reading Maya Art:
A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Maya Painting and Sculpture [London: Thames
and Hudson, 2011], 39; also note the mention of bees among the Maya)