The complex of four buildings known as the Women's Monastery, or if translated in detail from Spanish, the Quadrangle of the Nuns, is very interesting. This name was given by the Spanish explorers who thought that the ancient structures with 74 rooms resembled a Catholic monastery. Scholars who have studied Uxmal almost unanimously lean toward the idea (and such unanimity in judgments about Maya monuments is quite rare) that the "Women's Monastery" was indeed a real monastery, a dwelling place for Maya priests, perhaps priestesses as well. Here they likely lived in the secluded cells of their magnificent home, from where they went out to perform rituals in the sanctuaries of the Pyramid of the Magician, and to which they returned after the ceremonies. And when they looked out from the Monastery, they saw on the opposite slope, on three terraces, the Palace of the Governors shining under the scorching Yucatan sun, the residence of the "great men" of this remarkable indigenous city.

This structure (called the South Building here) literally faces the Palace of the Governors, from which it is separated only by a ballcourt and lies at the level of the inner courtyard. It consists of two symmetrical wings, each 80 meters long. Each wing has two rows of four rooms opening outward and inward to the courtyard, i.e., to the south and north. Both wings are connected by an arch, which is accessed by a large staircase on the southern side. This is the only monumentally decorated passage to the building complex. At the outer ends of both parts of the building are small two-room buildings set slightly back, accessible only from the inner courtyard. These were definitely built later. The upper half of the walls is decorated with two interconnected motifs: on the inner facade above each entrance is an image of a hut with a palm roof, above which are masks of the rain god, from which smoke and clouds spread. Between the huts are either decorations in the form of a net pattern or smooth walls and groups of three small columns with bands. The outer facade has mostly collapsed. From the remains preserved near the western corner, it can be assumed that the decoration was similar to the inner facade. The middle and upper cornices are structurally similar: two slanted borders frame a smooth protruding surface. The upper cornice is taller.

On the opposite side of the inner courtyard rises the largest and most beautiful building of the "Monastery" — the Northern Palace, which stands on a high terrace accessed by a magnificent staircase thirty meters wide, located in the middle of the platform. On each side, it is flanked by buildings at courtyard level.

In this palace, the cells are arranged in exactly the same way. The facade of the Northern Palace is decorated with the finest stone ornamentation. It consists of masks of the omnipresent Chaac placed above the entrance to each cell in four rows stacked one above the other. The space on the facade between these images of the rain god is filled with stone mosaics depicting people, birds, and snakes. Works by Maya sculptors depicted indigenous gods, members of the noble class, and the priesthood; stone reliefs were often adorned with chronological inscriptions. The character of the sculptural works depended on their purpose: these were stelae, altars, building facades, altar slabs in temples. The need to depict all the most important religious symbols often led to an excessive richness of decoration.

The northern building itself contains two rows of eleven rooms. The rear rooms can be accessed through the front ones. At the end sides, there are two rooms, one behind the other. Thus, the total number of rooms is 26 with 13 entrances. There are no entrances on the northern side. The central entrance on the southern side is wider than the others. As in the western and eastern buildings, the entrances are framed. This building has a more complex history than all the others in the Women's Monastery complex. The oldest structure did not have four side rooms and had a different facade. But all the decoration was removed, and we do not know what it looked like. The side rooms were added only in a later construction phase, and a new facade was also built. This construction stage is the latest in the entire Women's Monastery complex. This building combines motifs from other buildings in the complex. The plinth consists of a border alternating sections with three small columns and smooth walls with two smooth borders above and below. The lower tier of walls is smooth. The middle cornice consists of three elements: the middle is a smooth border, with slanted protruding borders above and below. The protruding elements of the facade are columns of Chaac masks. They divide its surface into separate segments. Similar ones are at the corners. Rows of masks protrude above the roof level. Their exact number is unknown as the facade is only partially preserved.

Above some entrances are images of traditional Maya houses, whose roof peaks are formed by two-headed snakes, possibly a metaphor for smoke rising above the hearth. In front of one of the houses is a sculptural image of two jaguars with intertwined tails — a motif found in other parts of Uxmal as well. Between the columns of masks and house images are fields occupied by a net pattern with diamond-shaped stones and meanders. Here are fixed protruding figures depicting, for example, a bound captive and an owl with a human face. Above the second entrance is a tall column of four Chaac masks.

The decoration of the building’s end sides has not survived. The rear side of the building is simpler. In a regular sequence, sections of smooth wall alternate with areas of lattice ornamentation. From the smooth sections above the middle cornice protrude stone pegs. On one of them remain traces of a male figure with exposed genitals. At the height of this figure’s head is a round hole, presumed to have held a stone peg on which the skull of a slain person was mounted.

The building’s upper cornice consisted of three levels: two smooth borders with a row of low small columns in the middle. The usual upper slanted border in such a cornice here is so tall that it can be considered another level of the wall, and the slant is not pronounced.

Two long buildings run one after the other parallel to the Eastern building of the Women's Monastery a bit further east. These are two identical buildings separated by a narrow passage, which was later covered by a vault. The southern building was built first, then the northern one, from which an arch was constructed to the southern building. Then a transverse wall was built, making the arch impassable and turning it into a semi-open room.

Both buildings are arranged identically. They consist of two unusually arranged rooms. The front room could be entered through three entrances. The rear room has only one entrance. The quality of workmanship is extremely high. The vault width is very large. In the rear room of the northern building, it is 4.1 meters, and in the southern building’s rear room, 4.35 meters. This is the widest vault in the entire Maya region. The features of the outer wall construction of the southern building are also noteworthy. It has no core of stone rubble and non-load-bearing material, as is usually the case. The entire thickness of the wall is made of stone blocks using stretcher bond. There are no facing stones or door jambs. It seems that a construction experiment was conducted here. The wall surfaces are smooth. Numerous pegs protrude from the upper part of the southern building’s wall, once supporting decorative elements. They have only partially survived. Three friezes each consist of three elements. The middle frieze consists of a protruding smooth border and two slanted borders above and below. The upper frieze is arranged similarly but is taller. The fact that the wall construction is the same as in the northern group building may indicate simultaneous construction of these buildings. It is believed that the Northern group was built among the first in Uxmal’s history. Therefore, the annex can also be dated to an early period. The passage between the buildings indicates that the Women's Monastery complex did not yet exist. Since the Women's Monastery was later constructed, and the passage through the arch began to butt against its platform, the arch was bricked up. The early dating is also supported by the painting preserved in the building’s corners. The entire lower part of the walls and vault was covered with dark red paint, and under the vault remained a horizontal border with large black hieroglyphs on a light background. This is a distinctive feature of buildings in the Proto-Puuk and early Puuk styles, where such a border is usually on the outer side of the walls. Poor preservation prevents reading the text.

Maya sculptures were extremely stylized. They were monumental but also somewhat static. The Maya did not use perspective; the size of a figure depended on the importance of the depicted person. The reliefs decorating the Monastery perhaps give an impression of a certain fragmentation typical of many works by Maya sculptors. This is because the artists were more concerned with creating a complete set of symbolic images than achieving proportionality of forms and dimensions.

The House of Priests, the Monastery, lay as if at the feet of the Shiw, the true, unlimited rulers of the city. The arrangement of the buildings testifies that the ruler unquestionably dominates, and the priesthood — although largely independent in their internal affairs — serves him. However, the Maya name for priests does not translate as "servants of the ruler," but as "servants of the sun" — "ah-kin." Ah-kins performed all the main duties related to serving the gods in Maya cities and villages. Their colleagues, the augur priests, called chilans in Maya, served their spiritual flock as soothsayers. Nako-mas — the third group of Maya priests — mainly performed human sacrifices. They were the ones who tore out the hearts of the unfortunate victims on the sacrificial stone during the notoriously cruel indigenous rituals. Above the priests performing the sacrifice, the prophet priests, and the sun servants stood the high priest, the chief priest of the Maya city-state. However, this ah-kin-mai not only led the clergy of his country but was also the great master of hieroglyphic writing, the chief astronomer, and, of course, the chief astrologer. By the stars, he determined the merits and faults of the coming day. The office of the high priest was inherited in Yucatan, just as the office of the sole, unlimited, true ruler of each Yucatan city-state — the office of "halach uinik" ("great man") — was inherited. Here in Uxmal, he resided in the luxurious Palace of the Governors.

And just as the high priest, just as the "great man" of the Maya city-state, all almecenes — nobles, literally "those who have two names" — inherited their posts and privileges. The fact is that each of these noble Maya Indians had two names: one from the father, the other from the mother. A son of a common Maya in the Yucatan states could inherit only the father's name, a daughter only the mother's name. By the time the Spaniards arrived on the peninsula, there were about 250 privileged noble families whose members bore both names — paternal and maternal. (These two-named lineages were already fully endogamous, meaning their members married exclusively among themselves.)

The hereditary aristocracy appropriated all offices, privileges, and almost all property in the Maya states. Small Maya communities were governed by lower chiefs, literally "owners of the axe," the batabs. They collected taxes in kind, mainly cacao beans, for the "great man," for the ruler's treasury; they took care of the military training of the holkans — infantrymen who formed the core of the Yucatan states' military forces during war.

Besides the batabs, other members of the Maya nobility lived directly in their magnificent stone cities or their suburbs. The common people — personally free peasants, craftsmen, and construction workers (literally called "low" or "lowest" people), as well as the most powerless pentakobes (slaves) — lived on the outskirts of these indigenous metropolises or in villages in huts, of which naturally nothing remains. And the indigenous pyramids and palaces outlasted their builders, their stonemasons, and stonecutters for many centuries in the Maya land.

Sources:

https://meksika.info/strana/dostoprimechatelnosti/ushmal-meksika-foto-karty-gorod/#i-4

Dmitry Viktorovich Ivanov: Architecture, History, and Art of Uxmal

Miroslav Sting: Mysteries of Indigenous Pyramids