This photograph shows the south 1/2 of the ball court, the bottom of the I and a portion of the game walls. The tall game walls are on both sides of main playing alley, and stone rings are set high in these side walls, presumably for shooting balls through. Reliefs along the lower parts of these walls depict the ancient ball game ritual, including the sacrifice of the losers by the victors. The very large building is called the Temple of the Jaguars, which looks down into the ball court from the east platform, with a lower chamber opening outside into the main plaza.
The second story of the Temple of Jaguars is reached by an extremely steep stairway at the east end of the court, visible in this photo. The balustrade of this staircase is carved to represent a feathered serpent. Serpent columns support the lintels of the wide doorway facing the plaza, and the doorjambs are decorated with typical Toltec warrior themes. A frieze appears here of a jaguar and circular shield motif in a flat relief, similar to that found at Tula. In the chamber is a now badly defaced mural of a battle scene with hundreds of warriors laying siege to a Maya village.
The crazed explorer Augustus Le Plongeon interpreted the battle scene in the interior of the Temple of the Jaguars (thought by modern scholars to be the 9th century sack of Piedras Negras) as the battle between Prince Coh leader of Moo (Le Plongeon's name for Chichén Itzá) and Prince Aac (Le Plongeon's name for the leader of Uxmal), which was lost by Prince Coh. Coh's widow (now Queen Moo) had to marry Prince Aac and she cursed Moo to destruction. Afterwards, according to Le Plongeon, Queen Moo left Mexico for Egypt and becomes Isis, and eventually is reincarnated as--surprise! Le Plongeon's wife Alice.
Mayanist Falken Forshaw comments: "The thinking now is that this court is not a place to play ball, being an "effigy" court for the purpose of ceremonial political and religious installations. The locations of the Chichen Itza ballcourts are set in the alignments of the windows of the Caracol's upper chamber (this is contained in Horst Hartung's book, Zeremonialzentren der Maya and very ignored by scholarship.) The ballcourt was also designed using sacred geometry and astronomy, some of the latter being published in journals. The playing alley is aligned using a diagonal axis that it N-S."
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