Redaction/Culture: Again Mormon explains the thinking of a group when he could not have known that information. Mormon is taking his account from Ammon’s record, and it seems unlikely that Ammon would have known the exact reasons for the invasion. Mormon has just told us that the prime instigators of the rebellion, the Amulonites and Amalekites, unrepentantly wished to continue the slaughter and therefore decide to continue by slaughtering some distant Nephites.
This reason seems improbable. The political reason for the attack on Nephi was to overthrow the king. Since the Anti-Nephi-Lehies did not resist the army, then probably the invaders accomplished their purpose without any loss of life. Without resistance, they took control of the government. Evidence is that the Anti-Nephi-Lehi survivors fled to Zarahemla, something they would not have needed to do had Lamoni’s brother remained on his throne. Once again, the Mesoamerican context provides some illumination.
The significant point is that these successful Lamanites must now install a new king. The combination of iconographic depiction and translations of the glyphic texts provide a fairly complete picture of how the Maya would have conducted the basic ceremony. Schele and Miller tell us:
Thus far, the following stages in accession have been identified, although the order in which they occurred is not known.
a) The designated heir, dressed only in a fringed kilt and minimal jewelry was given the elements of costume that marked him as king. The most important single items were a cloth headband with a Jester God mounted at the front and the flanged headdress. Tikal Stela 31 suggests that the king held this headdress aloft for people to see before he put it on.
b) The king, dressed in the full costume of office and carrying the ritual accouterments of kings, displayed himself to the people attending the rite. The ritual dressing and the display rituals seem to have had different audiences: for example, the king may have dressed with the court in attendance, walked out to the edge of a pyramid to show himself to a larger audience.
c) The wife or mother of the king brought forth a bundle with bloodletting instruments and both drew blood from their bodies, the woman from her tongue and the male from his penis.
d) Either before or after the rites described above, the king went to war to take captives for use in sacrificial rituals.
e) The captive was displayed bound to a special scaffolding, then he was sacrificed by heart excision.
f) The king mounted the scaffold, now defined symbolically as a World Throne, where the ritual cycle was completed.
For the Maya, accession to office was a process critical to the political well-being of the state. Thus, in 50 B.C. at Cerros and in the late eighth century at Copan, it was portrayed in public art as central to the order of the universe as well as to the community of man.
Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube give a more complete description of the pictographic exposition of the scaffolding that the king ascends to be seated upon his throne:
The monuments that Yo’nal Ahk erected here proved especially influential and were emulated at the city for the next 150 years. His Stela 25 established an inaugural motif (the so-called “niche” scene) showing the newly installed king seated high on a decorated scaffold or litter, elevated symbolically to the heavenly realm. A jaguar cushion atop a reed effigy caiman [crocodile] forms his throne, roofed by a canopy representing the sky and crowned by the great celestial bird, the avian aspect of the god Itzamnaaj. The seat itself was reached by a ladder, draped with a cloth marked by the king’s bloody footprints, the contribution of a sacrificial victim slain at its base.
The earliest Classic period description of the ascension ritual is on the Leiden Plaque (a small Epi-Olmec engraved stone, named for its current location in Leiden, Netherlands), a smaller artistic depiction that was portable as opposed to the monumental art carved on stelae. Schele and Miller elaborate:
The image on the Leiden Plaque refers to a second event that is vital to the process of accession. A captive, who is to be sacrificed as a blood offering sanctifying the transformation of the new king, lies bound and prostrate at his feet. The captive, marked as a noble by an ahau glyph on his head, was taken in battle specifically to serve in this ritual. Unhappy with his fate, he lifts his bound wrists and kicks his feet, twisting his body to look back across his shoulder, perhaps hoping for a reprieve. Other representations of accession ceremonies confirm that ritual sacrifice was a regular and necessary part of the process sanctifying the new ruler. At Piedras Negras, victims are shown stretched across an altar, their hearts excised. The heir designation rites recorded in the Bonampak murals were followed by sacrificial rituals that lasted for over a year. The battle to take the victims, their torture, and eventually their sacrifice are all depicted graphically.
The attacking Lamanites have dethroned Lamoni’s brother (King Anti-Nephi-Lehi) and must install a new king. For this particular ritual they need sacrificial victims who have been taken in battle. The pacifism of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies has denied the right kind of captives; hence, the Lamanites have to find someone who will actually fight back and therefore set their sights on Ammonihah. But why Ammonihah?
Martin and Grube help us understand why the sneak attack on an unsuspecting Ammonihah would have been attractive to the Mesoamerican mind: “Like many a Maya ruler, Bird Jaguar’s mystique was closely bound to his image as an indomitable warrior. His favorite military titles, ‘He of 20 Captives’ and ‘Master of Aj Uk,’ were seldom absent from his name phrase and much space was devoted to his various campaigns. Yet a modern understanding of these texts shows just how lowly most of these victims were. He made immense capital out of minor successes and Yaxchilan’s reputation as a ‘conquest state’ only reflects how beguiling his efforts have proved.”
The Lamanites were not full of blood lust as Mormon suggests. They were simply in dire need of war captives to make their coronation ceremony valid. To get them with as little risk as possible, they did what Bird Jaguar would later do—they looked for easy victims. Ammonihah looked like a quick and easy conquest—far enough away to be unsuspecting.
The story of this invasion (Alma 16:3–6) reports that the Lamanites took their captives and retreated to Lamanite territory when the Nephite army counterattacked. This is the only instance where a Lamanite invasion emphasizes captives being taken back. There was no attempt to enforce a client or tribute relationship with Ammonihah. Indeed, such an effort would have been virtually impossible, given Ammonihah’s location deep in Nephite territory. This war has only one real purpose: taking captives.