Mexican and Central American antiquities, calendar systems, and history; . of a bird with a talland erect crest. We succeeded in bringing home a complete spec-imen of this sort, which is now in the Royal Museum of Eth-nology in Berlin, and a copy of this (front and side views) is givenon plate xlii, reproduced by photographic process. The worshipof this deity, who, in character is evidently identical w^ith the idol ofthe Zapotec Teotitlan del valle, seems to have been remarkably wide-spread. Countless stone images of this deity, of whose birds-headmask only the towering crest remained, have be
Mexican and Central American antiquities, calendar systems, and history; . of a bird with a talland erect crest. We succeeded in bringing home a complete spec-imen of this sort, which is now in the Royal Museum of Eth-nology in Berlin, and a copy of this (front and side views) is givenon plate xlii, reproduced by photographic process. The worshipof this deity, who, in character is evidently identical w^ith the idol ofthe Zapotec Teotitlan del valle, seems to have been remarkably wide-spread. Countless stone images of this deity, of whose birds-headmask only the towering crest remained, have been found in the moun-tains of the slope toward the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in thosestrips of territory which succumbed to the so-called Chichimec inva-sion, the expansion of the higliland Nahua tribes. In the capital,Mexico, this deity Avas known under the name of Macuil-xochitl, 5 floAver and was regarded as the deity of luck in gaming. Hehas a dark brother, to whom the name Ixtlilton, the little black-face was given in Mexico, and to him they turned for help when. a 1) Fig. 68. Oods Macnil-xochitl and Ixtlilton, from Mexican codices. their children were ill. I have reproduced (in c and cZ, figure 67) therepresentations of these two deities as they are given in the Sahagunmanuscript of the Biblioteca del Palacio. These pictures also showthat there is left of the birds-head mask only the erect feather crest,with a wing as an ornament or device to be worn on the back. A characteristic group, which evidently represents these same twodeities, is found in the Fejervary codex, page 21, the fourth in a set ofsix pairs of gods (a, figure 68). These two deities have a somcAvhatdifferent form in the parallel passage of Codex Vaticanus B, page58, which is reproduced in 6, figure 68. That the deity of the Zapotec Teotitlan del valle was consideredby the Mexicans the same as their Macuil-xochitl appears to follow «I have given more careful proof of this in my worlt Das Tonalamatl der
Size: 2565px × 975px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectmayas, bookyear1904
