Part 6

Her hieroglyph is Fig. 52; it is distinguished by the wrinkles of age about the eye. Owing to the limited number of her pictures, there is little to be said concerning the significance of this goddess.

P. The Frog-God.

We call him the frog-god because in the Codex Tro. 31, he is pictured in the first and second lines with the club-shaped fingers of a frog, which occur only on this figure. The blue background, which is his attribute twice in the same passage, likewise points to a connection with water, and that the god also has something to do with agriculture may be deduced from the fact that he is pictured sowing seed and making furrows with the planting-stick. The two black parallel stripes at the corner of the eye seem to be folds of skin or marks on the skin, which may represent a peculiarity of this particular species of frog. His head ornament is very characteristic and contains the sign for the year of 360 days. He therefore bears some unknown relation also to the computation of time. It should be recalled in this connection that one of the Maya months is called Uo, frog. The god is pictured again in Tro. 30a and b, Tro. 22 (top, scattering seed) and Cort. 5 (at the very bottom, the figure lying down). Finally his neck ornament must be mentioned, which, as a rule, consists of a neck-chain with pointed, oblong or pronged objects, probably shells.

In the Dresden manuscript he occurs but once, Dr. 4a (first figure), with some variations it is true. The text at this place contains H's hieroglyph. God P does not occur in the Peresianus.

His hieroglyph is Fig. 53. It occurs in Tro. 31 (top) and can be unerringly recognized by the two black parallel stripes at the corner of the eye; which correspond exactly to the same marks on the face of the picture of the god himself.

This is all that can be said respecting this deity from the pictures in the manuscripts. Its meaning is obscure. Seler's assumption that god P is Kukulcan (Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1898, p. 403) has certainly very slight foundation, and in view of the material from the manuscripts described in the preceding pages, it is in the highest degree improbable.

* * * * *

The foregoing is an almost complete enumeration of the god-figures proper in the Maya manuscripts. Whatever other figures of gods occur in the manuscripts are details of slight importance. This is especially true of the Dresden manuscript, which is well nigh exhausted by the types enumerated here; there may be, I think, a few figures still undescribed in the Madrid manuscript, the careless drawing of which renders the identification very difficult. An isolated figure of the Dresden manuscript still remains to be mentioned, concerning which it is doubtful whether it is intended to represent a deity or only a human personage.

This is the figure characterized by a peculiar head ornament in Dr. 20b. It is designated in the text by two hieroglyphs, which belong together, Figs. 54 and 55, the latter occurring once with K (Dr. 7a). It seems to represent blowing from the mouth, screaming or speaking.

II. MYTHOLOGICAL ANIMALS.

1. THE MOAN BIRD.

This bird[41-1] belongs to the death-god as his symbol and attendant. Its hieroglyph (Fig. 56) contains the numeral 13; other forms are Figs. 57-59. It is pictured in Dr. 7c, 10a, 11a, 16c, 18b, and its hieroglyph without the picture is seen in Dr. 8b. A realistic representation of the whole figure of the moan as a bird, occurs on the head of the woman in 16c (1st figure) and 18b. God B sits on the head of the moan in Dr. 38c; the third hieroglyph of the accompanying text refers to this representation. Just as in Dr. 16 and 18, the moan bird appears in Tro. 18*c on the head of a woman. Its character as an attribute of the death-god is expressed by the Cimi-sign, which it wears upon its head (e. g., Dr. 10a), and also by the regular occurrence of symbols of the death-god in the written characters, which refer to the moan bird. In the same manner the sign of the owl, Fig. 5, also occurs frequently with it.

The moan confers name and symbol alike on one of the eighteen months of the Maya year, and thus, as Foerstemann conjectures (Die Plejaden bei den Mayas, in Globus, 1894), has an astronomic bearing on the constellation of the Pleiades.

According to Brinton the moan is a member of the falcon family and its zoological name is Spizaetus tyrannus.

2. THE SERPENT.

This is one of the most common and most important mythological animals, and is closely related to different deities, as has already been more fully discussed in connection with the individual cases. Apparently it has no independent significance as a deity. Its most important personification is that in god B, Kukulcan, the feathered serpent. Hence a fixed hieroglyph designating the serpent as a deity, as a mythologic form, does not occur, though there are numerous hieroglyphs which refer to serpents or represent individual parts of the serpent, as its coils, its jaws, the rattles of the rattlesnake, etc. The serpent appears in the mythologic conceptions of the Mayas chiefly as the symbol of water and of time. In the great series of numbers of the Dresden manuscript, certain numbers occur which are introduced in the coils of a large serpent (compare in regard to this, Foerstemann, Zur Entzifferung der Mayahandschriften, II, Dresden, 1891). The serpent is very frequently represented in all the manuscripts, sometimes realistically and sometimes with the head of a god, etc. In the Dresden manuscript it occurs in the following places: 1a, 26, 27, 28c, 35b, 36a, 36b, 37b 40, 42a, 61, 62, 65c 66a and 69. It is prominent also in the Madrid manuscript, occurring for example in Cort. 4-6, 12-18, Tro. 25, 26, 27 and elsewhere.

3. THE DOG.

Fig. 60 is its hieroglyph. It is the symbol of the death-god and the bearer of the lightning. The latter follows quite clearly from the picture in Dr. 40b where the god is distinguished by its hieroglyph. This animal is again represented in Dr. 7a, 13c on the right, 21b with its hieroglyph, 29a, 30a (forming a part of 31a, where god B holds the bound dog by the tail), and 39a without the hieroglyph, 47 (bottom) with a variant of the hieroglyph.

In Dr. 36a the dog bears the Akbal-sign on its forehead. The writing above it contains a variant of the hieroglyph for the dog; this is the third of the rubric. It shows (somewhat difficult of recognition) the Akbal-sign on the forehead of the dog's head occurring in it, and on the back of the head the Kin-sign, as symbols of the alternation of day and night. The same sign occurs again with adjuncts in Dr. 74 (last line, 2nd sign) and once with the death-god in Dr. 8a. The dog as lightning-beast occurs with the Akbal-sign in the eye instead of on the forehead in Codex Tro. 23*a; here again its hieroglyph is an entirely different one (the third of the rubric).

That the dog belongs to the death-god is proved beyond a doubt by the regular recurrence in the writing belonging to the dog, of the hieroglyphs, which relate to this deity, especially of Fig. 5. According to Foerstemann his day is Oc.

4. THE VULTURE.

This bird is distinctly pictured as a mythological figure in Dr. 8a. It appears again, in feminine form, together with the dog, in Dr. 13c and also in 19a. In the first passage, its hieroglyph is almost effaced; the hieroglyph is very striking and occurs nowhere else in the whole collection of manuscripts. The body of this animal-deity is striped black and white; in Dr. 38b it is almost entirely black. The same passage displays a second hieroglyph for this figure (Fig. 61); this hieroglyph also occurs with the numeral 4 in Dr. 56b. In Dr. 36b this bird of prey is pictured fighting with the serpent; its hieroglyph occurs in the second form; the serpent is designated by the Chuen, the gaping jaws of the serpent (first character of the rubric).

Finally it should be mentioned that the head of this bird occurs frequently as a head ornament, thus in Dr. 11a, 11b, 12b and 14b. Mention should also be made of the realistic representations of the vulture, eating the eye of a human sacrifice (Dr. 3, Tro. 26*a and 27*a).

According to Foerstemann his day is Cib.

5. The Jaguar.

The jaguar is likewise an animal with mythological significance. It is represented in Dr. 8a, where its hieroglyph is the third sign in the writing; it also occurs in Dr. 26 (at the top). It occurs in Tro. 17 (at the end) with a hieroglyph which represents the jaguar's head and contains the numeral 4 (Fig. 62); again it appears without a hieroglyph on p. 20 (bottom) and on 21 and 22 (bottom).

Its day is Ix, and hence it also relates occasionally as year regent to the Ix years, for example in Dr. 26a.

6. The Tortoise.