52 Shells as evidence of the Migrations. 
Further illustrations of the use of the shell-trumpet by 
the Aztecs are seen in Codex Borgia 14, where Tepeyollotl:, 
the Heart of the Mountains, God of the Caves, is figured 
blowing the shell-horn, and in Codex Vaticanus, No. 3,773, 
sheet 22, where the same god wears the shell-horn as a 
breast ornament and a second horn lies before him at the 
threshold of the temple.” 
In the Codex Vaticanus and elsewhere the Mexican 
Moon God, 7ecciztecat/, is represented in association with 
a large conch-shell as its symbol. This appears either on 
the brow of the god or at the back of the neck. As the 
emblem of the moon the shell also appears with the 
figure of a man holding in his hand a blood-stained agave- 
leaf spike, or merely a hand holding a bone dagger and 
agave-leaf spike, emerging from the mouth—the God in 
the shell—which might have reference to the waters being 
pent up, or possibly to different phases of the moon. The 
Rain God, 77Va/oc, is thus seen at the mouth of the shell, 
or emerging from it, holding lightning in both hands, 
(See /‘tgs. 2—5 on plate facing.) 
The snail-shell was also brought into association by 
the Aztecs with conception, pregnancy and birth; for, as 
the interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis says : 
“asi como sale del hueso el caracol, asi sale el hombre del 
vientre de su madre.” 
The Moon God is thought by Seler to bear this name 
“perhaps on the one hand because he has his phases, at 
times withdrawing half or altogether into his shell.” But 
on the other hand—and this is what the interpreters 
lay stress upon—it seems as if he owed this name to the 
relation in which the moon stands towards women, to the 
influence which it exercises on the bodies of women. In 
*! Seler, of. c#/., p. 103, figs. 295, and p. 105, sheet 22. Here the shell 
is like that of the Fasting-man, i.e., Aascto/aria gigantea. 
