DISCOVERY 



235 



opinion that the last-mentioned may be dated not 

 much later than a.d. 1200. This means that all three 

 originated in those districts which had been colonised 

 by the Maya after they had left their original settle- 

 ments in Guatemala and had been driven northward 

 into Yucatan by racial pressure, and it is clear that all 

 have reference to the same deities and arose out of one 

 and the same religious impulse. 



The God of Death 



The god first encountered in this alphabetic sequence, 

 God A, as he is generally described, is without doubt 

 that grisly genius who in all mythologies presides over 

 the realm of the departed. He is readily to be recog- 

 nised by his skull- like countenance and bony spine and 

 the large black spots, denoting corruption, which cover 

 the emaciated body. He wears as a collar the ruff of 

 the vulture, the bird of death, and a symbol which 

 usually accompanies him, but which ScheUhas was 

 unable to decipher, undoubtedly represents the maggot, 

 evidently a kind of hieroglyph for death. But the 

 distinguishing glyph for this god is a human head 

 with eyes closed in death, before which stands the stone 

 knife of sacrifice. In one part of the Codex Dresden 

 God A is shown with the head of an owl, the bird of 

 ill omen, his almost constant attendant, and this 

 recalls to us a passage in the Popol Vuh, a religious 

 book of the Maya, which states that the rulers of 

 Xibalba, the Underworld, " were owls," the inhabi- 

 tants of a dark and cavernous place. 



I believe God A to be Ah-puch, the death-spirit 

 mentioned by Father Fernandez. His name means 

 " the Undoer " or " Spoiler," and he was also known 

 as Chamay Bac or Zac, that is " white teeth and 

 bones." In some of his portraits he is decorated with 

 a feather, on which are seen the markings of the flint 

 knife, and I have deduced from this that the 

 glyph for "feather" was synonymous with that 

 " knife," a notion which I have substantiated from 

 the fact that in Maya the first wing- feather was called 

 " a knife." 



The personality of God B is a much debated one. 

 He has a long proboscis and tusk- like fangs, and certain 

 writers on American antiquities have caUed him " the 

 elephant-headed god." Apart from these peculiarities 

 his eye has a characteristic rim, and he is easily 

 recognised by the strange headdress he wears, which 

 I take to be a bundle of " medicine " or magical 

 appliances. And here it may be as well to say that I 

 believe the headdresses of these gods represent the 

 earliest S3rmbols by which they were known to their 

 priests and worshippers in the period before writing 

 was invented, or hieroglyphs came into use. They 

 would thus rank as hieroglyphs, as something to be 

 immediately recognised or " read," and probably 



acted as a definite step to the invention of written 

 symbols. 



That God B has an affinity with water is plainly 

 evident. He is seen walking on its surface, standing 

 in rain, fishing, paddling a canoe, and even enthroned 

 on the clouds. He is connected with the serpent, 

 which is, in America, the water- animal par excellence. 

 In some places, indeed, his head surmounts a serpentine 

 body, and, like the priests of the modern Zuiii Indians 

 of Arizona, he is represented as clutching tame serpents 



L M N O P 



Fig. I.— the .\I,PH.\BET OF GODS. 

 (Taken from Maya MSS.) 



in his hands. Like the old British god Kai^the 

 " Sir Kay the Seneschal " of Malory — he bears flaming 

 torches. Kai was a god of the waters ; so, in some 

 measure, is God B. 



The " elephantine " aspect of this god is accounted 

 for by his wearing the mask of the medicine-man 

 or priest, worn during the religious ceremony. Indeed 

 in one statue of his analogous Mexican form we see 

 him in the very act of removing this mask. In Mexico 

 the mask resembles the beak of a bird ; in Central 

 America it is more like a snout — whether that of an 

 elephant or other animal I do not possess sufficient 

 data to give an opinion. 



God B is, indeed, none other than Kukulkan, " The 

 Feathered Serpent," the Maya name for the Mexican 

 Quetzalcoatl, the god of the rain-bearing trade-wind. 

 But in Central America proper, whence he originally 

 hailed, he is more intimately connected with water 

 than with wind, and the learned priests of his cult 

 explained him to the Spanish conquerors as " the 



