DISCOVERY 



237 



A Storm -goddess 



The distinguishing characteristic of God H con- 

 sists in what is known as the chiccan or serpent-spot 

 appearing on his brow. He has practically no other 

 distinctive marks, and that he has some relation to 

 the serpent is clear. With I we come to the first of the 

 two goddesses represented in the list— a divinity of 

 water. She is scarcely prepossessing, and has claws 

 in place of feet. She wears on her head a knotted 

 serpent, and seems to pour the flooding rains from a 

 large vessel. But she is evidently not a beneficent 



Palenque, so it follows that he must have been a 

 divinity who ranked high in the galaxy of gods. He 

 has the same description of mask, with elongated snout, 

 as B, but his hieroglyph differs very markedly from the 

 symbol of that god, representing as it does an almost 

 ape-like head with a peculiar foliation in the region of 

 the forehead— a constant feature of his pictures. 

 From his position as lord of the calendar years which 

 belong to the east, Professor Seler believes him to be 

 Ah-Bolon tzacab, " Lord of the Nine Generations." 

 In my view he is a variant of B. The two most 

 famous deities among the Maya, Kukulkan and 



Fig. 3.— priest offering PASTE IM.\GE OF .\X INF.\NT TO A GOD IN THE SH.\PE OF A TURKEY (PROBABLY GOD F). 

 The plumage of the turkey cock symbolised to the Maya the colours of rain on green vegetation. To the left stands an acolyte. 



deity, for her face is distorted by an expression of angry 

 menace, and it is obvious that she personifies water 

 in its more harmful guise — the baneful flood rather than 

 the gentle rain. In some of the representations of 

 her water belches from her mouth, breasts, and 

 armpits, and she wields the rattle of the thunder- 

 storm. 



Such data as we possess regarding the deity indicated 

 by the letter K is not of a kind that would permit us 

 to arrive at any very definite conclusions regarding 

 him. He closely resembles B, and has even been con- 

 founded with him by some authorities. He is frequently 

 represented on the walls of the temples of Copan and 



Itzamna, were undoubtedly one and the same in 

 origin and essence, although in later times they came 

 to be regarded as rivals and as swaying the fortune 

 of opposing cities, and I believe K represents Itzamna 

 as B is unquestionably Kukulkan. 



A deity of darksome hue appears in God L, known 

 as " The Old Black God." In some of the pictures in 

 the Codex Dresden his face is entirely black, but in 

 the other manuscripts only the upper part of it is so 

 painted. From the insignia which accompany him, 

 I have been led to the provisional conclusion that he 

 is in some manner connected with the synodical 

 appearances of the planet Venus, which bulked largely 



