48 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOfiY [bull. 28 



became known to the Mayas through the medium of the kindred races 

 of Chiapas. For a Tzental-Zotzil x frequently corresponds to the 

 Maya z. 



In the Zapotec calendar the fifteenth day sign had the form naa and, 

 where it is combined with the numeral 1, quirulaa. The Mexican name 

 is Quauhtli, ""eagle", which is easily reconciled with the Guatemalan 

 tziquin, "bird", but not so readily with the Maya word men and 

 the Ma\^a hieroglyph (/', figure -i). But here again the Zapotec name 

 affords linguistic evidence of what I felt compelled to infer, in my 

 earlier work, from the form of the hierogl3q3h. The Maya hiero- 

 glyph, /', shows an aged, wrinkled face. And we see this hiero- 

 glj^ph, lengthened out, decorated with pompons, w, applied in 

 various ways pictorially and hieroglyphicall}^, among others in the 

 hieroglyph which usually accompanies the chief hieroglyph of the 

 eagle. I decided at that time that the Maya hieroglyph repre- 

 sented the picture of the old earth mother, the universally adored 

 goddess known as Tonantzin, "our mother", who goes about stuck 

 over with the fine white down}- feathers of the eagle, and who appears 

 in the Vienna codex, under the name hieroglyph ce Quauhtli, or 

 "eagle''. Now the Zapotec name gives us the same, for naa, naa 

 means "mother"", a word which usually appears ordy with the prefix 

 xi of genitive significance, because names of relationship were never 

 used without an indication of possession. 



The sixteenth da}^ sign is designated in the Mexican calendar by the 

 picture of the vulture (Cozcaquauhtli). The Maj'a races of Guatemala 

 designate it as ah-mak, and this word also seems to denote the vul- 

 ture, "wdio eats out eyes", "who makes pitlike excavations". The 

 Zapotec word is loo, or guilloo. This indeed could not mean the 

 vulture, but a different bird, the raven (pelao, halloo). The vulture in 

 Zapotec is pellaqui (pelahui, balai, baldai). Now it is not impossible 

 that one and the same conception underlies both these titles. Lao, 

 loo, means "eye", "face", "front", "outside". Laqui, lahui, lai, 

 means "set into the very midst", "between", "common", "public". 

 But at any rate, the meaning which lies at the bottom of the root of 

 pellaqui, baldai, "vulture", also occurs in the root loo. We have, 

 for instance, xi-loo-eela, co-loo-eela, "in the middle of the night", 

 "midnight"; loo-thoo, the "middle of the body", "breast", "trunk". 

 Still a third bird is mentioned in the Mexican calendar, of the Cronica 

 Franciscana of Guatemala, namely the tecolotl, "the night bird", 

 "the owl". The idea of death forms a connecting link between the 

 vulture feeding on corpses and the dark bird of night which is easily 

 understood. So, too, in pictun^ writings we often find the cozca- 

 quauhtli and the owl used interchangeably. 



The Maya hieroglyph, as I have already stated in my earlier work, 

 gives rise to very different conceptions. It shows us (see x, iigure 4) a, 



