SELEu] ZAPOTEC PRIESTHOOD AND CEREMONIATiS 281 



latter case a new deity is inserted between the tenth and the eleventh, 

 and therefore the twentieth deit}' of the first (original?) series is 

 omitted at the end. The seventeenth and eighteenth deities of the 

 first series, or the eighteenth and nineteenth of the second, are the 

 ones Avhich seem to have special reference to the festival of expiation 

 of the Zapotecs which has jnst been described. 



The expiation of sin is expressed in the clearest and most realistic 

 way, especially by the picture of the first of these two deities. He is 

 depicted in the form of a turkey cock, designated by the interpreter 

 as Chalchinhtotolin, " emerald fowl ", and explained as the image of 

 the god calJed by the Mexicans Tezcatlipoca, " smoking mirror ". 



By a natural and quite comprehensible transference of ideas sin 

 was designated by the people of ancient Mexico as dirt, excrement, 

 offal, and was portrayed in the picture writings, in a way to be recog- 

 nized more or less clearly, in the form of human faeces. Tlaelquani, 

 " she who eats ordure ", was called by the Mexicans the " earth god- 

 dess ", because she was the eradicator of sins, to whose priests the 

 people went to confess their sins in order to be freed from them by 

 this confession. In all the passages under consideration there is 

 always depicted opposite Chalchiuhtotolin a man in the act of self- 

 castigation, of drawing his own blood, or, in his stead, the imple- 

 ments and symbols of castigation. In the calendars of Codices 

 Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticanus A, next to the representation of a 

 penitent, sin is expressed l)y the conventional drawing of ordure («, 

 figure G0).« On page 51 of the Borgian codex, to which page 32 of 

 Codex Vaticanus B corresponds, an eagle's claw is represented beside 

 the sjanbols of castigation, offering the ordure to Chalchiuhtotolin to 

 eat (J, figure OO).'' By this means the '" emerald fowl ", the image of 

 Tezcatlipoca, is likewise designated as Tlaelquani, the erndicator of 

 sins.^ Finally, in the Borgian codex, page 29, to Avhich pages -i and 

 77, Codex Vaticanus B, correspond, opposite Chalchiuhtotolin, there 

 is («, figure Gl) the penitent (who bores out his eye with a sharp- 

 ened bone) in the middle of a ring, which appears from its coloring 

 to be of braided grass, since it consists of alternating green and white 

 sections, the white ones dotted with red, indicating the sprinkling 

 Avith blood. This ring evidently represeuts the tola of the Zapotecs, 

 the rope of grass, whose use is explained above. 



The same rope of grass is also represented in page 30 of the 



" In the third section of the calendar, in the place where in some picture writings the 

 earth goddess is represented opposite the god Tepe.voll()tl, in others, instead of the 

 former, there is the |)icture of a man eating his own excrement (hieroglyph for Tlael- 

 quani) and the symbol of the moon (see figure (!")). 



* I liad not arrived at a full comprehension of all these circumstances when I wrote 

 my work on Tonalamatl der Aubiusclien Sammlung. 



" This signification of Tezcatlipoca is also supported by other passages in the picture 

 writings, specially by the following codices: Borgian. p. 1'7 : Valicanus It, pp. (i, 70, or 

 Borgian, p. 4G ; and Vaticanus B, p. 87. 



