304 BUKEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [i'.ill. 28 



Otlior figures and vessels evidently represent a female personage or 

 a female deity. Thus the two beautiful figure vessels which are 

 reproduced in the middle of plate xxxiii, and on plate xxxiv, which, 

 together with the two others, with the serpent face, reproduced 

 on plate xxxiii, and two plain, low, three-footed vessels, were found 

 in a field in the neighborhood of the royal city of the Zapotecs, 

 Zachila, or Teotzapotlan. We had the good fortune to be on the spot 

 on the ver}^ day when this discovery was made, and were able to add 

 these pieces to our collection, after some bargaining. They have 

 passed with our whole collection into the possession of the Royal 

 Museum of Ethnology at Berlin. 



I have grouped together in plate xxxv some tj^pes of small pottery 

 antiquities. We collected the originals partly in the neighborhood 

 of Zachila and Cuilapa, partly in Mitla, and partly in Zoquitlan, 

 above Totolapan. Some of the heads are the tops of bulbous clay 

 Avhistles, which have two short feet in front, the mouthpiece of the 

 whistle forming a third foot behind. (Others are fragments of flat 

 figures, evidently modeled in pottery molds. We know that the pot- 

 tery whistles were frequently used, together with great whelk shells 

 which served as trumpets and other musical instruments, at religious 

 ceremonies, especially at the penitential exercises in honor of the rain 

 god and other deities. They were very often, we may even say very 

 generally, copies of the figure of a god. Those which come from the 

 Yalle de Mexico very often have the form of tlie god of gaming, 

 song, and dancing, but sometimes those of Xipe and others. f*rob- 

 ably the small pottery figures were in the main small house idols, 

 small images for votive offerings, and the like. 



There are two principal types to be recognized among these Zapotec 

 ])ottery heads and small pottery figures. First, male faces with 

 deeply furrowed features, some with beards and some with projecting 

 eye teeth, very often with a distinct halo. I believe these must be 

 identified with the old god, the male part of the primal pair of gods. 

 The other principal type is evidently that of a youthful female deity. 

 There is generally to be recognized over the brow the transversely 

 grooved palate and the two eyes of a reptile (alligator), out of whose 

 open jaws looks the face of the goddess. These heads therefore 

 doubtless represented the earth goddess who grants fertility and 

 prosperity. Jaguar heads, or faces which wear a jaguar as a helmet 

 mask, are seldom met with among these smaller pottery antiquities, 

 and the face with the inserted serpent jaws, which is so frequent in 

 the larger figure vessels, the mortuary vessels, seldom or never occur 

 among them. We obtained, chiefly in Zoquitlan, torsos dressed in 

 wadded armor, holding a shield in one hand and a club or a lance in 

 the other; but similar ones are also found occasionally among the 

 antiquities discovered in other places. 



