SELER] EXPLANATION OF WALL PAINTINGS 813 



it^ with a well-known deity of the Maya manuscripts, a deity of war, 

 fire, and death, who appears in the retinue of. the death god. Xipe in 

 our fragment does not appear directly as the " stone-knife god " (Iz 

 tapal totec, that is, Ttz-tlapalli, or Tlapal-itztli, Totec), as, for exam- 

 ple, in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis ; but he wears a crown of stone 

 knives, from which hangs a feather plume. Beside him, on the right, 

 are visible the heads and bodies of two serpents, having a row of 

 points along their backs. 



In fragment 3 there can be recognized two persons sitting with their 

 arms crossed over their breasts, evidently two penitents, for be- 

 tween them project two sharpened thigh bones, implements of self- 

 castigation, which served to pierce the tongue, ears, or limbs in order 

 to draw blood for sacrifice to the deity. 



The remnants still preserved in fragment 4 will no longer permit of 

 interpretation. In fragment 5, however, we still have on each side 

 of the sun glyph a continuous representation. On the right and left, 

 from the sun glyph, which is flanked by steplike structures, a cord is 

 seen to proceed, which is set with eyes (stars) and the eyes of light 

 or rays discussed in detail above. Figures falling from the sky 

 border, wearing peculiar wigs, which rise to a crest and are curled 

 like waves, grasp at these cords, to which cling, from below recum- 

 bent female forms with jaguar claws. These latter may perhaps be 

 considered as homologous Avith the " ilhuica-tzitzquique " of ^, 

 figure 75. The incident seems intelligible. The sun is being clraAvn 

 out of its cave. A legend descriptive of such an incident has, how- 

 ever, not yet been discovered. 



It is difficult to interpret other remains of figures which can still be 

 distinguished in fragment 5. On the left side of the fragment the 

 head of a bird seems partially visible. Farther toward the middle, 

 just on the left of the sun glyph, is the head of a jaguar. It seems 

 "as if this jaguar were intended to bear on its back the entire structure 

 containing the image of the sun, for on the right of the sun glyph and 

 equally distant from it there seems to hang down the tail of the 

 jaguar. A scorpion, with one claw and upward-curling tail, is plainly 

 visible at the right end of the fragment. 



Fragments 6 to 11 on plate xxxvii, belonging to the east side of the 

 court adjoining Palace I, are more carefully drawn and more deli- 

 cately executed than the paintings of Palace IV. The bird forms 

 with clearly marked crests are very interesting objects here. These 

 appear on the left (northern) end of the picture (fragment 6) as com- 

 plete birds; then half turned into men (fragment 10) ; finally, on the 

 right (southern) end (fragment 11), the full human face looks out of 

 the bird face, which is reduced to a helmet mask. These bird forms 

 and bird men are evidently identical with the idol of Teotitlan del 

 valle, whose form I was able to show in the reliefs reproduced abovt' 



