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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[ miiiL. 28 



the reliefs or in the mamiscripts. There is nothing to favor the 

 assumption that the figure represents a European. It shows quite 

 the usual type seen in similar representations. 



Tattooing 



Tattooing was customary among the Mayas. Landa gives an 

 account of it in chapter 22. We find l)ut little in the manuscripts 

 which we can positivel}^ regard as tattooing. As such we may cer- 

 tainly consider the foregoing character, g, figure 115 (cimi, " death "), 

 on the cheek of the sitting figure from the Dresden codex, page 28, 

 middle (priest of the death god), and perhaps the sign akbal 

 ("night", "dark") on the forehead of the same figure (see, too, 

 Dresden codex, page 5, middle), also the sign for the sun on the body 

 of the figure (sun god) in the Dresden codex on page 15, above. 

 It is hard to say wdiether the singular flourishes on the faces of many 

 of the deities " represented are intended for tattooing or whether 



O o o o o o 



d f 



Fig. 116. Tattooing and facial decoration. 



they are not more probably conventional symbolic accessories to the 

 representation. A peculiarity of the manuscripts, which is especially 

 noticeable in the written characters and which consists in indicating 

 the jawbone with the teeth in human faces (especially in the case of 

 the death god, but not in his alone), recurs as tattooing on a figure in 

 the Yucatan collection at the museum. The figure given on plate i of 

 the Veroffentlichungen des Koniglichen, Museum fiir ViUkerkunde, 

 October, 1888, one of the finest pieces in the collection, on close exam- 

 ination shows tattooing on the face, as restored in the accompanying 

 cut, &, figure 116. 



« It would lead us too far to go into particulars. We may mention the decorated eye 

 (a, fig. 116), which occurs so often, also the face of the deity C, who is frequently 

 represented in Codes Troano-Cortesianus, and the god F, the figure with the thick black 

 line on the face, Troano codex, p. 30, below. Codex Cortesianus, p. 42, etc. 



