SPINDEN— CENTRAL AMERICAN PORTRAITURE 



while the victim personifies some vassal town or province. The place- 

 name hieroglyph is enough to make clear what town or province is 

 meant, but Dr Seler professes to see regional differences in costume 

 among the captives. 



Both Tizoc and his successor Ahuitzotl are pictured on the stone 

 commemorative of the completion of the great temples to Huitzilo- 

 pochtli and Tlaloc bearing the date Eight Reed, 1487. This sculpture 

 is carefully executed and fairly well preserved. The two rulers stand 

 on opposite sides of a bundle altar and each pierces his ear with a 

 large awl made from a human femur. The sacrificial blood, flowing 

 outward and downward in a stream, enters an "earth mouth" beneath 



Fig. 1. — Tizoc and Ahuitzotl perform a blood sacrifice 



the altar. The costumes of the two chieftains are alike. Besides the 

 bone awl each carries a ceremonial pouch over one arm and has at 

 his foot a serpent-headed incense burner. Again the personal hiero- 

 glyph furnishes proof of identity, and individual traits do not appear. 

 It must be admitted that on these two monuments the conventional 

 figures are much smaller than nature. 



When we turn to the illuminated Mexican manuscripts we find 

 the pictures of historical persons to be entirely formal except for dif- 

 ferences in dress. Associated hieroglyphs again disclose the person- 

 ality. Examples of stereotyped human beings from the Codex Telle- 



[ 435 ] 



