80 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS RITES. 
number of these little gods kept in a house was prescribed by the rank of 
the family; for kings, princes and the great nobility were permitted to have 
six, the inferior nobles four, and others only two. 
Tetevinan was the mother of the gods. She was the daughter of the 
tyrant Colhuacan, upon whom the Mexicans wished to avenge themselves. 
They therefore demanded his daughter, under the pretence that their patron 
god required that she should be dedicated to him as his mother. The king 
dared not refuse, and the girl was received with great solemnities and 
sacrificed to the god, and has ever since been worshipped as the mother of 
the gods. The sun and the moon, of whose curious history we shall presently 
speak, were also worshipped as deified heroes. 
The Aztek or Mexican cosmogony is very remarkable. They believed 
that time was divided into four ages or periods. The first of these they 
said was Atonatiuh, the age of water, which terminated with a universal 
deluge, by which all created things, even the sun and the moon, were 
destroyed. Only two human beings were saved in a boat made of a hollow 
tree, and landed finally on the mountain Colhuacan. These became after- 
wards the founders of a new race, which lived during the second age. 
This period was called Zlaltonatiuh, the age of the earth, and terminated 
with a terrible earthquake, after the new creation had existed 5206 years. 
The third period, Lhecatonatwuh, the age of air, was closed, and the world 
again destroyed by Quetzalcohuatl, the god of the winds, who came down 
upon the earth armed with a sickle, and swept the nations from the earth 
by the power of his breath. The fourth period, Tletonatiwh, the age of 
fire, now commenced, everything having again been created anew, except 
the sun and the moon. 
The divine heroes (the great giants) assembled around a fire in 
Teotihuacan, and told the people who accompanied them that the first 
person who would throw himself into the flames would rise as a new sun in 
the firmament. Then arose JM/anahuatzin, the most courageous among 
them, and leaped into the burning mass; his soul soon reached the lower 
regions and presently appeared in the east as a new sun. 
A new moon was now only wanting, and this was supplied by Zezcociztekal’s 
‘selfimmolation, who followed Manahuatzin’s example and appeared again 
as the pale luminary of night. 
This is the period in which we live, and which will last 5206 years, and 
then terminate with a universal conflagration. 
The Mexicans believed in the immortality of the soul, and distinguished 
three places of abode for the immortal spirits after their separation from 
the body. ‘Those of the nobles and the soldiers who died in battle or in 
captivity when taken with arms in their hands, and those of women who 
died in labor, were supposed to be conducted by Zeoyanzquz to the house 
of the sun, where they led a life of endless delight amidst eternal festivities 
and singing and dancing. At different periods they received permission to 
visit the earth, and to animate clouds and birds of beautiful plumage, as 
well as lions and jaguars, but were always at liberty to rise again to heaven. 
The souls of those struck by lightning, of those who died by disease or 
300 
