Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts | Page 5

the Mayas believed
that whoever hanged himself did not go to the underworld, but to
"paradise," and as a result of this belief, suicide by hanging was very
common and was chosen on the slightest pretext. Such suicides were
received in paradise by the goddess of the hanged, Ixtab. Ix is the
feminine prefix; tab, taab, tabil mean, according to Perez' Lexicon of
the Maya Language, "cuerda destinada para algun uso exclusivo". The
name of this strange goddess is, therefore, the "Goddess of the Halter"
or, as Landa says, "The Goddess of the Gallows". Now compare Dr. 53.
On the upper half of the page is the death-god represented with hand
raised threateningly, on the lower half is seen the form of a woman
suspended by a rope placed around her neck. The closed eye, the open
mouth and the convulsively outspread fingers, show that she is dead, in
fact, strangled. It is, in all probability, the goddess of the gallows and
halter, Ixtab, the patroness of the hanged, who is pictured here in
company with the death-god; or else it is a victim of this goddess, and
page 53 of the manuscript very probably refers, therefore (even though
the two halves do not belong directly together), to the mythologic
conceptions of death and the lower regions to which Landa alludes.
7. Lastly the owl is to be mentioned as belonging to the death-god,
which, strange to say, is represented nowhere in the pictures

realistically and so that it can be recognized, although other mythologic
animals, as the dog or the moan bird, occur plainly as animals in the
pictures. On the other hand, the owl's head appears on a human body in
the Dresden manuscript as a substitute for the death-deity itself, for
example on Dr. 18c, 19c, 20a and 20c and elsewhere, and forms a
regular attendant hieroglyph of the death-god in the group of three
signs already mentioned (Fig. 5).
Among the antiquities from the Maya region of Central America, there
are many objects and representations, which have reference to the
cultus of the death-god, and show resemblances to the pictures of the
manuscripts. The death-god also plays a role, even today, in the popular
superstitions of the natives of Yucatan, as a kind of spectre that prowls
around the houses of the sick. His name is Yum Cimil, the lord of
death.
B. The God With the Large Nose and Lolling Tongue.
[Illustration: Figs. 7-10]
The deity, represented most frequently in all the manuscripts, is a
figure with a long, proboscis-like, pendent nose and a tongue (or teeth,
fangs) hanging out in front and at the sides of the mouth, also with a
characteristic head ornament resembling a knotted bow and with a
peculiar rim to the eye. Fig. 7 is the hieroglyph of this deity. In Codex
Tro.-Cortesianus it usually has the form of Fig. 8.
God B is evidently one of the most important of the Maya pantheon. He
must be a universal deity, to whom the most varied elements, natural
phenomena and activities are subject. He is represented with different
attributes and symbols of power, with torches in his hands as symbols
of fire, sitting in the water and on the water, standing in the rain, riding
in a canoe, enthroned on the clouds of heaven and on the cross-shaped
tree of the four points of the compass, which, on account of its likeness
to the Christian emblem, has many times been the subject of fantastic
hypotheses. We see the god again on the Cab-sign, the symbol of the
earth, with weapons, axe and spears, in his hands, planting kernels of
maize, on a journey (Dr. 65b) staff in hand and a bundle on his back,

and fettered (Dr. 37a) with arms bound behind his back. His entire
myth seems to be recorded in the manuscripts. The great abundance of
symbolism renders difficult the characterization of the deity, and it is
well-nigh impossible to discover that a single mythologic idea
underlies the whole. God B is quite often connected with the serpent,
without exhibiting affinity with the Chicchan-god H (see p. 28). In Dr.
33b, 34b and 35b, the serpent is in the act of devouring him, or he is
rising up out of the serpent's jaws, as is plainly indicated also by the
hieroglyphs, for they contain the group given in Fig. 10, which is
composed of the rattle of the rattlesnake and the opened hand as a
symbol of seizing and absorption. God B himself is pictured with the
body of a serpent in Dr. 35b and 36a (compare No. 2 of the
Mythological Animals). He likewise occurs sitting on the serpent and
in Dr. 66a he is twice (1st and 3d figures) pictured with a snake in his
hand.
God B sits