RESOURCE: A comparison of Aztec/Central Mexican and Maya Deities (2)

6th Oct 2022

Mexicolore contributors Dr. Christine Hernández and Gabrielle Vail

This is the second and concluding part of this valuable introductory study comparing Maya and Aztec pantheons by Dr. Christine Hernández of Tulane University and Dr. Gabrielle Vail of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. We are indebted to both...

NOTE: In the pairings that follow, we use colour coding to distinguish the two cultures:-
Maya and Highland Central Mexico.

Death, Disease, and Underworld
The Maya death god is distinguished by his skeletal form and also frequently by the presence of disembodied eyeballs as elements of his costume. He is occasionally paired with the god of punishment Kisin (see below), and the two sometimes merge. A female variant of the death god is sometimes pictured, engaged in activities such as sewing and weaving. Both deities have consistently negative associations and are frequently accompanied by an augural glyph that may read ‘dead person’. God A may be juxtaposed with the aged male creator deity Itzamna or with the maize god (God E, or Ajan).
In the highland K’iche’ Maya story the Popol Vuh, One Death plays a similar role to that of Mictlantecuhtli in serving as the principal lord of the Underworld.

Mictlantecuhtli, “Death Lord”, is god of the Underworld called Mictlan and god of the dead. The death god has a female consort, Mictlancihuatl. Mictlantecuhtli is depicted as a skeletal figure with patches of rotted flesh, a flint knife protruding from his nasal cavity, wild hair with star-eyes, disembodied eyeballs, and paper rosettes decorating his costume.
Mictlantecuhtli plays an important role in Aztec creation narratives, as the keeper of the bones of the previous creation, which are rescued by Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl and ground to create the present race of humans.

Punishment and Sacrifice
Kisin takes on various roles and functions in the Maya codices, where he is sometimes shown attacking other deities with a spear, and at others with maize foliage (as in the example at the right, which depicts a female version of the deity). Among contemporary Maya cultures in the lowlands of Chiapas, Kisin resides in the Underworld and punishes the souls of the dead. The banded markings seen on some examples of this deity have been compared to those characterizing Itzlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli in highland Mexican sources. They have been identified as the patterning that occurs on certain types of stones, such as chert and flint, which may relate to the deity’s role as a god associated with sacrifice and punishment. Like the Mexican deity, Kisin sometimes wears bands of knotted paper, although only rarely over the eyes, and at times has a similar curved conical headdress.

Itztlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli, “Curved Obsidian Blade” and “Eye Bundle,” are paired gods related to punishment, cold, stone, the north direction (Mictlampa, a region of the Underworld called Mictlan) and more distantly sacrifice and death. Ixquimilli is an aspect of Black Tezcatlipoca but differs because he is blindfolded with bands of paper knots like those worn by sacrificial victims. His companion, Itztlacoliuhqui, is often depicted in the costume of a sacrificial victim: body paint of white or dressed in white paper and quilted cotton like the figure to the right. He also is blindfolded and wears white and black vertical paint. His most distinguishing characteristic is his curved conical headdress pierced with a dart.
The pierced headdress of Itzlacoliuhqui refers to a cosmological myth recorded in the Leyenda de los Soles that tells of a battle between the Sun and Venus as Morning Star (called Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli). Venus attempted to force the Sun, who had settled on the eastern horizon, to move across the sky by shooting a dart at him but missed. The Sun returned in kind by shooting a dart into the head of Venus, sending him into the western sky to become the Evening aspect of Venus, known as Ixquimilli-Itzlacoliuhqui.

Sources Consulted:
• Berdan, Frances F.
1982 The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York
• Bierhorst, John (translator)
1992 History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca. University of Arizona Press, Tucson
• Boone, Elizabeth H.
2007 Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate. University of Texas Press, Austin
• Miller, Mary, and Karl Taube
1993 An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. Thames and Hudson, New York and London
• Nicholson, H. B.
1971 Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. In The Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, Part I, edited by Gordon F. Ekholm and Ignacio Bernal, pp. 395-446. Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 10. University of Texas Press, Austin
• Taube, Karl A.
1992 The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, No. 32. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Sources of Illustrations:
• Anders, Ferdinand
1967 Codex Tro-Cortesianus (Codex Madrid). Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, Graz
• ---- 1976 Codex Borgia. Codex Borgia. Biblioteca apostólica vaticana (Messicano Riserva 28). Codices e Vaticanis Selecti. vol. 34. Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, Graz
• Burland, C. A. (Cottie Arthur)
1966 Codex Laud. Ms. Laud. Misc. 678. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Introduction [by] C.A. Burland. Akademische Druck.-u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz
• Förstemann, Ernst
1880 Die Maya Handschrift der Königlichen öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Dresden. Mit 74 Tafeln in Chromo-Lightdruck. Verlag der A. Naumannschen Lichtdruckeret, Leipzig
• Nowotny, Karl Anton, and Jacqueline de Durand-Forest
1974 Codex Borbonicus, Bibliotheque de l’Assemblee nationale, Paris (Y 120): vollstandige Faksimile-Ausg. des Codex im Originalformat. Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Other image sources, Part One:
• Pic 1: photo (Sala Maya, Museo Nacional de Antropología) by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 2: image from the Codex Vindobonensis scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1974
• Pic 4: image scanned from The Creation of the Sun and the Moon by Ben Traven (illustrations by Alberto Beltrán), 1971, Frederick Muller Ltd., London.

Suggested Resources:
• Miller, Mary, and Karl Taube
1993 An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. Thames and Hudson, New York and London
• Vail, Gabrielle, and Christine Hernández
2018 The Maya Hieroglyphic Codices, Version 5.0. A website and database available online at www.mayacodices.org.