Vestiges of the Mayas / or, Facts Tending to Prove That Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in Very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa

by Augustus Le Plongeon

ISHTAR OR NANA,

the Chaldean Venus, of the etymology of whose name no satisfactory account can be given, says the learned author, whose list I am following and description quoting.

The Maya language, however, affords a very natural etymology. Her name seems composed of ix, the feminine article, she; and of tac, or tal, a verb that signifies to have a desire to satisfy a corporal want or inclination. Ixtal would, therefore, be she who desires to satisfy a corporal inclination. As to her other name, Nana, it simply means the great mother, the very mother. If from the names of god and goddesses, we pass to that of places, we will find that the Maya language also furnishes a perfect etymology for them.

In the account of the creation of the world, according to the Chaldeans, we find that a woman whose name in Chaldee is Thalatth, was said to have ruled over the monstrous animals of strange forms, that were generated and existed in darkness and water. The Greek called her Thalassa (the sea). But the Maya vocable Thallac, signifies a thing without steadiness, like the sea.