Codex Borgia.—Sheet 14: This is one of the most striking representations of the Death-god which has come down to us. Here he is depicted as a skeleton with a skeleton’s thorax and a skull for head, the arms and legs painted white with yellow spots picked with red, to symbolize the bones of a newly flayed person. He has a large rosette at the occiput and a flag, both painted in alternate white and red cross-bands, and this motif is carried out in the ends of the loin-cloth, and in the extremities of other bands and stripes. He presents a burnt-offering. The symbolic crossways and the owl are figured before him, the death-bird being surrounded with paper flags, the decoration of corpses prepared for cremation. Sheet 15: On this sheet he wears the death-symbols. At the nape of the neck he has a paper rosette, decorated with red and white cross-bands, the paper flag painted in the same way, broken in the middle and bent, and an ear-plug consisting of a human hand. His symbol in this place [[328]]is a bunch of malinalli grass. Sheet 79: In this representation of the Death-god we find the invariable skeleton head, but the body is painted, like that of the priests, in black. The nape-ornament is of paper, and the ear-plug is a human hand. The screech owl’s wing also appears. Opposite him is a corpse wrapped up in a cloth and corded with strings, a paper flag, used in the decoration of corpses prepared for cremation, and a cross, apparently made of knotted sheets of cloth or paper. His hair or wig is black and curly, some of the curls ending in eye-like circles with red centres. In this picture he sits opposite Tonatiuh, the Sun-god, and thus, perhaps, represents night in its black aspect, the eyes in his wig, as elsewhere, symbolizing the stars. Sheet 57: Here he is placed opposite the Death-goddess and wears the usual insignia. The ground on which their seats are placed is not simply yellow, as in the other sections, but consists of alternate fields of malinalli grass and fragments of skulls in the style of the hieroglyph of arable land. Both present each other with a naked human figure, symbolic of human sacrifice. Between them stands a receptacle painted black and studded with eyes, with red bands in the middle and yellow border. On the left of this stands a dish filled with blood and smoking hearts, on which the goddess is pouring fire from a vessel. On the right projects the body and tail of a dragon, which is seized by the god. In the centre is seen a skull swallowing a man who is falling headforemost into its throat, and above all is pictured the moon, without, however, the usual rabbit appearing in its circumference.
MICTLANTECUTLI.
(From Codex Borgia, sheet 13.)
Tepeyollotl.
(From Codex Nuttall, sheet 70.) (See page 332.)
FORMS OF THE UNDERWORLD DEITIES.
(See also under Quetzalcoatl, facing p. 119.)
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 37: Here Mictlantecutli is placed opposite the Death-goddess. He has the usual insignia, but wears black garments, decorated with eyes and crossbones. His seat is made of ribs and a piece of skull, and he holds a dragon in both hands. Between him and his mate a man sinks into the yawning jaws of the earth, and above it is a dish with a stone sacrificial knife.