Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 21: He has the usual skeleton head, but in the arms and legs the bony structure is merely [[329]]indicated by a yellow colour and a black design. He is clothed with a jacket of green malinalli blades and wears in his ear a strip of unspun cotton. He has as back-device a pot, in which three flags are stuck. Sheet 34: In this sheet he is represented much as in Codex Borgia, sheet 15. Sheet 58: Here he is pictured as a black god, with a skull for head and seated on a chair made of blood, bones, and malinalli grass. He has the nape-shield and the flag inclining forward, and a nose like a sacrificial stone knife.
STATUE OF AN OCTLI (DRINK) GOD.
Found near Vera Cruz.
Codex Magliabecchiano.—Mictlantecutli is represented more than once in this codex, importantly on pages 73 and 79. In the first instance he is depicted with blue-grey body and enormous claws on hands and feet, the head plastered with the yellow patches and bloodstains he frequently shows. The head is that of a skull, with protruding yellow nasal-bone, but the ground-colour is blue, not bone-colour. He wears the “night-hair” occasionally associated with him, and his coiffure is decorated with small, black, festal bannerets, interspersed with what appear to be stellar eye-motifs. His maxtli appears to consist of a rope or twisted piece of cotton, and he wears wristlets and anklets of bright red cotton. The necklace is reminiscent of that worn by several of the Maya deities. He sits in the portal of a temple, and before him squat a number of men and women, regaling themselves on human flesh from several earthen vessels containing a head, a leg, and an arm. The second picture exhibits the penance done before him. In this place he is painted brown, with the same enormous talons, the death’s-head face, “night-hair” and bannerets (yellow), without, however, the accompaniment of the stellar eye-ornaments. These, however, appear to be reproduced upon the wrists, knees, and one ankle, and, perhaps, make this phase of the god a parallel to the Greek Argus, the “eye-spotted” night. On the breast depends an ornament which is not sufficiently clear to justify its description. On page 82 the god is depicted as wearing a garment covered with crosses, and on page 88 as standing on the skull-altar (see Tezcatlipocâ). His wavy hair is surrounded by a red and yellow cotton fillet, [[330]]and he is being anointed by a priest from a vessel of blood, whilst other priests stand before him with pots full of blood and human hearts. He wears a curious blue necklace almost of the “masonry” type seen in Egyptian, Greek, and Asiatic deific ornaments, and a cotton garment with red bows. A cotton web depends from his blue ear-plug.
MYTHS
The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says of Mictlantecutli: “He descends for souls as a spider lowers itself with its head downwards from the web.” Later on he states that “he is the great lord of the dead below in hell, who alone after Tonacatecutli was painted with a crown.… They painted this demon near the sun, for in the same way as they believed that the one conducted souls to heaven, so they supposed that the other carried them to hell. He is here represented [that is in the codex] with his hands open and stretched towards the sun to seize on any soul that might escape from him.” Later he states that Ixcuina, “the goddess of salt, dirt, and immodesty,” was the wife of Mictlantecutli. The commentator of Codex Telleriano-Remensis seems to regard Mictlantecutli as rescuing souls from the realm of the dead. He says: “They place him opposite to the sun to see if he can rescue any of those seized upon by the lord of the dead.” The two interpretative codices were almost certainly edited, if not copied one from the other, by the same hand, and it is such passages as this which show the great dubiety existing in the minds of the priestly commentators regarding the precise nature of the Mexican deities.
Sahagun in the Appendix to his third book, the first chapter of which treats of burial, gives a prayer or address to the dead which mentions Mictlantecutli, and which states that he and his wife Mictecaciuatl await the deceased, who goes to dwell among the shadows, “where there is no light or window.” It is further explained that when he arrived in the realm of the god of the dead (which has already been described in the chapter on Cosmogony), he makes him an offering of the papers which he carries, of faggots or torches [[331]]of pinewood, and of perfumed reeds, cotton, mantles, and costly apparel.
Boturini and Brasseur give a great deal of matter regarding this god which is absolutely worthless, as does Leon y Gama, and the deity has been in some manner confounded with a god Teoyaomiqui, who seems to be quite supposititious in character and never to have had no other existence in the minds of Gama and his copyists.