SHIELD OF WOOD (FRAGMENT) WITH MOSAIC DECORATION
MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN HEYE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK
We now come to a feature which is also found in the Vienna shield, namely, a person falling or descending from the sun or celestial regions. The injured condition of the Vienna specimen renders it impossible to distinguish the sex of the figure, but in the New York specimen a woman is represented, probably a goddess. On several pages of the Codex Nuttall Zouche[98] (pp. 4, 19, 21) are representations of human figures hanging from or plunging from the heavenly band. Seler has connected these scenes with the Venus period of the Mexican calendar. Attached to the band on our shield are five dots. Taken in connection with the eight dots below, respectively four on each side of the hieroglyph at the bottom, one recalls the suggestive fact that the Mexicans were acquainted with the correspondence of eight solar years to five Venus periods, and reckonings connected with the correction of these two periods have been established by both Seler and Bowditch.[99] In the Codex Selden is found an analogous picture, the band of the sky, with a central tonatiuh, and a descending human figure attached, below which are two figures. This scene has been interpreted by Beyer[100] as representing the solar god accepting human sacrifice. In our shield, the feature which follows in Codex Selden, depicting this sacrifice, is absent.
In our shield, facing the plunging figure, are two human figures, one on each side, holding something like a staff in each hand, similar to those held in the hands of the goddess. From the mouth of each of these figures protrudes an unknown object, perhaps a conch-shell trumpet, but it is not supported by the hands.
Fig. 18
Above a horizontal band just over the bottom of the inner encircling rim is a hieroglyph. It is the well-known glyph for Culhuacan, or Colhuacan, the name of an important town in the valley of Mexico in ancient times. The form of the glyph, a mountain with a curved peak, is derived from the tradition that the Nahuan people originated where there was a mountain with a curved peak, called in the Nahuan language Culhuacan. The sign is interwoven with the legendary history of the ancient tribes in central Mexico, Teuculhuacan being the province far to the north where were situated the Seven Caves of Chicomostoc, the primeval home whence sallied the Seven Tribes. In the Codex Boturini I, this legend is pictured. In fig. 18 are two forms of the glyph taken from the Codex Telleriano Remensis. On each side of this glyph on the shield are four dots, not to be confounded with the representations of shells attached to the glyph. These eight dots should have a calendric meaning, and we might stretch our imagination and consider the glyph to be Calli, a day-sign and also year-bearer, represented by the conventional figure of a house, which would give us the date 8 Calli, capable of being coordinated with either the year 1461 or 1513. The general character of the glyph, however, seems to be too well established as Culhuacan to admit of such hypothesis.
PL. XXIX
SHIELD OF WOOD (FRAGMENT) WITH MOSAIC DECORATION