Fig. 51.—Rear head of the two-headed monster; Temple of the Cross, Palenque.
(After Maudslay)
The earth-monster is not however the only two-headed animal in Maya art. Many of the stelæ, particularly those at Copan, Quirigua and Naranjo, show a figure bearing in its arms an object usually known as the “ceremonial bar” (see Pl. [XXI]; p. 236). In some cases the object appears simply as a two-headed snake, with drooping body, but in the majority of instances it resembles a beam with a snake-head at either end. In either case the heads are similar, and resemble the main head of the earth-monster; while the open jaws enclose the head of a god, usually God B, the rain-god, but sometimes the sun- or sky-god. Where the body assumes the beam form, it is divided into panels, enclosing glyphs which are almost certainly symbols of certain planets, the sun, moon, day and night. Now practically throughout America the snake is the emblem of clouds, rain and lightning, and I would suggest that this symbol represents the sky. From this point of view the association of the planet symbols, and the gods of the sun and rain, is explained, and one immediately recalls the myth according to which the creator placed the four Bacabs at the cardinal points to support the heavens. It may be that the figure which holds the “bar” may represent one of these deities; and this suggestion is to some extent supported by the following facts. Many, though not all, of the stelæ bear dates recording even katun quarters (a katun = 7200 days, see p. 251), and it is possible that these stelæ were erected to mark the lapse of regular periods of time. The historical Maya were in the habit, so Landa states, of setting up a “stone” to commemorate the passing of a katun, and also of holding certain ceremonies at one of the sacred piles of stones outside the village in honour of the commencement of each solar year. These ceremonies were in honour of the Bacab, who was supposed to preside over the year in question (see p. 263). Now a large proportion of the figures portrayed upon stelæ at various sites carry, instead of the “bar,” an object hitherto called the “mannikin sceptre.” This is a short staff, presumably of wood, carved to represent God B (or God K, both rain- and wind-gods), and terminating below the hand in a curved projection representing the head of a snake (Fig. [52]). Now the real nature of this object has hitherto, most unaccountably, been misunderstood. It is nothing more or less than a ceremonial axe, the stone blade of which, bearing the marks which conventionally expressed a stone implement, can in nearly every case be clearly seen projecting from the forehead of the small figure. At Palenque this blade is replaced by a foliated ornament, which may represent an elaborate blade of copper, or, possibly, a bunch of feathers. Considering the ceremonial nature of the implement, the substitution in later times (for Palenque is perhaps the latest of the important sites) for the unornamental stone of a tuft of gorgeous plumage is easily understood and has many parallels in the history of ceremonial weapons. Now the haft is carved in the likeness of the rain-god, the snake is the emblem of rain, and the axe is par excellence the weapon of the rain-deity, emblematical of thunder (see p. 221). Thus again we arrive at the possibility that the bearer may be one of the Bacabs, who seem to be identical with the Chac, or rain-gods of Yucatan. Still, the identification of the main figures with the gods who support the sky is not one on which I would insist at present. The personages who bear the emblems of the sky and rain may be merely the priests of the all-important deities of fertility, or chieftains who are thus endowed with the symbols of divine power. I have given perhaps disproportionate space to the discussion of these three symbols, the earth-monster, the sky-snake and the ceremonial axe, because I wish to emphasize two points; firstly that the accounts of the historical Yucatec do undoubtedly throw some light upon the monumental remains of earlier date; and secondly that the root-ideas of Mexican and Mayan religion are closely akin and cannot with profit be studied separately. It is the full recognition of these two axioms, combined of course with his own remarkable intellectual gifts, which gives the investigations of Seler so signal and permanent a value.
PLATE XXI
Photo. Dr. A. P. Maudslay
MAYA
Stela H.; Copan, Honduras
Fig. 52.—Ceremonial axes from the monuments.