Figure 41.
Sahagun has recorded how these semi-sacred edifices were specially consecrated to the “Mother of the gods and of us all, whose curative and life-giving power was exerted in the temazcalli, also named xochicalli, the place where she sees secret things, rectifies what has been deranged in human bodies, fructifies young and tender things, ... and where she aids and cures....” It was customary for pregnant women to resort to these baths under the care of the medicine-woman who exhorted her patient on entering, with the words: “Enter into it, my daughter, enter into the bosom of our Mother whose name is Yoalticitl ... warm thyself in the bath, which is the house of flowers of our god ...” (Historia, book vi, chap. xxvii).
The Vienna Codex contains, besides pictures of temples (fig. [41], a and b), two instances which elucidate the meaning of the design; c of the same figure displays the conventional symbol for land, fringed on three sides. Enclosed in this and seen, in profile, is a stratum of checker-board design, above which is a sheet of water; d displays a conventionally drawn mountain, inside of which is the symbolical vase filled with the design. From this steam or smoke ascends through the soil of the mountain, and forces its way through the surface, above which we see two recurved puffs of smoke and a young blossoming maize shoot, conventionally drawn, such as may be seen worn by priestesses, as a symbolical head decoration, on page 11 of the Vienna Codex. The seated figure of a priest is represented as sheltering its growth with his outspread [pg 124] mantle. On his back he displays a symbol, composed of two rolls united by a crossband, which is met with in Maya and Mexican Codices. In the latter the four projecting ends are usually painted with the colors of the four quarters. As these are figured as united into a single sign, it seems evident that this symbolized a union of the four elements deemed necessary for the production of life by the ancient native philosophers.
The foregoing illustrations, to which more could be added, clearly establish that the checkered design was associated with the symbols of earth, heat and water. It obviously expressed the idea embodied in the Nahuatl word xotlac=the heated earth; literally, glowing embers, also budding and opening flowers. It was emblematic of the fall of the rain or earth-wine upon the heated soil. In the temazcalli the same life-producing union of the elements took place and aided human growth and health. It would seem as though the appellation xoch-i-calli, bestowed upon the sweat-house by the native medicine-woman, expressed the same train of thought. Moreover, it is noteworthy, that the sound of the first part of this name and of xo-tlac recurs in the Maya word for vase in general, ho-och. The checker-board design would naturally have been employed in connection with the festivals, associated with esoteric rites, which were held in celebration of the union of the Heaven and Earth at the commencement of the rainy season. It would, naturally, therefore, have been used as a decoration on the drinking vessels employed in the distribution of fermented drinks for vivifying and curative purposes. It is met with on Peruvian drinking bowls, as proven by several examples in the Royal Ethnographical Museum in Berlin, for instance.
It is curious to note as an interesting analogy that the same checkered design frequently adorns the ancient Egyptian drinking bowls represented in the hieroglyphic writings. I have also observed it in some ancient Greek drinking vessels, preserved at the Imperial Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg, where it decorated the bowl itself or the garments of Bacchantes figured thereupon. It is also met with in ancient Peruvian textile fabrics, in black and white, as on one figure vase in the Berlin Museum, and, needless to remark, it is a Scotch clan tartan. Its adoption as the basis for chess-boards of ancient Egypt seems to indicate that there it also signified the Above and Below and that the game was thought of as an exemplification of the eternal contest between the powers [pg 125] of Heaven and Earth, light and darkness, etc. We look to specialists for information as to the origin, meaning and employment in Egypt and Greece of this primitive and almost universal design.
Figure 42.