black figure in Plate XXIII of the Manuscript. In front of each inclosed figure, and immediately over the head of the serpent, is an urn. The snout of each serpent is crowned with a plume-tipped process. These resemblances, notwithstanding the otherwise great dissimilarity of the figures of this plate of the Borgian Codex to those of the other two works, render it quite probable that they relate to the same general subject.[1] I think it very probable that the serpent was sometimes used to symbolize the Ahau, as for example on Plates 33, 34, 35, and 69 of the Dresden Codex; that on Plate 33 to denote the 6th Ahau, that on 34 the 3d; that on 35 the 8th, and that on 69 the 10th. The lustres are evidently indicated on the last by the colors.
Turning again to the plates of the Manuscript, we notice the figure of an animal of some kind mounted on the right-hand personage in the upper division of XXI, XXII, and XXIII. The peculiar form of the eye shows these to be quadrupeds. They are doubtless mounted on these individuals to show that they are Chacs, corresponding with those in the upper division of the Codex plates.
We may as well call attention here to the fact that several of these things which appear on the other plates and seem to be equally applicable to all the years alike, are wanting on Plate XX, which relates to the Ix years. For example, the serpent is wholly wanting here; there is no animal denoting the Chac, and one at least of the clay vessels is missing. What does this signify 1 I confess that I am somewhat at a loss how to account for it, but, from my examinations and what has been ascertained, am disposed to explain it by the fact that Ix is the closing year of the lusters and cycles, and that the things mentioned, being symbols of one or the other of these periods or depending upon them, properly disappear with this year. If this view be correct, it will probably enable us to assign a signification to the large (supposed) red-clay vessels placed on the serpent coils in Plates XXI-XXIII. Uayeb-haab or Uayeyab (the latter is but a contraction of the
- ↑ In a pamphlet by Sr. J. M. Melgar, of Vera Cruz, entitled "A comparative view of the symbolical signs of the Ancient Systems of Theogony and Cosmogony, and those existing in the Mexican MSS., as published by Kingsborough, and the alto-relievos on a wall in Chichen-Itza," 1872, which Dr. Foreman, of the Smithsonian, has very kindly translated for me, I find a somewhat different interpretation of this plate of the Borgian Codex. This will be found in my Appendix No. 2.
