THE GODS OF MEXICO

Uitzilopochtli in Mexico and is now housed in the Museo Naçional in that city. In this figure, as in a similar if less massive statue from Tehuacan, the characteristics of the cipactli earth-animal obtrude themselves in a wealth of scale, claw, and tusk, which although frequently described as serpentine, is only partially so, and shows traces that more than one idea was in the mind of the artist who chiselled its symbolic intricacies. In the latter of these sculptures the appearance of ferocity is most marked and is accompanied by the same dragon-like claws on hands and feet. In the mythologies of many lands the Earth-mother is represented as ferocious, insatiable, as slaying those who take part in her amours, as a riotous and outrageous demon, unnatural and destructive in her lusts and appetites, and it would seem that her Mexican phase throws light upon the reasons for this savage wantonness. In the sculpture first alluded to, and in the carving on its base, we can perceive a close resemblance to the earth-monster of the Maya peoples, especially as represented in the carvings at Copan and in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque. These afford almost irrefragable proof of the correctness of the supposition regarding the fusion of the concepts of the earth-beast and the earth-mother which has been outlined.¹⁵