Sahagun in the Appendix to his third book, the first chapter of which treats of burial, gives a prayer or address to the dead which mentions Mictlantecutli, and which states that he and his wife Mictecaciuatl await the deceased, who goes to dwell among the shadows, “where there is no light or window.” It is further explained that when he arrived in the realm of the god of the dead (which has already been described in the chapter on Cosmogony), he makes him an offering of the papers which he carries, of faggots or torches of pinewood, and of perfumed reeds, cotton, mantles, and costly apparel.
Boturini and Brasseur give a great deal of matter regarding this god which is absolutely worthless, as does Leon y Gama, and the deity has been in some manner confounded with a god Teoyaomiqui, who seems to be quite supposititious in character and never to have had no other existence in the minds of Gama and his copyists.
NATURE AND STATUS
Mictlantecutli, it would seem, is neither more nor less than a god of the dead, that is, his original conception was probably that of a prince of Hades, a ruler of the realm of the departed, who in time came to possess the terrific aspect and the punitive attributes of a deity whose office it was to torment the souls of the erring. The fact that he presides over the eleventh hour—the hour of sunset—shows that he was in a measure identified with the night, as certain aspects of his insignia would appear to show. In a manner he must be regarded as the earth, which in its form of the grave, yawns or gapes insatiably for the bodies of the dead. (See Mictecaciuatl.) He appears to have analogies with the Lords of Xibalba, or the Place of the Dead, alluded to in the Popol Vuh, of the Quiches of Guatemala.1