the sign, Fig. 9, which signifies black and is one of the four signs of
the symbolic colors for the cardinal points.

God B is represented with all the _four cardinal points_, a
characteristic, which he shares only with god C, god K, and, in one
instance, with god F (see Tro. 29*c); he appears as ruler of all the
points of the compass; north, south, east and west as well as air, fire,
water and earth are subject to him.

Opinions concerning the significance of this deity are much divided. It
is most probable that he is Kukulcan, a figure occurring repeatedly in
the mythology of the Central American peoples and whose name, like that
of the kindred deity Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs and Gucumatz among the
Quiches, means the "feathered serpent", "the bird serpent". Kukulcan and
Gucumatz are those figures of Central American mythology, to which belong
the legends of the creation of the world and of mankind. Furthermore
Kukulcan is considered as the founder of civilization, as the builder of
cities, as hero-god, and appears in another conception as the rain-deity,
and--since the serpent has a mythologic relation to water--as serpent
deity. J. Walter Fewkes, who has made this god-figure of the Maya
manuscripts the subject of a monograph (A Study of Certain Figures in a
Maya Codex, in American Anthropologist, Vol. VII, No. 3, Washington,
1894), also inclines to the belief that B is the god Kukulcan, whom he
conceives of as a serpent-and rain-deity. This view has been accepted by
Förstemann (Die Tagegötter der Mayas, Globus, Vol. 73, No. 10) and also
by Cyrus Thomas (Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices, Washington,
1888). The same opinion is held also by E. P. Dieseldorff, who, a
resident of Guatemala, the region of the ancient Maya civilization, has
instituted excavations which have been successful in furnishing most
satisfactory material for these researches (see Dieseldorff: Kukulcan,