fully discussed in connection with the individual cases. Apparently it
has no _independent_ significance as a deity. Its most important
personification is that in god B, Kukulcan, the feathered serpent. Hence
a fixed hieroglyph designating the serpent as a deity, as a mythologic
form, does not occur, though there are numerous hieroglyphs which refer
to serpents or represent individual parts of the serpent, as its coils,
its jaws, the rattles of the rattlesnake, etc. The serpent appears in the
mythologic conceptions of the Mayas chiefly as the symbol of water and of
time. In the great series of numbers of the Dresden manuscript, certain
numbers occur which are introduced in the coils of a large serpent
(compare in regard to this, Förstemann, Zur Entzifferung der
Mayahandschriften, II, Dresden, 1891). The serpent is very frequently
represented in all the manuscripts, sometimes realistically and sometimes
with the head of a god, etc. In the Dresden manuscript it occurs in the
following places: 1a, 26, 27, 28c, 35b, 36a, 36b, 37b 40, 42a, 61,
62, 65c 66a and 69. It is prominent also in the Madrid manuscript,
occurring for example in Cort. 4-6, 12-18, Tro. 25, 26, 27 and elsewhere.


3. THE DOG.

[Illustration: Fig. 60]

Fig. 60 is its hieroglyph. It is the symbol of the death-god and the
bearer of the lightning. The latter follows quite clearly from the
picture in Dr. 40b where the god is distinguished by its hieroglyph.
This animal is again represented in Dr. 7a, 13c on the right, 21b with
its hieroglyph, 29a, 30a (forming a part of 31a, where god B holds the
bound dog by the tail), and 39a without the hieroglyph, 47 (bottom) with
a variant of the hieroglyph.