sacrifices performed in connection with the captive enemy. Just as we find
a personification of death in the manuscripts of the Mayas, we also find
it in the picture-writings of the ancient Mexicans, often surprisingly
like the pictures of the Maya codices. The Aztec death-god and his myth
are known through the accounts of Spanish writers; regarding the death-god
of the Mayas we have less accurate information. Some mention occurs in
Landa's Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, §XXIII, but unfortunately
nothing is said of the manner of representing the death-god. He seems to
be related to the Aztec Mictlantecutli, of whom Sahagun, Appendix to Book
III, "De los que iban al infierno y de sus obsequias," treats as the god
of the dead and of the underworld, Mictlan. When the representations of
the latter, for example in the Codex Borgia, and in the Codex Vaticanus
No. 3773, are compared with those of the Maya manuscripts, there can be
hardly a doubt of the correspondence of the two god figures. In the Codex
Borgia, p. 37, he is represented once with the same characteristic head
ornament, which the death-god usually wears in the Maya manuscripts, and
in the Codex Fejervary, p. 8, the death-god wears a kind of breeches on
which cross-bones are depicted, exactly as in Dr. 9 (bottom).

Bishop Landa informs us that the Mayas "had great and immoderate dread of
death." This explains the frequency of the representations of the
death-god, from whom, as Landa states, "all evil and especially death"
emanated. Among the Aztecs we find a male and a female death-deity,
Mictlantecutli and Mictlancihuatl. They were the rulers of the realm of
the dead, Mictlan, which, according to the Aztec conception, lay in the
north; hence the death-god was at the same time the god of the north.

It agrees with the calendric and astronomic character of the Maya deities
in the manuscripts, that a number of the figures of the gods are used in
connection with specified cardinal points. Since, according to the Aztec