Mayan Vampire Headed Deity

Title: Mexican and Central American antiquities, calendar systems, and history Issue 28 of Bulletin, United States Bureau of American ethnology Issue 28 of Bulletin (Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology). Mexican and Central American Antiquities, Calendar Systems, and History, Charles Pickering Bowditch. Authors: Eduard Seler, Ernst Wilhelm Förstemann, Paul Schellhas, Karl Sapper, Erwin Paul Dieseldorff. Editor: Charles Pickering Bowditch. Translated by: Selma Wesselhoeft, Alberta M. Parker. Publisher: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1904. Length: 682 pages.

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The accompanying drawing of the vampire god occurs on a clay vessel found buried with a dead person on the summit of a temple mound in Chama, together with an urn.

The pot is cylindric in form, about 55 centimeters in circumference, measured around the outer edge, and 15 centimeters in height. It was broken into many pieces, and the polish and painting are greatly damaged. It is to be noted that reddish black, droplike spots occur all over the pot, as if some resinous fluid had been sprinkled over it with a brush. I have also observed similar spots on pots from the Zacapa region.

In order to form a characteristic image of the vampire god we must direct our attention to his dress and to similar representations on the monuments of ancient Maya civilization.

The first tiling that strikes us is that he wears the collar of the death god, showing the three round balls, which also appear on the cloaklike wings, and which we may, no doubt correctly, assume to be human eyes.

That an ornament of this kind should be given to the death god is entirely in keeping with the fact that the extinction of the eyesight in approaching dissolution is one of the most striking phenomena of death.

In the temple at Copan which bounds the western court on the north, on the east side of the inner entrance, was the representation of a battle between the vampire god and Cukulcan, the god of light, which I am inclined to regard as morning twilight, the struggle between darkness and light. On the basis of this, supported by the fact that the vampire leaves his hiding place at twilight,

Wr regard the streams of breath that shoot from his mouth as a symbol of sunset. It seems to me certain that this does not mean wind, with Which rorce of nature this god has no connection, although I know that his glyph often occurs with Ben-Ik, which combination, however, refers to all birds, beasts, and gods whose life and dwelling is supposed to be in the air.

We may therefore regard the vampire god as the servant of death, the ruler of twilight.

The god Cukulcan, ruler of air and light, and therefore of life, is represented in almost all the temple pictures and on the monoliths of Copan, sometimes with a human body, more frequently as a bird, also as a double snake. I will not at present enter more deeply into the reasons which have led me to this decision localise the subject deserves treatment in a special paper.

The glyphs belonging to the picture on this vessel afford us no solution, since we do not understand them; the central glyphs of plaua probably denotes the vampire god, since the dots appearing on the forehead remind us of the representations at Copan, where they occur in a similar manner. The central glyph of plate b occurs in the Dresden codex, page 151, at the bottom.

I do not think that this clay vessel was prepared especially for burial, as I supposed in regard to the urns with a melon-shaped base. It seems to me rather to have served for religious purposes.