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0 N o t e s o n M i d d l e A m e r i c a n A r c h a e o l o g y a n d E t h n o l o g y Carnegie Institution of Washington Division of Historical Research No. 19 March 30, 1943 Representations of tlalchitonatiuh at Chichen itza, Yucatan, and at el Baul, escuintla J. Eric S. Thompson One would hardly expect Indian warriors normally to wear flaxen hair studded with jade beads. Such a peruke must have ritualistic significance. It is, indeed, the hair arrangement normally worn by Tonatiuh, the Mexican sun god, and occasionally by other members of the Mexican pantheon, but in the latter case beads are seldom set in it. The facial paints of the solar god are red or yellow, and these and the golden hair obviously derive from the natural colors of the sun. Jade or turquoise beads were normally set in the sun disk, and clearly have a close association with the sun. The connection between warriors and the sun was extremely close in ancient Mexico. Warriors fought to capture victims to nourish the sun, and, as a reward, after death on the field of battle or on the sacrificial block, they went to the sky. There they accompanied the sun on his daily journey from the point of sunrise to the zenith (women who had died in childbirth were classified as warriors, and escorted the sun from the zenith to, the western horizon). The finest warriors, as servants of the sun, formed various military orders, of which those of Eagles and Jaguars were most renowned. Eagle and Jaguar were names borne by the sun, and the members of those orders dressed in the skins of those animals. The Toltec painted the bodies of victorious warriors yellow and their faces red, and an Aztec who had taken a prisoner single-handed was permitted the honor of painting himself in the same colors. These, however, were precisely the colors of the sun, as just noted. The three friezes which gird the pyramid of the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, repeat with unrelieved monotony the same ritual. Jaguars, eagles, and an unidentified animal offer slightly conical objects to persons in recumbent positions. The animals are in pairs, set back to back, so that each faces a person. The latter, also in pairs, are placed feet to feet, but with their bodies twisted so that each faces outward toward an animal, at which he appears to point a highly ornamented staff or spear. Other sources of information permit of the ready identification of the conical object each animal holds as a heart. Each individual has a ring around his eye, a barshaped nasal rod, and a peculiar headdress of the kind frequently worn by Tlaloc, the Mexican rain god, in codices of the Borgia group. The combination of ring around eye, straight nasal rod, and this peculiar headdress point unmistakably to Tlaloc, yet Tlaloc has no connection with the offerings of human hearts by eagles and jaguars. However, these Tlaloc-like figures have another attribute, a sweeping curved object, set with beads, which issue from behind the back. This has been correctly recognized as hair, on the strength of its identity with objects attached to the heads of figures depicted on frescoes in the same building. The frescoes reveal that this coiffure was bright yellow and was set with green beads. There is little doubt that it represents artificial hair, for in one case it is attached to the side of the head of a man who otherwise is bald. The wearers are sacrificial victims, prisoners, and warriors engaged in battle. Representations of Tlalchitonatiuh at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, and at El Baul, Escuintla 71 We can, accordingly, be sure that the warriors on the frescoes of the Temple of the Warriors with yellow hair set with beads and yellow or red body painting have donned a ritualistic attire in honor of their patron the sun. Having established that the peculiar hair arrangement worn by warriors on the frescoes of the Temple of the Warriors is one of the attributes of the Mexican sun god, Tonatiuh, we must explain why this same unusual coiffure should be combined with unmistakable attributes of Tlaloc on the sculptured friezes of the same building. A rather rare manifestation of the Mexican sun god is Tlalchitonatiuh, ‘Sun near the earth,’ who is the...

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