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38 performed a ceremonial dance wrapped in the fresh skin. The practice seems to be symbolical of vegetation in the early spring, apparently dead, but containing within the germ of life and fertility, and no doubt was originally intended to assist by imitative magic the process of nature in renewing the food-supply. Corresponding to this goddess, and, like her, regarded as the mother of the gods, was the Mexican Teteoinnan or Tozi, a deity held in especial reverence by the Tlaxcalans and Olmec, and perhaps borrowed from the latter people. She was in particular the goddess of ripe maize and healing herbs, patroness of doctors, midwives and bath attendants (for the steam-bath played an important part in childbirth) and diviners. She too was connected with the flaying-sacrifice, and was sometimes pictured as clad in the victim's skin; otherwise her attributes are the same as those of Tlazoltcotl (sec below) and she carries a broom. The maize-god par excellence was Cinteotl, her son (though occasionally mentioned as a female deity), who appears originally to have been a Totonac god. He is usually shown with a vertical line leading down his cheek, probably representing tears and symbolizing the fertilizing rain. On certain occasions his priest wore a mask made from the skin of the thigh of the victim sacrificed in honour of Teteoinnan. At first sight it is a little surprising to find this god appearing as one of the tutelary deities of the lapidaries of Xochimilco, but no doubt the reason of this is that the ripe maize-cob, nature's mosaic, recalled the incrusted work which formed one of their principal manufactures. Closely associated with all these deities was a maize-goddess, Chicome Coatl, sister of Tlaloc, who presided over agriculture and was honoured with a flaying-sacrifice; while the young maize-ear had an especial protector in the goddess Xilonen, perhaps the same as the Chichimec Xilo worshipped by the inhabitants of the Amantlan district of Mexico. Another