Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
52 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL gladiator wears the characteristic blood- red dress of the god Xipe Totec. Before a temple at the right is the scaffold, the cross bars of which are tied with ropes. To this scaffold a victim, also wearing the costume of Xipe Totec, is bound. A priest, whose body is painted black, has pierced the sacrifice with several arrows and the blood is streaming down. In the Codex Nuttall the contest on the stone disk is more fully represented and that on the scaffold is somewhat with four cross beams at the bottom and one at the top. The victim is stretched across the open space and his body i.s pierced by arrows. In one picture we see a priest in the act of shooting. Behind the temple is a pole with some sort of framework at the top and with a rope hanging to the ground. Various indi- viduals are also shown, each with his name hieroglyph above his head. There is nothing to indicate that the scaffold sacrifice is here connected with the feast
Text Appearing After Image:
The Mexican feast to Xipe Totec, the Lord of the Flayed, representation from the Manascril du Cacique. A temple is depicted at the right, before which a captive taken in war is being sacrificed on a scaffold. A priest garbed in black is throwing arrows at the victim with an allall, or throwing stick. At the left is shown the contest of the stone disk, in which another captive fights four armed warriors. Both victims wear the blood-red costume and head-dress of Xipe Totec al)breviated. There is a remarkable uniformity however, in essential details. The day Six House is recorded in both pictures and there are also figured eight sacrificial knives. Under the sacrifice on the scaffold is an object which may represent the sacred bowl used to catch the blood. Two human sacrifices on scaffolds are drawn in a somewhat more realistic fashion in the Codex Porfirio Diaz. In each picture we see a temple (drawn out of scale as always) and before it a scaffold of Tlacaxipehualiztli. Above the upper cross bar in one case there is a heart, which may indicate that this vital organ was offered to the divinity in whose honor the ceremony was celebrated; in the other case there is a disk-shaped object which doubtless represents the sun or some other heavenly body. There is good reason to believe that the scaffold sacrifice originated in southern Mexico and that it was connected primarily with the sun or some important planet and secon(laril^' with war. Most of the

Note About Images