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The Maya dead were laid to rest with maize placed in their mouth. Maize, highly important in Maya culture, is a symbol of rebirth and also was food for the dead for the journey to the otherworld. Similarly, a jade or stone bead placed in the mouth served as currency for this journey.
The Maya death gods (also Ah Puch, Ah Cimih, Ah Cizin, Hun Ahau, Kimi, or Yum Kimil) known by a variety of names, are two basic types of death gods who are respectively represented by the 16th-century Yucatec deities Hunhau and Uacmitun Ahau mentioned by Spanish Bishop Diego de Landa. Hunhau is the lord of the Underworld.
Cizin is a Maya god of death and earthquakes. [1] He is the most important Maya death god in the Maya culture. [6] Scholars call him God A. [7] To the Yucatán Mayas he was Hun-Came and Vucub-Came. [5] [clarification needed] He also has similarities to Mictlāntēcutli. [8]
In the Late Post-Classic Maya mythology of the Popol Vuh, Camazotz (/ k ɑː m ə ˈ s ɒ t s / from Mayan /kama ˈsots’/) (alternate spellings Cama-Zotz, Sotz, Zotz) is a bat spirit at the service of the lords of the underworld. Camazotz means "death bat" in the Kʼicheʼ language.
The inclusion of such a "departmental" deity of death in a religion's pantheon is not necessarily the same thing as the glorification of death. A death deity has a good chance of being either male or female, unlike some functions that seem to steer towards one gender in particular, such as fertility and earth deities being female and storm ...
Xibalba (Mayan pronunciation: [ʃiɓalˈɓa]), roughly translated as "place of fright", [1] is the name of the underworld (in K'iche': Mitnal) in Maya mythology, ruled by the Maya death gods and their helpers. In 16th-century Verapaz, the entrance to Xibalba was traditionally held to be a cave in the vicinity of Cobán, Guatemala. [2]
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya. University of Texas Press, Austin 1999. S.W. Miles, The Sixteenth-Century Pokom-Maya. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1957. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. Thames and Hudson, London 1993.
The Maya Vase Book Vol. I: 161–184. Coe, Michael D., and Stephen Houston (2015), The Maya. Thames & Hudson. Danien, Elin C. (2004), Maya Folktales from the Alta Verapaz. University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. Foster, George M. (1945), Sierra Popoluca Folklore and Beliefs. Berkeley / Los Angeles ...