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Deity Relationships in Mesoamerican Cosmologies

Abstract The study of deity images in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artworks and pictographic texts has been dominated by a concern to classify them for identification of the individual gods. The usual approach has been taxonomic classification, emphasizing the attributes consistently shared by various images to distinguish them as members of a single class (i.e., a single deity). However, identifying criteria are shared by more than one deity class, and the desired consistency in a set of traits for class membership has never been realized, such that scholars still disagree as to the proper identification of these images. This study takes a different approach, by examining the relationships among gods manifested in both imagery and text. It focuses on the Maya God L, who shares some identifying features with God M and also shares certain contexts with the God Bolon Yokte. These associations reflect their spatiotemporal alignments, with God L representing the stability of the primordial cosmic center, whereas Gods M and Bolon Yokte are “travelers” who move within the periphery. From these relationships we begin to explain not only the fluidity of deity imagery, but also how deities served as metaphoric representations of dynamic social and cosmic processes.