Vase A-708 from Sacul I

When I first saw this vase in Mexicon (December, 2003, vol. XXV. nbr 6, p. 143) I ignored it. The picture was not very clear; the rabbit had one short and one long ear; and the explanations were of the common kind: the lady was the Moon Goddess and the Rabbit was her companion. The gentlemen on the other side of the vase were almost invisible also. In fact, I did not even read about them at all.

One evening, when I had little else to do, I opened up Mexicon and was surprised to see that I recognized two components of the graphics that I had not noticed previously. Not only that but one of those components was repeated on the other side with the two gentlemen. That particular segment was the turtle carapace. The hooked nosed man with the protruding chin and hollow cheeks on the other side was wearing one on his back.The man should be very ancient, as ancient as the first stars. The man above him had a bird's head, but, being partially obliterated, no real identification could be made of him.

On the other side, the "goddess" holding the "rabbit" is wearing a skirt with the turtle carapace design and the "rabbit" is wearing a "drum major" hat so familiar to us in the Palenque art. Attached to it are two star forms similar to comets. It was the turtle carapace design that caught my eye this time around. I had been working on the Becker-Colombino Codex and had drawn out a turtle man or two, so the shell was still fresh in my mind. The "drum major" hat came a while later.

Now if the lady is the Moon (Goddess) and she is inside of a turtle carapace, however soft and comfortable it may be, the vase might be telling us that the Moon was in the Turtle Constellation when the "bird-headed man" was nearby. The turtle constellation, according to Richard H. Allen in his book Star Names: Their Lore and Meanings was once the name of Lyra. The "god" of the Turtle Shell then, with his hooked nose and hollow cheeks, might well be one of the first star formations ever identified by the astronomers of Sacul, Peten.

The Aztec poem "The Birth of the Fifth Sun" in the book Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos tells us that there were two bird-men in the sky, and the one that a rabbit thrown into his face so that he would move away from the earth became the Moon. So, here, we can add a bare-breasted female for emphasis and designate her as the "Goddess of the Moon" just because she was in the area of Lyra (the Turtle) at the time the rabbit, who is now sucking his thumb, was thrown at the moon. Above his "drum major" headdress is a long stem with fire feathers on it in the original picture that should confirm his sudden "birth" on the face of the moon.

The face of Kawi'l appears to be on the back of the lady's throne and the throne itself is seated upon a sky band. No denying that these participants are sky entities, including the rabbit.

There is no better way to remember astronomy when books for the general public were not always available. Was it an astronomical story? Well, if the Moon and the Rabbit of the Moon are in the sky, then the rest of the tableau should have been there also. We know that the Hummingbird of the South (Huitzilopochtli) was a fireball from the sky and he was very impressive as a sky-bird. He even considered the stars to be his brothers and sisters.

As for the "drum major" headdress that is so similar to the one made of jade in Palenque, it is apparent that the "rabbit" became a very important entity in the sky. Did he control the rain and the mists at night? Or did he just become the great recording scribe of the sky gods? Since women made tortillas and food, but did not usually read and write in that era, the rabbit probably took over the role of scribe, since the moon was so regular in its appearance in the sky.

When one is investigating an artifact, would it not be more reasonable to take all the myths and traditions of the area into consideration before "guessing" at a "reasonable" solution? And if there is any indication that stars may have been involved, not people, then the stars should be considered in the same process even when they are called "people."