A New Vase
An Old Humming Bird
A vase has been discovered in Burial 196 at Tikal.(Vessel MT176, Drawing in Culbert [1993]) As can be seen, even in this rendition,the body of the Maya lord is shaped with color, almost as if it was air-brushed. It does not have the normal flat color for flesh tones usually found on Maya vase representations. It is almost as if an artist of European art schools painted this vase. However, the drawing itself is of major importance.The images found there is an Sky Lord sitting on a jaguar pelt throne (star studded sky). A bird-creature man is seated in front of him. The bird image has the long beak of a humming bird. with a jewel-like fire element in the middle. There are two scenes on the vase, which tell us about different times that these meetings took place. Only the submission scene is shown here (i.e. the Roman-style "hand on the shoulder" as in Palenque courtyard).In Curl Mountain Cave, one finds a humming bird image which is named Huitzilopochtli, but it has no bright area in its beak. As a possible alternative, the Borgia Codexhas more than a few jewel-eyed birds, but all have short beaks. 
Of the many birds, one found here and on Plate 2, is a direct reference to the Maya Hunahpu and the loss of his arm to Vucub Caquix. This may indicate that Vucub Caquix who only ate yellow fruit must have originally been a bird form. The picture also shows a yellow ball attached to a star form within the mountain where the bird stands holding the arm in his beak. A "capture flag" is to the right and behind his tail. The Madrid Codex shows long jewel-beaked bird.
and is part of a story involving an astronomer in a cave, an axe in the earth, and a personage with what appears to be two hands on his head, holding a fire-torch with another. The Dresden Codex has at least two long jewel-beaked birds.
Even though the stories here are unknown, there is enough information in the Madrid to tie this strange bird with the twins Hunahpu and Ixbalamque. It was Hunahpu who took his blow gun and shot the jewel out of the beak of the bird. Fray Sahagun identified the constellation Gemini as Astelejos but seemed to make an error and wrote the name Mastelejos into the text.
The word "mastelejos" is an old Spanish word which describes the mast and the spar of a ship, which is an excellent verbal description of the constellation, the Northern Cross. This constellation is part of a long-beaked bird constellation called Cygnus and in the long beak of this "bird" is a star called X-1 which was said to have exploded many, many eons ago. The question that remains is: If it was eons ago, why is its explosive flare-up so well remembered?