This is a short staff, presumably of wood, carved to represent God B (or God K, both rain- and wind-gods), and terminating below the hand in a curved projection representing the head of a snake (Fig. 52). Now the real nature of this object has hitherto, most unaccountably, been misunderstood. It is nothing more or less than a ceremonial axe, the stone blade of which, bearing the marks which conventionally expressed a stone implement, can in nearly every case be clearly seen projecting from the forehead of the small figure. At Palenque this blade is replaced by a foliated ornament, which may represent an elaborate blade of copper, or, possibly, a bunch of feathers. Considering the ceremonial nature of the implement, the substitution in later times (for Palenque is perhaps the latest of the important sites) for the unornamental stone of a tuft of gorgeous plumage is easily understood and has many parallels in the history of ceremonial weapons. Now the haft is carved in the likeness of the rain-god, the snake is the emblem of rain, and the axe is _par excellence_ the weapon of the rain-deity, emblematical of thunder (see p. 221). Thus again we arrive at the possibility that the bearer may be one of the Bacabs, who seem to be identical with the Chac, or rain-gods of Yucatan. Still, the identification of the main figures with the gods who support the sky is not one on which I would insist at present. The personages who bear the emblems of the sky and rain may be merely the priests of the all-important deities of fertility, or chieftains who are thus endowed with the symbols of divine power. I have given perhaps disproportionate space to the discussion of these three symbols, the earth-monster, the sky-snake and the ceremonial axe, because I wish to emphasize two points; firstly that the accounts of the historical Yucatec do undoubtedly throw some light upon the monumental remains of earlier date; and secondly that the root-ideas of Mexican and Mayan religion are closely akin and cannot with profit be studied separately. It is the full recognition of these two axioms, combined of course with his own remarkable intellectual gifts, which gives the investigations of Seler so signal and permanent a value. [Illustration: _PLATE XXI_ _Photo. Dr. A. P. Maudslay_ MAYA STELA H.; COPAN, HONDURAS] [Illustration: FIG. 52.--Ceremonial axes from the monuments. _a._ Tzendales. _b._ Palenque. _c._ Quirigua. _d._ Palenque. _e._ Menché.]