after he
"descended to the water," he had an encounter with an alligator, who had
viciously bitten off his foot and carried it away. (See Fejervary Codex,
pp. 3 and 74. Vatican, II, p. 74.) Pictures representing Tezcatlipoca,
after this event, display the broken end of the tibia exposed and the
transverse section of the bone forming a ring, usually painted either
white or red. Special pains seem to have been taken to accentuate the
hollowness of the bone ring, since its centre is usually painted blue, the
symbolical color of air, and conventionalized puffs of breath or air are
shown as issuing from it (fig. 1). In some cases, as on the sculptured
monolith called "the Stone of Tizoc," these symbols of breath, issuing
from the broken tibia, are figured in such a way that modern writers,
ignoring what they were meant to represent, were led to identify them as
some animal's tail attached to the foot of the deity. The hollow circle
and puffs of air, constantly associated with the god, frequently figure as
his ear ornament when his broken tibia is concealed (fig. 2, no. 3).
Besides certain fanciful interpretations which have been given to this
symbol, it has been explained as being a hieroglyph conveying the name
Tezcatlipoca, and consisting of an obsidian mirror=tezcatl, and
smoke=poctli. A possible objection to this assertion might be that in
Mexican pictography, the mirror is invariably represented as jet-black, in
a white or red frame. In the Codex Telleriano Remensis, a combination of
symbols (of water, fire and a serpent) are figured as issuing from the
base of the bone (fig. 1, nos. 5, 6). Having taken particular pains to
collect all representations of the footless god, I was specially
interested in one (Fejervary, p. 1) in which he is figured as standing on
the cross-shaped symbol ollin, the accepted meaning of which is Four
Movements. The most remarkable and puzzling picture I found, however, is
that (fig. 1, no. 2) in which the jaws of a tecpatl, the symbol of the
North, are represented as holding one of Tezcatlipoca's ankles in a tight
grip and practically fastening him thus to the centre of a diagonal cross.
In this and other pictures (Codex Fejervary, 41, 43 and 96) it is obvious
that the artists had endeavored to convey the idea of a person permanently
attached to one spot by one foot. The only form of locomotion possible to
him would be to describe a circle by hobbling on one foot around the
other, which would se