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This is the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. The image is based on the Codex Borgia, a precolumbian manuscript that was created by neighbors of the Aztec. The rain god, with his goggled eyes and big teeth, was widespread throughout the cultures of Central Mexico. Prevalent in the earlier civilization of Teotihuacan, his characteristics might derive ultimately from the Olmec.
NOTES, SOURCES & LINKS: The Mexican artist and anthropologist Miguel Covarrubius created an ingenious diagram showing the purported derivation of Tlaloc from the Olmec were-jaguar through successive stages of intervening cultures. It has been argued that a rain god would hardly have been worshipped by the Olmec, whose coastal homeland has plentiful rainfall. But an association of the were-jaguar with the veneration of water is suggested by a stone sculpture of a were-jaguar from the Olmec site of La Venta that was evidently used as part of a water conduit system. A full-color restoration of the Codex Borgia is available from Dover Publications. Twin temples to Tlaloc and the war-god Huitzilopochtli crowned the Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan.
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