At the time of the

Spanish conquest of Yucatán The Spanish conquest of Yucatán was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish ''conquistadores'' against the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities in the Yucatán Peninsula, a vast limestone plain covering south-eastern Mexico, northern ...

(1527–1546), Ix Tab or Ixtab ( ʃˈtaɓ "Rope Woman", "Hangwoman") was the indigenous Maya goddess of

suicide by hanging Suicide by hanging is the intentional killing of oneself (suicide) via suspension from an anchor-point such as an overhead beam or hook, by a rope or cord or by jumping from a height with a noose around the neck. Hanging is often considered ...

. Playing the role of a

psychopomp Psychopomps (from the Greek word , , literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are supernatural creatures, spirits, entities, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afte ...

, she would accompany such suicides to

heaven Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...

Sources

The only description of the goddess occurs in the ''Relación'' of the 16th-century Spanish inquisitor

Diego de Landa Diego de Landa Calderón, O.F.M. (12 November 1524 – 29 April 1579) was a Spanish Franciscan bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. Many historians criticize his campaign against idolatry. In particular, he burned almost a ...

: Beyond this description, there is only a very brief and somewhat obscure mention of Ix Tab in the Book of

Chilam Balam The Books of Chilam Balam () are handwritten, chiefly 17th and 18th-centuries Maya miscellanies, named after the small Yucatec towns where they were originally kept, and preserving important traditional knowledge in which indigenous Maya and early ...

of Tizimin and in the Pérez Codex, in a context of chaos, suffering, and hangings: "They suspended Ix Tab from their hands", or, alternatively, "Ix Tab suspended them from her hands".

Comparisons

''Ix Tab'' is the female form of ''ah tab'', "hangman". The function of Ix Tab as a benevolent "hangwoman" could derive from a basic association with snares. Landa (Tozzer 1941: 155) mentions the hunting deity 'Ah''''Tabay'' ("Ensnarer" or "Deceiver"), possibly a patron of hunting with snares, including such that hoist the prey into the air. Animals hoisted by such snares are found depicted in the Dresden and Madrid codices, the Madrid codex (MC45c) personifying one of these traps by a male hunting deity. Ix Tab could be understood as a specialized, female form of such a deity, luring the human quarry into the hanging rope personified by her. Suicides freely putting their heads into this "snare" (prompted, perhaps, by a dream) could then be seen to consecrate themselves to her. On the other hand, the

Xtabay ''La Xtabay'' is a Yucatec Maya folklore about a demonic femme fatale who preys upon men in the Yucatán Peninsula. She is said to dwell in the forest to lure men to their deaths with her incomparable beauty. She is described as having beautifu ...

of contemporary folklore is a seductive female demon "ensnaring" or "deceiving" her male human preys so as to madden and destroy them.

Dresden Codex

The

Dresden Codex The ''Dresden Codex'' is a Maya book, which was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century. However, in September 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico, previously known as t ...

picture (DC53b) of a dead woman with a rope around the neck, suspended from a celestial bar, is often, and without further proof, taken to represent Ix Tab. However, since the picture occurs in a section devoted to eclipses of sun and moon, it may rather have been used to symbolize a lunar eclipse and its dire consequences for women, who were intimately associated with the moon goddess.

As possible fabrication

It has been claimed that the Pre-Spanish Maya did not have a suicide goddess, or a significant narrative of suicide by hanging. Originally, Ix Tab may only have been a hunting goddess (see above, Comparisons). Today, the sensationalist idea of a "cult of Ix Tab" appears to be invoked by popular Yucatecan media to portray suicide as an indigenous problem, given that Yucatán has a suicide rate more than twice that of Mexico at large.Reyes-Foster and Kangas 2020: 5-6

References

Bibliography

* Ciudad Real, Antonio de, ''Calepino maya de Motul''. Edited by René Acuña. Plaza y Valdés 2001. * Reyes-Foster, Beatriz M., and Rachael Kangas, “Unraveling Ix Tab: Revisiting the “Suicide Goddess” in Maya Archaeology”. ''Ethnohistory'' 63-1 (2016):1-27. * J.E.S. Thompson, ''Maya History and Religion''. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1970. * J.E.S. Thompson, ''A Commentary on the Dresden Codex''. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1972. *

Alfred M. Tozzer Alfred Marston Tozzer (July 4, 1877 – October 5, 1954) was an American anthropologist, archaeologist, linguist, and educator. His principal area of interest was Mesoamerican, especially Maya, studies. He was the husband of Margaret Castle T ...