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Concept
Qʼuqʼumatz
Summary
Qʼuqʼumatz (qʼuːqʼuːˈmats; alternatively Gukumatz) was a god of wind and rain of the Postclassic Kʼicheʼ Maya. It was the Feathered Serpent that according to the Popol Vuh created the world and humanity, together with the god Tepeu. It carried the sun across the sky and down into the underworld and acted as a mediator between the various powers in the Maya cosmos. It is considered to be the equivalent of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and of Kukulkan, of the Yucatec Maya.
Qʼuqʼumatz was also associated with water, clouds, and the sky. Together with Tepeu, god of lightning and fire, it was considered to be the mythical ancestor of the Kʼicheʼ nobility by direct male line.
Kotujaʼ, the Kʼicheʼ king who founded the city of Qʼumarkaj, bore the name of the deity as a title and was likely to have been a former priest of the god. The priests of Qʼuqʼumatz at Qʼumarkaj, the Kʼicheʼ capital, were drawn from the dominant Kaweq dynasty and acted as stewards in the city.
Qʼuqʼumatz (alternatively Qucumatz, Gukumatz, Gucumatz, Gugumatz, Kucumatz) translates literally as "quetzal serpent" although it is often rendered less accurately as "feathered serpent". The name derives from the Kʼicheʼ word qʼuq, referring to the Resplendent quetzal Pharomachrus mocinno, a brightly coloured bird of the cloud forests of southern Mesoamerica. This is combined with the word kumatz "snake". It is likely that the feathered serpent deity was borrowed from the Aztecs or the Maya and blended with other deities to provide the god Qʼuqʼumatz that the Kʼicheʼ worshipped. Qʼuqʼumatz may have had his origin in the Valley of Mexico; some scholars have equated the deity with the Aztec deity Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, who was also a creator god. Qʼuqʼumatz may originally have been the same god as Tohil, the Kʼicheʼ sun god who also had attributes of the feathered serpent, but they later diverged and each deity came to have a separate priesthood.
The male resplendent quetzal boasts iridescent blue-green tail feathers measuring up to long that were prized by the Maya elite.
Official source
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