[Illustration: Figs. 56-59]
This bird[41-1] belongs to the death-god as his symbol and attendant. Its
hieroglyph (Fig. 56) contains the numeral 13; other forms are Figs. 57-59.
It is pictured in Dr. 7c, 10a, 11a, 16c, 18b, and its hieroglyph
without the picture is seen in Dr. 8b. A realistic representation of the
whole figure of the moan as a bird, occurs on the head of the woman in
16c (1st figure) and 18b. God B sits on the head of the moan in Dr.
38c; the third hieroglyph of the accompanying text refers to this
representation. Just as in Dr. 16 and 18, the moan bird appears in Tro.
18*c on the head of a woman. Its character as an attribute of the
death-god is expressed by the Cimi-sign, which it wears upon its head
(_e. g._, Dr. 10a), and also by the regular occurrence of symbols of the
death-god in the written characters, which refer to the moan bird. In the
same manner the sign of the owl, Fig. 5, also occurs frequently with it.
[41-1] See plate for representations of the Mythological Animals,
1-6.
The moan confers name and symbol alike on one of the eighteen months of
the Maya year, and thus, as Förstemann conjectures (Die Plejaden bei den
Mayas, in Globus, 1894), has an astronomic bearing on the constellation
of the Pleiades.
According to Brinton the moan is a member of the falcon family and its
zoological name is _Spizaetus tyrannus_.