Each of the four Bacabs was also called Acantun, which means “a stone set up,” such a stone being erected and painted of the color sacred to the cardinal point that the Bacab represented[1].  Some of these stones are still found among the ruins of Yucatecan cities, and are to this day connected by the natives with reproductive signs[2].  It is probable, however, that actual phallic worship was not customary in Yucatan.  The Bacabs and Itzamna were closely related to ideas of fertility and reproduction, indeed, but it appears to have been especially as gods of the rains, the harvests, and the food supply generally.  The Spanish writers were eager to discover all the depravity possible in the religion of the natives, and they certainly would not have missed such an opportunity for their tirades, had it existed.  As it is, the references to it are not many, and not clear.

[Footnote 1:  The feasts of the Bacabs Acantun are described in Landa’s work.  The name he does not explain.  I take it to be acaan, past participle of actal, to erect, and tun, stone.  But it may have another meaning.  The word acan meant wine, or rather, mead, the intoxicating hydromel the natives manufactured.  The god of this drink also bore the name Acan ("ACAN; el Dios del vino que es Baco,” Diccionario del Convento de Motul, MS.).  It would be quite appropriate for the Bacabs to be gods of wine.]

[Footnote 2:  Stephens, Travels in Yucatan, Vol. i, p. 434.]

From what I have now presented we see that Itzamna came from the distant east, beyond the ocean marge; that he was the teacher of arts and agriculture; that he, moreover, as a divinity, ruled the winds and rains, and sent at his will harvests and prosperity.  Can we identify him further with that personification of Light which, as we have already seen, was the dominant figure in other American mythologies?

This seems indicated by his names and titles.  They were many, some of which I have already analyzed.  That by which he was best known was Itzamna, a word of contested meaning but which contains the same radicals as the words for the morning and the dawn[1], and points to his identification with the grand central fact at the basis of all these mythologies, the welcome advent of the light in the eastern horizon after the gloom of the night.

[Footnote 1:  Some have derived Itzamua from i, grandson by a son, used only by a female; zamal, morning, morrow, from zam, before, early, related to yam, first, whence also zamalzam, the dawn, the aurora; and na, mother.  Without the accent na, means house.  Crescencio Carrillo prefers the derivation from itz, anything that trickles in drops, as gum from a tree, rain or dew from the sky, milk from teats, and semen ("leche de amor,” Dicc. de Motul, MS.).  He says:  “Itzamna, esto es, rocio diario, o sustancia cuotidiana del cielo, es el mismo nombre