Editing Maya mythology (section)

====Maize Hero====
The [[Maya maize god|Tonsured Maize God]] is the subject of many episodes, only part of which has been explained. Often he is accompanied by the Hero Twins. Some scholars consider him the Classic form of the Hero Twins' father, the failed hero Hun-Hunahpu, and accordingly view the maize god's head attached to a cacao tree as the severed head of Hun-Hunahpu suspended in a calabash tree.<ref>Taube 1985, 1993</ref> However, there is also a tendency to treat the Tonsured Maize God as an agent in his own right. Scholars have compared him to the maize hero of the Gulf Coast peoples and identified several episodes from this deity's mythology in Maya art, such as his aquatic birth and rebirth, his musical challenge to the deities of water and rain (on [[San Bartolo (Maya site)|San Bartolo]]'s west wall) and his victorious emergence from the latter's turtle abode.<ref>Braakhuis 2014; Chinchilla Mazariegos 2017: 218-223</ref> Others, however, prefer to view the 'musical challenge' as a rainmaking ritual and the emergence from the turtle abode as the Opening of the Maize Mountain.<ref>Taube 2009</ref> Another frequent scene, the maize god surrounded by nude women, may relate to the fact that the Tonsured Maize God also functions as a moon god; for in many Mesoamerican sun and moon tales, a playful young man becomes moon rather than sun after giving in to the lures of young women.<ref>Chinchilla Mazariegos 2017: 164-168, 202-207</ref> Other scholars, however, view the women as 'corn maidens', or even as the maize deity's 'harem',<ref>Coe and Houston 2015: 89</ref> a concept not otherwise attested.