THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The name Camazotz joins the K'iche' words for death and bat: the snatch-bat. Twice in the Popol Vuh a bat comes for heads. When the wooden people were destroyed, a monster called Camalotz - generally taken as a creature of the same kind - dropped from the sky to cut them off; and in Xibalba's House of Bats, Camazotz is the greatest of the blade-snouted horde, bats whose muzzles are described as knives, their wings clattering through the dark all night.
When the Hero Twins reached that house, they crawled inside their own blowguns to wait out the assault. Late in the night the bats fell silent, and Hunahpu slid his head out of the muzzle to see whether dawn had come. Camazotz swept down and carried the head away in one stroke, and the death lords hung it over the ballcourt as the game ball. Xbalanque summoned the animals to bring their foods; the coati arrived rolling a chilacayote squash, which the beasts carved into a substitute head for Hunahpu's shoulders. During the next match a rabbit crouched by the court and bounded off when the ball flew wide, decoying the lords long enough for Xbalanque to swap the true head back. The twins went on to win the game.
In the Maya world the bat keeps company with night, caves, and sacrifice. Classic painted vases show snarling leaf-nosed bats hung with death signs; the emblem glyph of the kingdom of Copán is a leaf-nosed bat's head; and the Tzotzil of highland Chiapas still call themselves the People of the Bat.
