Photo of the Day 330

Aztec Rain God, Mexico City, Mexico, 2003

Photograph by Macduff Everton

An Aztec brazier in the Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico City depicts Tlaloc, the god of rain. Like many Aztec deities, Tlaloc was both benevolent and wrathful, sending rain to nourish crops but also unleashing drought and hurricanes and demanding appeasement in the form of sacrificed children.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Under the Mexican Sun," November/December 2003, National Geographic Traveler magazine)