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 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
STOXE OF THE SUX (TOXATIUH) AND OF \-EXUS KjUETZALCOATL) CALLED THE .\ZTEC CALEXDAR 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924097634996 
 
HUNTINGTON FREE LIBRARY 
 AND READING ROOM 
 
 Indian Collection 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 097 634 996 
 
<^NUO^ 
 
 Copyright 1921 By 
 The University of Chicago 
 
 Published August igzi 
 
 ^yfu 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicajro Press 
 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the course upon Mexico, which has been given repeatedly to 
 my students at the University of Chicago during the last twenty-five 
 years, we have always devoted some time to the study of the "Aztec 
 Calendar Stone." As a specimen of native American art it is of 
 extraordinary interest; as a mass of symbols, in which the astronomi- 
 cal and chronometric knowledge of the ancient Mexicans is, in a sense, 
 summarized, it is of the highest importance. 
 
 It has long been my intention to print a sort of study guide regard- 
 ing the stone for the use of my students. My plan was to prepare a 
 careful summary of the argument of each and every worker who had 
 seriously attempted to interpret the stone; to arrange these summaries 
 in chronological order; to subject them to critical investigation in 
 order to extract from them what appear to be final conclusions; to 
 add some original suggestions as to significance; and, finally, to point 
 out what further study was necessary in order to a full understanding 
 of the monument. 
 
 While I delayed, another worker has done a task so nearly like the 
 one I proposed that mine seems no longer necessary. Mr. Enrique 
 Juan Palacios, of the City of Mexico, has presented a paper, entitled 
 La Piedra del Sol y el primer capitulo de la historia de M&xico, before 
 the Sociedad Cientifica "Antonio Alzate," which has been printed in 
 its Memorias. It is an admirable piece of work. I have felt that it 
 would be better for me to translate it into English than to write a new 
 work. Nor have I thought it desirable to recast his work or to alter it. 
 I still think that, for students in a class, my method — ^presenting com- 
 ■ plete summaries of the ideas of each author, before attempting study 
 of details — is preferable, but I present Senor Palacios' work as he 
 made it. I have omitted some sentences or paragraphs which did not 
 in any way affect either his argument or conclusions; there are also 
 a few verbal changes and one or two additions, but these have been 
 made by the author himself and have been translated from his copy. 
 
 Senor Palacios has made an actual contribution to our knowledge 
 of the Calendar Stone. This is not to say that I am as yet prepared 
 
to accept each and all of his suggestions; His long-continued and 
 capable study, however, deserves and earns serious consideration of 
 his views. Faithful examination of his work will show students what 
 may be accepted as settled; it will also indicate what problems 
 remain to be solved. 
 
 Frederick Starr 
 Chicago 
 June 21, 1921 
 
THE STONE OF THE SUN AND THE FIRST CHAPTER OF 
 THE HISTORY OF MEXICO 
 
 The famous stone of the Archaeological Museum of Mexico, from 
 the moment of its discovery, has given occasion that men of ability 
 and eminence should interest themselves in it. 
 
 Rare must be the traveler who does not admire the architecture of 
 the metropoUtan cathedral, whose towers, crowned by bell-shaped 
 terminations, majestically distinguish it among all the basilicas of the 
 world. It was precisely the author of a considerable part of this 
 facade, and in particular of the towers, Don Jose Damian Ortiz de 
 Castro, who made the discovery of the stone, under the pavement of 
 the Plaza Principal, on the seventeenth of December of the year 1790. 
 
 They were about to bury it anew, imitating an archbishop who 
 two centuries before had been guilty of so strange a blunder; fortu- 
 nately the viceroy of the colony at the time was a man of the character 
 of the second Count of Revillagigedo, Don Juan Vincente de Giiemes 
 Pacheco de Padilla. This able and progressive governor opposed the 
 execution of their plan, ordering that educated individuals should take 
 charge of the stone, that they should measure and study it, and that 
 it should be transported to the Royal University and placed in a 
 public place "where it should be forever preserved as a notable 
 monument of Indian antiquity." With this act the said ruler, one 
 of the most illustrious that New Spain ever had, once more demon- 
 strated that talent and discretion of which he gave so many proofs. 
 
 The first to examine the monument with the interest and the 
 scientific rigor which the work merited, and the first to draw and 
 reproduce, with sufficient fidelity, the complicated relief figures upon 
 it, was the illustrious Mexican astronomer, Don Antonio de Leon y 
 Gama. This same modest and eminent savant was also the first to 
 formulate an interpretation of the figures engraved upon the face of 
 the monument; and his study with reference to it is of such sort that, 
 although not final nor entirely correct, it has not only given the basis 
 for all subsequent scientific studies, but remains a classic in the matter. 
 Even today, when the decipherment of the monument goes largely 
 
along paths which Leon y Gama did not indicate, the thesis of the 
 illustrious author is partly sustained and wiU always be an important 
 treatise of the subject. 
 
 The admirable monolith could not fail to attract the attention of a 
 man like Baron Alexander von Humboldt. He examined it in great 
 detail, being the first to classify its petrographic nature in scientific 
 terms, earlier indicated with fair accuracy by the prolific writer, Don 
 Jose Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, and finally determined with the 
 precision of modern methods by the distinguished geologist, Don 
 Ezequiel Ordonez, who refers it to the group of olivine basalts. Hum- 
 boldt confirmed also the weight which Gama had attributed to the 
 stone by means of ingenious calculations, and reproduced the drawing 
 made by the same scholar, illustrating with it one of the pages of his 
 beautiful Vues des Cordilleres. So far as concerned interpretation, 
 he accepts completely the thesis of Leon y Gama (as thirty years 
 later did a man of the ability of Albert Gallatin, who also made use of 
 the drawing of our archaeologist), presenting, it at length and fully 
 discussing the chronological system of the aborigines and their the- 
 ony and cosmogony. The vast knowledge of the German writer and 
 his extensive journeys suggested to him various relations between 
 the constructors of the stone, the Asiatics, and peoples of Southern 
 America, an idea fecund in a certain way, but which has brought more 
 iUs than advantages to our archaeology, leading many investigators 
 to devote their energies to tracing foreign affinities, instead of studying 
 in themselves the products of the culture of Anahuac. 
 
 From that time up to near the end of the nineteenth century, no 
 figure of first rank returned to the attempt of lifting the veil under which 
 was hidden the guarded secret of the famous stone. Set in the lower 
 part of the eastern tower of the basilica, savants and travelers coming 
 from all parts of the world filed before the mysterious reliefs during 
 more than a hundred years, contemplating it some with curiosity, 
 some with wonder, all with admiration. It was there about 1805, 
 when the talented Moxo relates that the common herd diverted itself 
 with battering its figures and designs, athough the learned "have not 
 ceased to view it with the greatest astonishment and respect, con- 
 sidering it an original document which testifies to the notable knowl- 
 edge of astronomy and geometry of the ancient Mexicans." 
 
 There, with permission of Don Lucas Alaman, at the time minister 
 of state, W. Bullock, proprietor of the museum of London, took a 
 mold of it for the first time, which he successfully transported to his 
 
 6 
 
institution. The traveler relates that at that time (1823) the people 
 of Mexico called the monument reloj de Moctezuma ("Montezuma's 
 watch"), a statement which Brantz Mayor repeats in his work 
 Mexico as It Was and Is (1844). Gama's drawing is reproduced in 
 both books. (We may add that today excellent molds of the relief 
 exist in the American Museum of Natural History of New York and 
 in other foreign institutions.) There also was taken one of the most 
 perfect existing photographs of the stone, which adorns the pages of 
 the great work Monumentos del Arte Mexicano Antigua; there also the 
 expert and notable artist, Don Jose Maria Velasco, drew it with his 
 customary fidelity and precision. Finally in the year 1885, the monu- 
 ment was transported to the place which it now occupies in the grand 
 salon of the Museum of Archaeology. 
 
 At about this time, the able archaeologist, talented and illustrious 
 historian, and eminent man of letters, Alfredo Chavero, produced a 
 most brilliant disquisition, which for many years changed the course 
 of ideas regarding the monument. Fundamentally contrary to the 
 theory of Gama, although agreeing with it in some details, this study 
 possesses very interesting aspects; nevertheless, rather than an ade- 
 quate decipherment of the hieroglyphs it is a demonstration of the 
 vast knowledge of Chavero in the general topics of archaeological 
 science. 
 
 Following so luminous a work, there are no studies truly worthy 
 of being taken into consideration, except that of Don Dionisio Aba- 
 diano, prolix and minute beyond any other, sufficiently erudite also, 
 but in almost its entirety aberrant and full of inacceptable subtleties 
 and arguments as distorted as arbitrary. We will say nothing very 
 different of the work of Felipe J. Valentini, without denying, however, 
 the merit of his other works to the German doctor. 
 
 As little can we admit, well elaborated and estimable as may 
 be the work {The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World 
 Civilizations) in which it is propounded, the thesis of Sefiora ZeUa 
 Nuttall, investigator to whom the archaeological science of Mexico 
 owes so many services. The distinguished Americanist claims in 
 essence that the central part of the monolith represents the circum- 
 polar zone of the celestial vault, the naolin and the four rectangles 
 comprised in it being an allegory of the movements of the Great Bear, 
 which form apparently the cross or Buddhist swastika gyrating around 
 the Pole Star, center of the system whose strange and notable fixity 
 was the origin of the worship which the aborigines and other peoples 
 
of the earth consecrated to it. Without dfescending to details, we will 
 only say that the theory — although developed with the most powerful 
 logic and extreme wealth of data — omits the analysis of the greater 
 part of the signs and gl3T)hs of the relief, which, without speaking of 
 other serious objections, reduces the probabilities of likelihood. At all 
 events, the work of the illustrious lady writeris a work of many merits. 
 An original and sufficiently probable hypothesis concerning how 
 the relief was engraved is due to the expert and well-informed archae- 
 ologist, Don Ramon Mena. The official explanations of the Museum, 
 published in its Catalogues — ^work of the illustrious writer and pro- 
 fessor of archaeology in the institution, Don Jesus Galindo y Villa — 
 and contained in notes and labels fixed to the objects in its collections 
 — notes edited in part by Senor Mena and in part also due to the 
 inspiration of Don Eduard Seler and of the notable savant and archae- 
 ologist, Don Francisco del Paso y Troncoso — describe the stone 
 without pretending to interpret it, except in a very general way; in 
 basis, and so far as concerns the monument of which we are speaking, 
 they follow many of the ideas of Chavero, and in less degree those of 
 Leon y Gama. 
 
 DESCRIPTION AND FIRST EXPLANATIONS 
 
 The stone of the Museum is a circular relief, sculptured in basalt, 
 3.63 m. in diameter. In truth, the entire surface of the monolith 
 is found to be occupied by glyphs, distributed in seven zones or 
 concentric circles; there are, further, other signs in the cylindrical pro- 
 jection of the relief, part of an enormous rock approximately quad- 
 rangular, whereon, with consummate mastery, the cylinder was 
 worked. 
 
 At the center and of large size, is seen the image of the sun, under 
 the figure of the old god (kuehueteotl) . He has a mask, the skin 
 wrinkled at the sides, distinctive ear ornaments, protruding tongue 
 (expression of light), elegant necklace of seven beads (symbol of 
 -celestial bodies) and the solar glyph on the forehead, accompanied by 
 two numerals. 
 
 On one and the other side of this face, two opened and magnificent 
 talons present the luminary as if it were suspended in the zenith, 
 according to the happy expression of Senor Chavero. 
 
 Inclosing the face of the sun, and occupying the following circle, 
 shows itself in large size the sign naolin, indicative of the movement 
 of the sun between the solstices and the equinoxes. Four rectangles, 
 
which contain the representation of the cosmogonic ages into which 
 the indigenes arranged the history of the world, form this allegory. 
 The figures sculptured in the said frames carry, all of them, four 
 numerals; their symboUsm has given rise to important studies ever 
 since the time of Gama and especially by the learned archaeologist, 
 Don Alfredo Chavero. 
 
 Artistically developed between the rectangular frames, with the 
 shaft end downward and the point showing the meridian of the place, 
 there is distinguished an arrow of elegant drawing at whose extremities 
 above and below, to right and left, are read the dates Ce tecpatl (with 
 its attendant, Tletl) and below Ce quidhuitl and Ome or Chicome 
 ozomatli. Circumscribed, at the end of the arrow, and between the 
 face and the claws of Tonatiuh, are glyphs and numerals of which we 
 shall speak later. We may add that the very position of the arrow 
 is sufficient proof that the monolith was placed vertically, and not 
 horizontally. 
 
 Comprised within the same circle, to the right and the left of the 
 rectangular frames of the naolin, are noted four great numerals. 
 These do not relate to the said sign (which, by its very form, implicity 
 carries the name "four movements"), but to the face sculptured at 
 the center of the stone. This being the old sun and being figured in a 
 chronographic figure, a native of those times would without vacillation 
 assign to it the value corresponding to it: it is the huehuetiliztli or 
 century of the Indians, double and sacred cycle, which the ancient 
 Mexicans called old duration or age; therefore the four numerals 
 indicate four huehuetiliztli, which are 416 years. Such was the motive 
 for not having figured Tonatiuh as in other representations, with a face 
 radiant with Hfe, but with the appearance of age; the stone confirms 
 this repeatedly, as we shall see further on. 
 
 Sahagiin, speaking of this chronological period and of its impor- 
 tance, expresses himself as follows: 
 
 The larger period of time which they counted was 104 years, and they 
 called this count an age, and the half of it, which are 52 years, they called a 
 bundle of years. This method of counting the years they had brought 
 down from antiquity; it is not known when it began; but they held it 
 for certain and as a belief that the world had to come to an end with the 
 conclusion of one of these bundles of years, and they had a prediction and 
 oracle that then the movement of the heavens had to cease, and they took 
 as a sign the movement of the Pleiades on the night of this festival, which 
 they called toxiumolpilia. 
 
In the central figure of the monument then it is not a question of 
 the simple representation of the star of day; it treats rather of the 
 chief chronological cycle of the aboriginal cultures, the true century 
 or age of the Indians, as Sahagun tells us. The artist attempted to 
 indicate, and in this face of an old man does perfectly indicate, a 
 huehuetiliztli, a double xiuhtlalpilli: 104 years. The thought could not 
 be better conceived nor better expressed. 
 
 Let us add that below the arrow there is another numeral; but 
 it is not as large as the previous four, nor is it worked out in exactly 
 the same way. Without doubt it should not be computed in the same 
 fashion. 
 
 Let us consider the following circle, which is the third of thereUef. 
 Its description offers no difficulties, and its interpretation is the ABC 
 of archaeological studies. It contains the twenty characters of the 
 native month, symbols which — as they constitute the foundation of 
 the calendars of the Nahua, Maya, Zapotec, Matlatzinca, and other 
 races which vary in the designative terms, agreeing in the roots — 
 we ought to consider as 'a common legacy from a civiUzing population 
 which served as a trunk to all the others. The signs begin with 
 Cipactli and end with Xochitl. Mrs. Nuttall sees in these characters 
 symbols of the native zodiac, and we do not consider the idea (sug- 
 gested previously, more or less explicitly, by Boturini, Veytia, 
 Fabrega, Orozco y Berra, del Paso y Troncoso and Chavero) absurd. 
 The order is that well known from the monuments and the codices, 
 to-wit: 
 
 Cipactli 
 
 Miquiztli 
 
 Ozomatli 
 
 Cozcacuauhtli 
 
 Ehecatl 
 
 Mazatl 
 
 Malinalli 
 
 Ollin 
 
 Calli 
 
 Tochtli 
 
 Acat] 
 
 Tecpatl 
 
 Cuetzpallin 
 
 Atl 
 
 Ocelotl 
 
 QiiiShuitl 
 
 Coatl 
 
 Itzcuintli 
 
 Cuauhtli 
 
 X6chitl 
 
 We may add that the style of the Cipactli appears here a somewhat 
 pecuHar one.. Supporting themselves on this circle, and dividing the 
 following one, display themselves four magnificent rays or pointers 
 with curved base, which by their position indicate the principal 
 divisions of the day: midday {Nepantla Tonatiuh), midnight {Yohual- 
 nepantla), the hour of sunset {Tonaqui Tonatiuh), and that of dawn 
 {Iquiza Tonatiuh). Gama estabhshed this symbohsm. 
 
 Alternating with these, but less in size and with support upon the 
 following circle, are other four rays, but with base not curved but 
 
straight, which express the following hours. Yet smaller and resting 
 upon the following zone are seen eight asps between the rays described; 
 they indicate, surely, a smaller subdivision of time. In total, the day 
 of the aborigines was distributed into i6 hours of 90 minutes each. 
 
 The fourth zone or circle contains two hundred dots distributed in 
 groups of five (each group in a little frame) which are commonly 
 designated with the term of quintiduos ("quintettes"). In the asps 
 already mentioned (six of which are entirely visible and two concealed 
 in such a manner as induces us to assign the same elements to them) 
 are eight quintiduos, giving a total of forty dots. We ought yet to add 
 the ten circumscribed in the arrow of the naolin and the ten placed 
 between the face and the claws of the Tonatiuh. These last are dots 
 like the others; but the necessities of distribution of the relief do not 
 permit their being arranged in an actually identical form. Altogether 
 they sum up to two hundred and sixty numerals of equal kind, a 
 reading already made by archaeologists. 
 
 Until now it has been assumed that the elements in question 
 represent the tonaldmatl or cecempohualli, fundamental computation 
 of native chronology. Nevertheless, this is an error. Further than 
 the fact that that appears inscribed in another part of the relief, the 
 distribution of the 260 numerals in groups of five, and not of thirteen, 
 dots demonstrates by itself alone that we are not here dealing with the 
 sacred book composed fundamentally of thirteens. The dots in 
 question denote years, not days as has been supposed; and if they 
 appear distributed in fives it is because they allude to years of the 
 planet Venus, that is to say, the synodical movements of that planet, 
 five of which form a cycle in the calendar of the aborigines for reasons 
 which we shall explain later. 
 
 The dots of the fourth circle, joined with the other elements of the 
 same kind which may be read in the relief, represent then a period of 
 260. Venus years. Taking the synodical revolution of the planet as 
 very close to 584 days, the total amounts to 151,840 days, or 416 
 solar years, great cycle of the aboriginal chronology, repeatedly figured 
 in the monolith, as we shall see in the sequel. It is inferred that the 
 Indians carried on simultaneously two calendars, that of the star of 
 day and that of Venus, and by their combination they computed the 
 course of time; in this method, with purely astronomical elements, 
 they formed their system of chronology. 
 
 Interrupted in its turn by the great and small rays, the fifth circle 
 is formed of eight zones or glyphs which archaeologists have agreed in 
 
considering solar. Six of these zones contain ten glyphs, and each of 
 the other two contain five: in all there are seventy glyphs of the same 
 kind, to which are added the three which border each of the eight asps 
 before mentioned, and the ten, a little smaller but of identical form, 
 placed between the face and the talons of Tonatiuh. In total, they 
 sum 104 solar glyphs, indicative of so many other years. Here as 
 little is it a question of days, as the archaeologists have claimed, 
 identifying dissimilar glyphs of the relief in order to compute the 365 
 days of the year: a procedure arbitrary and of course illogical in a 
 work of the magnitude of the one we consider here. In reality the 
 circle expresses the Indian century, or kuehuetiliztli, period already 
 read in the face of the center. Later we shall see the motive for the 
 repetition of the cipher. 
 
 Nothing concrete has been said until now about the following 
 circle. Some call the figures that compose it temples; others have 
 seen them to resemble leaves or mountains; some simply call them 
 httle arches; but no one has penetrated their exact significance. In 
 the most authorized descriptions they have generally been designated 
 with the descriptive term "pentagons" (Chavero) or "trapezoidal 
 figures," symbolism of the most general kind having been attributed 
 to them. If in passing beyond the third zone Penafiel has said that 
 the archaeologist entered upon the field of conjecture, with respect to 
 this zone, the sixth in the relief, it may be affirmed that up to the 
 present it has been enveloped in impenetrable mystery. 
 
 The monolith has no more interesting glyphs. Their number, 
 their distribution, the form of the figure say sufficiently what they 
 represent. They appear in four groups, separated by the great solar 
 rays. The two upper groups present thirteen signs; and each one of 
 the lower, twelve, it being necessary to presume the missing one, 
 hidden by the plumes of the serpents which adorn this part of the 
 stone. In total they sum up four groups of thirteen glyphs of the 
 same form, the significance of which is somewhat of the most impor- 
 tant which the relief contains; there is concentrated not only its own 
 significance, but that of many of the other aboriginal monuments. It 
 explains the tenacity with which the glyphs guard their secret. 
 
 The archaeologists have said that the characters of which we treat 
 are a kind of pentagons. Without being such, speaking precisely, 
 they may be considered as made up of five somewhat irregular sides; 
 there is noticed, at the same time, the concavity of the inferior side. 
 
This is the figure of the jewel of Quetzalcoatl, as may be seen in many- 
 representations: on pages 42 and 59 of the Codex Borgiano, which 
 represents of great size the double morning and evening star; in the 
 beautiful statue belonging to the Trocadero Museum; on page 16 of 
 the Codex Borbonico; on page 17 of Codex Vaticanus A; and in others 
 of the Codex Telleriano Remense, etc. The jewel shows an ejegant 
 outline with five indentations or sides, "figurade cinco angulos," as 
 Sahagun says, and is slightly concave below. In converting itself into 
 a chronographic glyph, it received many conventionahzations — Hamy 
 has described them minutely in his The Jewel of the Wind — which we 
 may see in the monuments; but all are alike in the important details. 
 
 Ah well, was it a result of fancy or was it due to deliberate intention 
 that this form attaches to the jewel of the deity ? The more important 
 pictographs (e.g., the Dresden Codex) reveal this practice of the 
 tonalponhque: to take as a unity the five years of the planet which make 
 a running with eight solar years. Suth was the origin of the festival 
 atamalqualiztli, celebrated at the end of this term. The unity thus 
 formed was repeated thirteen times, as we see in the Dresden Codex 
 itself (p. 24), in the Cospi, in theBorgian, in Vaticanus B, and in other 
 documents. The conjunct equals 65 years of the planet, exactly equal 
 to 104 solar, by virtue of the well-known equations: 
 
 584X S = 36sX 8= 2,920 days 
 584X65 = 365X104 = 37,960 days 
 
 The form of the jewel is allegorical of the five movements of Venus, 
 which make cycle with the eight years of the sun; corroborating it, 
 see the eight dots at the bottom of the representation of the double 
 star on page 59 of the Borgian Codex; see eight solar glyphs under the 
 face of the stone figure of Tepezuntla (commonly called Tzontemoc) 
 corresponding to the five circles which the same beautiful figure has 
 upon the forehead. That this stone represents Quetzalcoatl (the 
 star Venus) in his descent of eight days into hell, the form of the ear 
 ornament, which is typical, manifests without a doubt. 
 
 But there was another motive for dividing the jewel of the deity 
 into five parts or distributing it into five points. In developing the 
 calendar of the star, the periods of 584 days are begun with the symbols 
 Cipactli, Cdatl, All, Acatl, and Ollin, and continuing the series of Venus 
 years, the same characters are repeated in identical order, giving for 
 result that of the twenty day signs of the native month; only five 
 preside over the revolutions of the star, a fact discovered by the learned 
 Seler. The number results eminently symbolical of the planet. 
 
 1.3 
 
We have then a little cycle of five revolutions of Venus equal to 
 eight solar years, which are 2,920 days. Each of the frames inclosing 
 five dots, each of the little pentagons, expresses this chronological 
 value. Supposing the planet at the beginning of its matutinal appari- 
 tion or its heliacal rising, it will have recovered the identical position, 
 with respect to the star of day, at the termination of the cycle. The 
 fact is a phenomenon of astronomical observation which could not pass 
 unobserved to scrutinizers of the heavens like the Indians: and in 
 order to commemorate it, they celebrated the festival atamalqualiztli 
 of which Sahagun speaks. But we have seen that this unity is repeated 
 thirteen times. There are two reasons for this: one, to equal with 
 Venus years the great period of 104 solar years, a cycle equivalent 
 to 65 synodical movements of the planet; the other, to equalize the 
 two calendars, because when five Venus years have passed, the sixth 
 commences anew with Cipactli, but this character goes this second 
 time not accompanied by the ndmeral i, but by 9, necessitating that 
 the five years shall be repeated thirteen times, in order that Cipactli 
 should return to be accompanied by i, as at the beginning of the period, 
 and the commencement of the one and the other calendar. 
 
 The cause of this phenomenon is known. The tonaldmatl, that 
 is to say, the series of twenty thirteens, runs through the book of the 
 planet the same as through that of the sun, calendars, one and the 
 other, which are made up by the combination of thirteen numbers in 
 order with the twenty day characters, so that these may not be 
 confounded on being repeated. As the number 584 does not contain 
 an exact number of thirteens, there are twelve units over in the first 
 Venus year, eleven in the next, ten in the next, and so on successively, 
 so that Cipactli comes to be accompanied by different numerals, the 
 thirteen times that it begins the year, until the 65 counts of the 
 planet's calendar are complete. Although all archaeologists know 
 this, we copy anew the distribution of the thirteens and of the day 
 characters in the computation which we are considering. 
 
 Figures which accompany the initial signs of the Venus year, in a 
 series of 65 years: 
 
 Cipactli I — 9 — 4 — 12 — '7 — 2 — 10—5 — 13 — 8 — 3 — 11 — 6 
 C6atl 13 — 8 — 3 — II — ^6 — I — 9 — 4 — 12 — 7 — 2 — 10 — 5 
 Atl 12 — 7 — ■ 2 — 10 — -5—13 — ■ 8 — 3 — II — -6 — I — 9 — ^4 
 
 Acatl II — 6 — I — 9^-4 — 12 — 7—2 — 10 — 5 — 13 — 8 — 3 
 Ollin 10 — 5 — 13 — 8 — 3 — II — 6 — I — 9 — 4 — 12 — 7 — 2 
 
 14 
 
With the beginning of the 66th year of the series, Cipadli, 
 with the numeral i, returns to begin the count Hke that of the 37,960 
 days passed, and on this same day the sign with the same number 
 gives beginning to the 105th year of the solar calendar; one and the 
 other count are thus adjusted to each other. Serving as a base to both 
 the tonal&matl finds itself exactly at its first day: 
 
 584X65 = 365X104=260X146. 
 
 Now we may understand the thirteen pentagons inscribed in each 
 one of the four parts of the circle of the monument. They denote the 
 number of times that the five characters enter as initials of the Venus 
 year in one huehuetiliztU. They figure in this fashion thirteen times, 
 and just so many times was celebrated in said cycle the festival of the 
 planet, atamalqualiztU, always coinciding with Cipactli. And that 
 the intention of the astronomer-director of the engraving of the relief 
 was to inscribe this number of glyphs, is plainly seen in the upper 
 groups of the sixth circle; without aesthetic prejudice and almost com- 
 pelled by the demand of symmetry, other pentagons might very well 
 have been located in the space covered by the bands which issue from 
 the serpents' tails. The artist might, with the greatest good taste, have 
 placed six glyphs in this double empty space, but he deliberately pro- 
 longed the bands instead. His proposition could not be made more 
 manifest. The purpose was the engraving of a number, not of an 
 ornament. This suflEices to show us that there are no simply decora- 
 tive signs in the relief, incomparable synthesis of art and science. 
 
 But there are four groups of Venus cycles, four zones of thirteen 
 pentagons. To what necessity of the system can this repetition 
 correspond ? The synodical movement of Venus being taken as 584 
 days, there result 37,960 for each group, or 151,840 for the total of 
 52 pentagons of the circle. This period represents exactly 416 
 solar years. In other terms, if each group signifies 65 Venus 
 years, equivalent, as we know, to a huehuetiliztU, the four correspond 
 to as many sacred cycles, which is what is indicated by the great 
 numerals that surround the head of Tonatiuh, conformably to the 
 interpretation which we have already given. One and another circle, 
 the second and the sixth, say exactly the same thing: 416 solar years. 
 The fourth zone expresses an equal thing: 260 Venus years, number 
 which is considered sacred. Everything in the monolith concurs in 
 declaring one single and well-considered thought; we shall speak of its 
 origin and admire its profundity and transcendence. Meantime we 
 
 IS 
 
say, as proof that we are not dealing merely with arbitrary theories 
 or purely speculative systems, that the numbers 37,960 and 151,840 
 appear in the Dresden Codex. Forstemann, its able interpreter, has 
 read them in that admirable astronomical book. 
 
 Let us pass to the seventh zone, which forms the border of the 
 monument, figuring two serpents which end in colossal heads of strange 
 and elaborate decoration. This is the pre-eminently beautiful circle 
 of the relief perhaps the most studied, concerning which there have been 
 proposed the largest number of conflicting conjectures. Here we 
 shall confirm the key of the interpretation of the monolith and shall 
 see the sum and confirmation of the preceding data. 
 
 Two magnificent serpents encircle the relief and at the lower part 
 of the stone join heads, from whose opened throats peer out human 
 faces confronting each other. The body of the serpents is found to 
 be ornamented through its entire length with an artistic and imagi- 
 native richness which, considered simply as decorative, would be a 
 masterpiece; if more than decorative, these glyphs involve pTecise 
 dates and astronomical symbolisms — the work becomes one of genius 
 than which certainly the nations of antiquity have left nothing more 
 admirable. 
 
 The signs distributed over the body of the serpents are of three 
 classes: numerals, groups of bars or strokes, and a glyph considered 
 a conventionalized representation of fire; further, four tyings in the 
 tails of the monsters. 
 
 All of these elements possess concrete meaning. In the so-called 
 flames, which issue from the back of the serpents, there are also groups 
 of four thick bars. In sum the zone includes the following elements: 
 the heads inclosed in the throats of the serpents, with characteristic 
 headdress and attributes; the scales or body divisions of the creatures 
 themselves; numerals made of dots and groups of four bars distributed 
 in the bodies themselves and in the two terminal bands which go off 
 from the tails; other glyphs situated in the inner line of the body of 
 the serpents, which have been considered conventionalizations of fire, 
 although without noticing that these signs bear numerals; and lastly . 
 the date indicated by the points of the tails and included within a 
 frame, in the upper part of the monoHth. This date is found figured 
 with a cane and thirteen points (13-dcatl). 
 
 Let us commence by observing that the heads which appear in the 
 throats are distinct beings or deities, differentiated by characters 
 
 16 
 
which permit their identification. Both heads protrude the tongues, 
 joining or touching them together in the clearest fashion; here is 
 symbolized the thought of the relief. Archaeologists admit that the 
 tongue symbolizes light in the idols and pictographs representing stars, 
 and it is not possible to doubt it after the demonstration which, with 
 the peculiar sagacity in which no one has equaled him, Senor Chavero 
 gave upon this point, studying the greenstone figure, discovered in 
 Papantla, which in place of the tongue presents the mouth perforated 
 for the material passage of light. In a similar manner, the face of 
 Tonatiuh, central to the relief, has the tongue out signifying the irra- 
 diation of light through the universe. This considered, what could 
 that be which in so graphic a fashion joins these deities who peer out 
 from throats of time, metaphorically figured by the serpents ? The 
 light itself; but their special lights, since here different beings are 
 in question, that is to say, the lights of special celestial bodies. It 
 would be impossible to indicate in more expressive and artistic form 
 the concurrence of two chronological periods determined by the com- 
 bination of stars which renew the same relative positions which 
 they had before. 
 
 Let us undertake to identify the deities; if known, it will be easy 
 to recognize the cycle. The figure of the left semicircumference of 
 the rehef is undoubtedly the sun himself. It is distinguished by the 
 glyph of the forehead, identical with that which adorns the face of the 
 central huehueteotl, although without the two numerals which accom- 
 pany that. The head on the opposite side has not this glyph. The 
 ear ornament, similar to that of Tonatiuh, distinguishes it; the face 
 with the other serpent lacks this. The head of the solar snake 
 has before the nose the sign of the double cane, a character closely 
 related with Tonatiuh and with XiuhtecuhtH, as is seen in the codices. 
 Ome dcail (2-cane) is one of the various names of the sun, and two are, 
 in fact, the figures of the cane here represented. Others have recog- 
 nized in the glyph a handful of herbs, giving us, anyway, the name 
 of Xiuhtecuhtli (lord of the herb and the year). As little does this 
 symbol appear in the face of the opposite serpent. 
 
 On the other hand, the figure on the right shows a netting clearly 
 defined, peculiar to Quetzalcoatl in his multiple representations; in 
 front of the nose is a symbolical glyph which we cannot identify because 
 
 the stone is badly destroyed in this part But that which in a 
 
 special mode distinguishes the two beings is the ear ornament (na- 
 cochtli), which is lacking in the figure to the right and identical with 
 
 17 
 
that which adorns the central Tonatiuh in the figure to the left. The 
 ear ornament possesses distinctive value in the representations of 
 deities. More is not necessary for our purpose; it suffices to aflirm 
 that the sun is the star represented in this figure. 
 
 What star can it be that the other serpent symbolizes ? It is not 
 necessary to meditate long in order to understand it: it is Quetzal- 
 coatl or Venus, the beautiful twin or the plumed serpent, a deity often 
 actually represented in this latter form. Symmetry compelled the 
 artifice of representing by another plumed serpent the corresponding 
 solar cycle; furthermore, the serpent involves the general symboHza- 
 tion of time. The face of Quetzalcoatl wears a net, adornmen t lacking 
 to that of Tonatiuh; it has no ear ornament, and the sign placed before 
 the nose, now badly defaced and difficult to determine, was without 
 doubt that distinctive of the divinity; yet it appears as if it were 
 i-cane, unlike the double one of the sun, which gives us one of the 
 names best known of the personage, Ce dcail (i-cane), the day of his 
 birth. 
 
 The figures identified, it is not difficult to state what chronological 
 period is symbolized in the reunion of the tongues, thalt is to say, of the 
 respective lights of the stars. It is the huekuetiliztli, the sacred cycle 
 of 104 years, indicated in the wrinkled face of the central Tonatiuh; 
 it is the period at whose end the deified celestial bodies return to occupy 
 a certain position in space and the tables of the respective calendars 
 adjust themselves, attaining harmonious development. 
 
 Profound the thought of the astronomer-director of the monu- 
 ment! Here is the form in which the relief expresses it: chronology 
 is born from the movements and relative situation of two stars. In 
 the development of their harmonious revolution, they engender 
 chronological cycles equal as to the time of their termination, but 
 distinct in that which concerns their origin, since the deities who deter- 
 mine them are diverse. Hour after hour the apparent march of the 
 sun and of Venus through the heavens are scrutinized and scrupulously 
 noted in the respective calendars, which advance, one ever upon the 
 'other, until 37,960 days course by, an exact cycle, and then the 
 sacred books (teoamoxtli) complete their round, coinciding with 
 mathematical precision in number and symbol ih the thirteens and the 
 twenties of that marvelous arrangement. 
 
 Fact in truth surprising: in that same moment the stars approach 
 each other in the celestial vault. If the preceding huehuetiliztli began 
 coincidently with the matutinal apparition of Venus, another time 
 
the planet will find itself in the same position; and seeing it then so 
 near the star of day, well might the aboriginal priests imagine that the 
 deities confronting each other kissed, touching tongues, at beginning 
 the new pilgrimage through the vault of space. (Here we will 
 mention the following interesting fact: According to calculations of 
 the Berlin astronomer, Berberich, undertaken' at the suggestion of 
 Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, the evening star and the new moon were visible on 
 the horizon of the valley of Mexico, half an hour after sunset, on March 
 14, 1507, date of the new fire for the Indians.) Together with so 
 poetical, exact, and admirable an allegory, they cherished the persistent 
 tradition that one of these encounters was to bring about the destruc- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 Let us continue the analysis of the seventh zone. If the heads 
 which face each other,- joining tongues, give the huehuetilietli, in the 
 body of the serpents is directly indicated the number 416 which we 
 have met in other parts of the relief. The reading is made from the 
 groups of four rays, interpreted until now as symbols of fire and in 
 various other fashions, all arbitrary or at least vaguely symbolical, as 
 emblems of the highest indefiniteness. Nevertheless, their meaning 
 is most clear: each group says dcatl, Ucpatl, colli, tochtli, names of the 
 four successive years in the ordinary chronology. Very well, the 
 serpent symboHcal of the sun presents 52 groups of four rays equiva- 
 lent to 208 years; added to the 208 corresponding to the other serpent, 
 we have the total of 416 solar years, expressed this time directly, a 
 most interesting fact which we are the first to indicate. Here there is 
 no necessity of recurring to allegorical conceptions. And so deliberate 
 was the intention of inscribing in each one of the serpents precisely 52 
 groups of rays that the artist, not having sufficient space, was compelled 
 to add those bands which issue from the points of the tails, the only 
 element of the relief which might appear somewhat arbitrary or at 
 least not rigorously aesthetic. They are indispensable for the placing 
 of the four groups that were lacking, already three having been dis- 
 tributed at the border of the monument; above the tails, five in the 
 triangular ends of these, three in each arc of its twelve scales, and four 
 in the throats and plumage. The total figure is classic in Indian 
 chronology: there are 52 groups. This number appears in each 
 serpent, a careful examination of the stone sufficing to demonstrate 
 the fact: if up to the present none of the draughtsmen and lithog- 
 raphers who have reproduced the stone — except the most skilful 
 
 19 
 
Iriarte, who devoted four months to the work in order to illustrate a 
 study of Senor Leopoldo Batres — copied this and some of the other 
 elements with exactness, it is because, the meaning of the glyphs being 
 unknown, their number and complicated distribution easily caused 
 them to make errors. Further on we shall say in what the principal 
 errors have consisted and shall speak of one very curious artificial 
 anomaly of the stone. 
 
 We have still to explain the signs which form the scales or divisions 
 or the body of the serpents and to count the numeral dots placed at the 
 border of the stone and around the said divisions. Concerning those 
 Beyer and other archaeologists maintain that they are symbolizations 
 of fire. We have no reason to deny it; but our own opinion is that 
 together they indicate the number of cycles or meetings of Venus and 
 the sun, registered in the firmament and in the calendar departing 
 from some certain date; later we shall see what this may be. With 
 respect to the dots, Senor Chavero counted them and interpreted them 
 well, finding in them the number of days in the native year. Nothing 
 more logical: the cyclical coincidence of the 104 solar years and 65 
 Venus years is effected by the aggregation, one after the other, 
 of series of 365 days. It was natural to place these dots where we find 
 them. And they do not find themselves duplicated in the two ser- 
 pents because it is the common element of both reckonings; it was 
 sufficient to inscribe them once. 
 
 We, however, differ somewhat from Senor Chavero in our way of 
 counting them. There are ten dots each in as many scales, there are 
 eighteen in the single scale which follows the tyings or ligatures, 
 twelve more are circumscribed in the triangle which forms the tail- 
 In sum there are 130 dots on each side, or 260 in going all around, 
 which gives us the fundamental basis of the chronology: the 
 tonal dmatl. If, on the other hand, we count the 63 large points of the 
 border of the stone, added to the hundred of the first ten scales, we 
 have 163 numerals, and with the 18 which follow the tyings, they sum 
 up 181 on each side, or 362 in the entire circumference; almost hidden 
 within the claws of the first scale (the first on each side, of course) are 
 two other points, that is, four altogether. In sum there are 366. This 
 is the result which we obtain, and thus we shall state it, even if in this 
 case it appears a little defective; but we do not attempt, as some 
 interpreters, to fit the facts to our theories, but from the facts them- 
 selves to infer the true decipherment. It might be admitted that this 
 last dot signifies the intercalated day: the native bissextile. 
 
As for the four tyings located on the tail of each serpent, archae- 
 ologists have been in accord in attributing to them the value of so 
 many tlalpilli of 13 years, four of which, as everyone knows, formed 
 the classical xiuhtlalpilli, xipoualli, or xiuhmolpilli of the chronological 
 reckonings: 52 years. Each serpent has four tyings, that is to say, 
 104 solar years are symbolized in the total of the representation. 
 Thus is confirmed the chronological value expressed by the meeting 
 of the heads of the sun and the planet. 
 
 We may add that, on the projected part of the cylinder, there are 
 other glyphs, composed in essence of butterflies with stars, groups of 
 flint knives (tecpatl), and dots to the number of 156. 
 
 DATES 
 
 We arrive at the important matter of the dates inscribed upon the 
 famous monolith. One only has until today been definitely fixed by 
 archaeologists: the ij-dcatl sculptured within a frame between the 
 tails of the serpents. It is the prominent date of the stone, the one 
 engraved with the most deliberate purpose; its position shows it such. 
 
 No one is ignorant that the capital defect of the chronological 
 system of the Indians is that the names of the years repeat themselves 
 every 52 years, each xiuhmollpia. The ij-dcatl (13-canes) of the tablet 
 may be the year 1479, which is the one generally admitted, and 1427 
 and 1375 and 1323 and 1271 and 1167 and 1115 and 1063 and 699, 
 etc., etc. It is certain that the minute account of Duran, invoked 
 by Don Alfredo Chavero, gives much force to the presumption that 
 the date expresses the year in which the monolith was completed, 
 during Axayacatl's reign, in 1479. More than that, the stone was in 
 the great temple of Tenochtitlan; it was found in those precincts; 
 there they buried it again between 1551 and 1569, and there later on 
 it was rediscovered, remaining in the base of one of the towers of the 
 basilica until its transference to the site which it now occupies in the 
 museum. There are reasons, then, for believing that it is the stone 
 described by the friar, the consecration of which was the object of 
 so great ceremonies and to which alludes the statement of the natives, 
 therein cited, that it bore "the figure of the sun." Tezozomoc gives 
 a similar account. 
 
 Withal, this does not go beyond supposition, and there might be 
 reason for doubt amid the multipHcity of conflicting opinions: that 
 the stone was completed in the time of Chimalpopoca, as Don Antonio 
 Penafiel believed; in 1352, as Abadiano asserted; in 103 or 231, dates 
 
which some have claimed to read in the reUef ; and in 699, and that it 
 was made by the Toltecs, as there are very strong reasons for believing. 
 What we may indeed affirm is that we have not here the date with 
 which the last sun or the historic sun began, as Joyce says, and 
 Spinden repeats, because the statements are in agreement, not only 
 in the Aztec traditions but in the Toltec, in assigning the sign Ce 
 tecpatl (i-knife) to this event: the codices prove it without any manner 
 of doubt. What, then, will be the date designated ? We believe that 
 the stone itself will yield the means of solving the problem. 
 
 Let us enumerate the dates of the relief. In the upper rectangular 
 tablet we have seen the one upon which attention has been most 
 turned, the date in which we believe the monument was completed: 
 13-cane. 
 
 Near the face of the sun, in the next following great circle, it will 
 be remembered that we meet with a flint knife with one dot, that is 
 Ce ticpatl. Together with the tecpatl is seen the mamalhuaztU; sign of 
 the new fire. 
 
 In the designs like flames or half-feathers, which project from the 
 irmer border of the serpents, four stout bars are seen upon each. 
 
 The peculiar position of these flames, almost separated from the 
 body of the serpents, symbol as we know of time, seems to us to 
 express previous epochs or cycles, which must be considered as 
 past with reference to the actual era of the world, directly represented 
 in the serpents. They are links separated from the allegorical circle 
 of time. In consonance with the general significance of the glyphs, 
 it does not seem to us illogical to attribute to the said figures a cycle 
 of 416 years, or, what is the same, to give to each bar the value of 
 an Indian century, a huehuetiliztli; we shall see the hypothesis con- 
 firmed. 
 
 Each flame is the emblem of a spark of light, of an'irradiation of 
 solar fire through the universe, irradiation which in the life of the orb 
 is hke a flash, but which for the limited existence of man attains the 
 term of a cycle of 416 years. Being twelve the flames of the entire 
 round, there result 4,992 years, date for which we shall later seek 
 associations. Adding to it the 104 years represented by the meeting 
 of the heads, we arrive at 5,096, a most important date which will give 
 us extraordinary revelations. The importance of the date seems to 
 have led to its repetition, and we meet it figured in the projection of 
 the cylinder. Let us state now, to be proved later, that this year 
 5096 was a 13-acatl; and do not lose sight of the fact that the reading 
 
 22 
 
of the number is made in the bodies of the serpents, whose tails indicate 
 precisely the frame of the 13-cane. 
 
 Let us see now the symbols of the projection. Until the present 
 they have been considered either merely decorative or emblems of the 
 Milky Way. They might metaphorically be the latter ; but they have, 
 at the same time, an exact chronological significance, an idea suggested 
 by Abadiano, although our own judgment in this matter differs in 
 various respects from his. There are two tecpatl (flint knives) which 
 face each other, alternating with itzpapdlotl (obsidian butterflies), 
 which in our conception is the constellation Orion: the small circles 
 crossed by lines clearly show that an asterism is in question. 
 
 There are 32 butterflies; assigning to each the value of a xiuh- 
 mollpia (cycle or bundle of 52 years) gives us among them all 1,664, 
 whose significance we shall seek opportunely. With respect to the 
 knives {tecpatl), they number 64, or, as they are in couples, 32 groups; 
 attributing the same value to them, not an arbitrary hypothesis as 
 we shall see, there is obtained the number 3,328, the double of 1,664, 
 which is the precise product of four periods of 416. Summing this 
 number 3,328 and the preceding 1,664 completes the important date 
 read in the surface of the relief: the year 4492; notice that the series 
 of elements with which we have encountered it are three in accord. 
 One reading confirms the other. We shall undertake to harmonize 
 them with our chronology. 
 
 A third date may be read in the monolith. Each serpent presents 
 twelve scales, or divisions, and each one of these incloses a glyph, 
 symbohcal of fire according to the archaeologists, which is accom- 
 panied by a half-nimieral, that is to say, a half-circle. 
 
 The figure resembles the glyph of the new fires, frequently repre- 
 sented with a double volute, as may be seen, for example, in the edifice 
 of Xochicalco; and the supposition is so much the more probable, 
 considering that the symbohcal serpent ought to grow by equal parts 
 or periods, and here the four tyings of the tail tell us that the serpent 
 represents primordially a chronological value of 52 years. But the 
 half-circles indicate that in each scale only the half-period is to be 
 considered. There being 24 of these divisions, their summation 
 embraces a total of 624 years (24X52-5-2), which, added to the 
 5,096 gives us the year 5720 of native reckoning. 
 
 Soon we shall harmonize this new date with our chronology. If 
 we add the 156 dots inscribed on the cylindrical projection or edge of 
 the reUef , near the butterflies and the flint knives, we attain the date 
 
 23 
 
5876 last in time of those which are read in the monoHth. All pertain 
 to the chronology of the Indians; it is necessary to relate them if 
 possible, to our own. 
 
 Let us repeat in order, for greater clearness: 
 
 Direct, that is to say, by summation 
 of elements 
 
 Year 4992 (twice) 
 Year 5096 
 Year 5720 
 lYear 5876 
 
 (13-. 
 Native reading, for us indirect •! 
 
 dcatl 
 tecpatl 
 
 Two other dates there are, Ce quidhuitl (i-rain) and Chicome 
 ozomatl (7-monkey), below the great central arrow. 
 
 INTERPRETATION 
 
 The historian Ixthlxochitl, great-grandson of the last king of 
 Texcoco, is held to be the most faithful and informed conservator of 
 the traditions, history, and cosmogony of the Toltecs. There reigns, 
 however, the most extraordinary confusion and an incredible disorder 
 in many of the dates which he gives, which is due to the fact that he 
 did not know how to harmonize the native with the Christian chro- 
 nology; but the basis of his narrative, submitted to a vigorous analysis 
 and judiciously pruned, very nearly approaches historic truth, a 
 cahildo of Indian savants (that of San Salvador Quautlancingo) hav- 
 ing certified to the exactitude of his statements. Men of no less merit 
 than Clavijero, Prescott, Count Cortina, Fernando Ramirez, and 
 Manuel Orozco y Berra, have rendered justice to this man, unduly 
 unesteemed by some. 
 
 According to the data of the Relaciones, the human species from 
 the creation of the world on had been three times destroyed: the first 
 time by inundations {Atonatiuh or the sun of water); the second by 
 hurricanes {Ehecatonatiuh or the sun of the air), after a lapse of time 
 equal to that which passed before. The third age concluded in the 
 year 4992, which is just 12 complete cycles of 416 years, and ended by 
 terrestrial calamities (wars, eruptions, earthquakes, etc.), " .... 
 those of this earth had another destruction, who were the giants; 
 and thus also many of the Tultecs died in the year Ce tecpatl 
 (4993); and this age they called Tlacchitonatiuh (sun of earth)." In 
 it Ixthlxochitl places the Uhnecas and the Xicalancas, gives data 
 
 24 
 
regarding Quetzalcoatl, and speaks of the first pyramid of Cholula. 
 The destruction of the giants (quinametzin) marked the end of the 
 era in 4993. 
 
 Be it noticed that the number is equal to three exact periods of 
 1 ,664 years, in its turn made up of 4 cycles of 4 1 6 : and let us not forget 
 the pronounced tendency of the Indians to distribute the evolution of 
 their history in fixed periods of equal duration. Thus is explained 
 the allegory engraved in the center of the relief which represents the 
 four ages of the world, the duration of each one of which appears deter- 
 mined by 4 dots, the chronological value of which has not been dis- 
 covered until now. It is easy for us to suppose that the Toltecs, 
 always obedient to the tetranary conception which permeated such 
 diverse phases of their social organization, their philosophy, and their 
 rehgio-cosmogonic beliefs, would assign to each period, even if it had 
 scarcely begun, 1,664 years, number formed by four great cycles of 
 416 years, made up, they also, of four huehuetiliztli. According to this, 
 the dots on the tablets are valued each one at 416 years, like the flames 
 from the bodies of the serpents and other diverse elements of this 
 admirably co-ordinated product of talent. 
 
 The above might seem to be speculative; but it is a fact that the 
 Texcocan chronicler fixes the date 4992 and that this is read twice in 
 the rehef . Ah well, when 4,992 years had run their course, three ages 
 only had been completed; 104 years later, Ixtlilxochitl afi&rms that the 
 Toltecs initiated a new chronology, "they added the bissextile, in 
 order to adjust the solar year to the equinox," and in fine, they per- 
 fected their calendar, determining the rules relative " to the months, 
 the weeks, and the signs and planets" : the event occured in Ce tecpatl 
 (i-knife) 5097, counting from the creation of the world in the Indian 
 cosmology. 
 
 The important Anales de Cuauktitlan (codex which surpasses all 
 those known in the antiquity and precision of its chronology, which 
 embraces eight great cycles), considered as in apparent disaccord with 
 the Texcocan historian, in reahty confirm the capital data of Ixtlilxo- 
 chitl. They locate the arrival of the mysterious nation of the Ulmecas, 
 in the beginnings of the third age, very nearly a thousand years before, 
 Christ, and categorically fix the beginning of the second Toltec 
 monarchy — ^because in remote times they had constituted another — 
 in the year 674 of our era. Twenty-six years later, the year 700 was 
 Ce iScpatl; and all the traditions affirm that the Toltecs initiated a 
 new epoch in Ce tecpatl. 
 
 25 
 
On his part, the canon Ordonez de Aguiar, to whom are due the 
 most trustworthy data which we possess upon the ancient inhabitants 
 of Chiapas, stated at a little less than a thousand years before the 
 vulgar era the apparition of the Quich'es, a people mysterious until 
 the present, in whom, however, we are not the iirst to suggest affinities 
 with the Ulmecas. Brasseur de Bourbourg discovered many most 
 interesting things. With the estabhshment of the Toltec monarchy 
 or some analogous event of importance, such as the regulation of the 
 chronology, we have seen that the period called the fourth age of the 
 world began. 
 
 Very -well, if the third age began 1,664 years before that event, 
 its commencement dates from the year 964 B.C. Ordonez has dis- 
 covered in the traditions of Chiapas, that "almost a thousand 
 years" before our era, took place the apparition, and began in our 
 territories the migrations, of the Quich'es. Brasseur de Bourbourg, 
 with data from the codices, indicates the coming of the Ulmecas in 
 the Plateau in the year 955 B.C., a date admitted by Chavero in relation 
 to the Vixtoti, who were fundamentally the same people; then is 
 "when the sun began to divide the lands between men." There is 
 but nine years' difference from 964. 
 
 We shall have to infer that the Ulmecas and the Quich'es were the 
 same people, which explains to us the arrival of the first from the east. 
 Some circumstance set them in movement about a thousand years 
 before our era, and about the year 964 or 955 they began to show them- 
 selves in the high table-land of Anahuac, coming from the direction 
 of the Gulf, as all the traditions assert. It is necessary to admit the 
 probability that they constructed. the first pyramids and other monu- 
 ments, as legend persistently claims. Sahagun, Torquemada, and 
 various chroniclers collected the story from the Hps of the Indians, and 
 in our own days Bishop Plancarte y Navarrette urges it with powerful 
 arguments. Also Waldeck, Lenoir, and Orozco y Berra indicate the 
 event as a thing about three thousand years past. 
 
 Somewhere about the year 596 of the vulgar era, date suggested 
 by Clavijero, there appeared on the Plateau, or at least began their 
 movement, the advance guards of the Toltec migration. The. best 
 documents, the Andes de Cuauhtitlan among them, agree that the land 
 was then occupied by the Ulmecas. Some grave event, perhaps the 
 last manifestations of volcanic activity, developed at the time, princi- 
 pally in the valley of Mexico, permitting the newcomers to witness the 
 last ruins of the catastrophe in the regions which had been occupied 
 
 26 
 
by their predecessors; the vestiges of human work fohnd under the 
 lavas of Xictli and of Cerro Pelado in the Pedregal of San Angel and 
 on both slopes of Ajuscp strongly corroborate this hypothesis. It was 
 then the year 4992 in the chronology of the aborigines. After the 
 cataclysm the Toltecs employed another 104 years, a huehuetiliziU, 
 in establishing themselves in the district, and, in the year 700 of our 
 era, founded their final seat, initiated a new period in the fourth age 
 of the world, arranging the chronology, consolidating their monarchial 
 institutions, and electing their first king. 
 
 Chavero agrees with these data, although he believes that six years 
 earlier, in 694, some very important event occurred, which some, like 
 Orozco y Berra, connect with the dedication of the pyramids to the 
 astronomic cult; but he accepts the mentioned date anyway. Tor- 
 quemada had gathered from the traditions which came within his 
 reach the same date 700, adding that the Toltecs had "wandered" 
 for 104 years before, a statement which accords with others that we 
 have. Clavijero and other authors vary slightly as to the founding 
 of Tula, assigning the dates 661, 667, 674 — the Anales de Cuauktitlan 
 gives this — and even 694, given by Motolinia as the year of the 
 beginning of the epoch; but the date mentioned (700 a.d. ; Cetecpatl 
 in the native calendar), whether we relate it to that event or to the 
 exaltation of the first monarch, best resists analysis for which reason the 
 erudite author of the first volume of Mexico a traves de los siglos 
 (Chavero), after a thorough investigation, decides in favor of it. The 
 Anales mentioned, although, they declare that Tula was founded in 
 674, add that the nation existed for twenty-seven years without a 
 monarch, that is to say, they arrived anyhow at the notable date 700. 
 It cannot be denied that the date floats with singular persistency upon 
 the tumultuous waves of tradition. Buelna, whose talent and 
 breadth of documentation no one denies, also encounters it in his 
 investigations, although the learned author of the Peregrinacidn de 
 los Aztecas refers it to one of the principal stations in the journey of 
 the tribe of Tenoch — the arrival at Mexcala or Coathcamac — an 
 assertion with which we do not agree, because it conflicts with the 
 statements of the Codex Ramirez, of Duran, and of Chimalpahin, 
 who unanimously assign a much less ancient date to that event. But 
 even if it is not related to the race of the Mexi, the suggestive thing is 
 that this date appears in all the studies, so that surely it does allude 
 to some event of capital importance in the history of the aborigines ; 
 and all the circumstances had us admit that it treats of the Toltecs. 
 
 27 
 
The relative littleness of the discrepancies which we mention in itself 
 manifests the effective exactness of the chronology in question. 
 There are those who (Seler, Joyce) in place of the year 700 prefer to 
 assign the initial references of the document of Cuauhtitlan, relative 
 to the Toltecs, to the year 752; the fact that this date is just a 
 bundle of years after the other, united to other testimonies, confirms 
 our opinion that that is the correct one.' Ixtlilxochitl and the 
 Anales de Cuauhtitlan result then on the whole in agreement: the 
 5 ear 700 of the vulgar era is 5097 of the chronology of the Indians. 
 Here foUows a most important passage from Ixtlilxochitl, which 
 one might almost say was directly deduced from the data of the rehef : 
 
 .... In the year 5097 of the creation of the world, which was Ce tecpatl, 
 and 104 from the total destruction of the quinametzin (giants) , there being 
 peace throughout this New World, all the Toltec savants came together, 
 the astrologers as well as the other arts in HUehuetlapallan, head city of 
 their kingdom, where they treated of many things such as the events and 
 calamities that had happened and the movement of the heavens since the 
 creation of the world. 
 
 There leaps to view the allusion to the famous meeting of Toltec 
 astronomers, which certainly did not occur in the remote district of 
 the Gila, as has erroneously been claimed — in any event, there were 
 various of these assemblies — meeting in which was made the re- 
 organization of the calendar. This important reunion took place in 
 the year 5097 from the creation of the world (native chronology), year 
 that was Ce tecpatl in its series (commenced with the same name and 
 number) . 
 
 We have before seen that some event of the greatest importance 
 for that people occurred in the year 700 of the Christian Era, and the 
 synchronological tables (see those of Veytia) tell us without room for 
 error that that year 700 was Ce tecpatl. At the same time, the para- 
 graph of the Texcocan chronicler states that the third age of the world 
 ended in 4992, since that 104 years before 5097 the quinametzin 
 perished; this was the Tlacchitonatiuh, or the sun of the earth 
 {Tlaltonatiuh) . So that the Indians considered their third epoch 
 finished in the year 596, and it is to be noticed that three historians 
 Torquemada, Clavijero, and Veytia, are in harmony regarding this 
 
 I And Seler himself, so learned and well documented generally, studying 
 similar problems affirms {Origenes de las Civilisationes centro-americanas) that the 
 beginning of the Toltec culture and of the system of the tonaldmatl, or "the historic 
 sun" for the Indians, dates from an epoch which oscillates about the year 700 a.d. 
 
 28 
 
date; but as they delayed a century (104 years) in consolidating and 
 regulating the calendar, they adopted the year 700 for the chrono- 
 logical beginning. 
 
 Ah well, the monument of the museum shows the two dates clearly: 
 in the glyphs on the backs of the serpents, which summed with the 104 
 years of the meeting of the heads give the number 5,096, and in the 
 glyphs at the margin of the stone, alluding to the facts already passed, 
 which express the number 4,992. In order to confirm it with noonday 
 clearness, here is the character Ce tecpatl, joined to the face of Tona- 
 tiuh in a prominent part of the relief; here are also the four cosmogonic 
 ages; -here at the edge of the stone the hieroglyphs alluding to the 
 three ages completed. The reference could not be more explicit. The 
 monolith appears worked expressly to record the facts discussed at 
 the memorable assembly of the astronomers, that "movement of the 
 heavens and the calamities that have occurred since the creation of the 
 world." Already we know what these were: Chavero has read them to 
 perfection in the rectangles which surround the naolin: Ehecatonatiuh, 
 Tletcnatiuh, Atonatiuh, and Tlaltonatiuh, which was the present, 
 initiated by Ce tecpatl: the ages, suns, and catastrophes of the air, fire, 
 water, and earth. Already we know the meaning of the "movement 
 of the heavens," that it was nothing else than the cycles of 104 and 416 
 years, determined by the harmonious interlocking of the periods of 
 the sun and of Venus, which is what the union of the magnificent 
 serpents symbolizes. 
 
 And what is the native year 5097 in our chronology ? The syn- 
 chronological tables, Ixtlilxochitl, and the Anales, each in its own style, 
 tell us: This Ce tecpatl, comTnencement of the Toltec epoch within 
 the fourth age of the world, corresponds to 700 of the vulgar era, when 
 the compatriots of Huemantzin declared their new history begun and 
 founded the second Tula, or, what is more probable, elected their 
 monarch Mixcoamazatzin, as Chavero says. Torquemada gives the 
 same year, but changes the king's name to Totepeuh; and Motolinia 
 varies only by six years, since he says that the present age commenced 
 in 694, while the tables prove that the Ce tecpatl mentioned by Ixtlil- 
 xochitl could only be 700.' So many testimonies give force; it might 
 
 ' Further, the narratives of the history of the Aztecs and their precedessors, 
 the Culhuas (who were Toltecs), which were ordered to be written down by the 
 daughter of Motecuhzoma, Dona Isabel, and which were published by Senor 
 Icazbalceta, coincide in assigning to the first king a year of the eighth century, 
 which is notably near to the year 700. Certainly the princess utilized the services 
 of some truly learned native priest. 
 
 20 
 
indeed be believed, and we have been driven seriously to think that 
 the stone of the museum was made a little after the year 700 a.d., by 
 the hands of a people who, on account of their knowledge in the arts 
 and sciences, have left fame in the traditions as learned and artistic. 
 
 For fuller measure! The year 699 was a 13-dcatl, the date indi- 
 cated by the tails of the serpents in whose heads and bodies we have 
 read so simply the number 5,096. Whatever chronological tables, 
 those of Veytia, for example, corroborate this assertion. There is 
 nothing venturous, in the presence of so many and such circumstances 
 in claiming that the monument dates from 1,200 years back and that it 
 was sculptured in record of the most famous assembly of Toltec 
 astronomers, meeting of which this relief seems the imperishable 
 official record. As we think how it has resisted the destructive 
 agencies of the past five hundred years, we hope that it may defy the 
 kiss of one and of many myriads. 
 
 There is another circumstance suggesting the Toltec origin of the 
 stone, at least as concerns the ideas represented: the importance 
 which the planet Venus has in the relief. Quetzalcoatl was the symbol 
 of the star; Quetzalcoatl changed himself into Vesper, states the 
 fragment attributed to Olmos, Hystoyre du Mechique; Quetzalcoatl 
 was the evening star, declares the commentators of Codex Vaticanus 
 A. Ah well, Quetzalc6a,tl was pre-eminently the product, the most 
 perfect personification of that race. Son of Ixtacmixcoatl, "the 
 serpent of the white clouds" (the Milky Way), tradition says that 
 this personage was one of the brothers engendered by the divine 
 creator, that is to say, one of the original races, called Olmecas, 
 Xicalancas, etc. The Codex Dehesa confirms the legend, since it 
 shows the last beginning their pilgrimage into the heavens. It 
 would not be the first people that has deified its progenitors! 
 Quetzalcoatl is then the representative of the Toltecs, its symbol, its 
 metaphorical incarnation, and the Toltec priests and kings were 
 accustomed to adopt his name. And Quetzalcoatl is also the evening 
 star. Already we have been able to explain to ourselves that they 
 deified him, and that from his movements combined with those of the 
 star of day they made the basis of their chronological system, the basis 
 of their calendar. This being the product of the thirteens and the 
 twenties arranged by cycles of 52 and of 104 years, it obviously results 
 that the adorers of the star are the inventors of the system the true 
 inventors of the tonaldmatl. Logical, in truth, that the symbols of 
 the star should figure in a prominent part of the cyclographic stone! 
 
 30 
 
To summarize: Repeat the reading of the characters of basalt, 
 combining scrupulousness with analytical rigor, and always the same 
 data will be found: the four ages of the world, the number 4,992 
 twice placed (in one of which the numbers 1,664 figures), the number 
 5,096, the 13-dcatl correspondent to the same year, the Ce tecpatl, the 
 following year (5097), and the cycles of 104 and 416 solar years 
 indicated in different modes, the dates mentioned being the result 
 of the addition of these same cycles. Simple and highly logical con- 
 ception! 
 
 Translating this into our language and relating it to modern 
 chronology, aided by documents as authoritative as the Anales de 
 Cuauhtitlan and the Relaciones of Ixtlilx6chitl, both natives, we may 
 say: The date 5096 corresponds to the year 699 of the Christian Era; 
 this year was a 13-dcatl, and 1,664 years had passed since 964 B.C. when, 
 in their legends, with discrepancies of about nine years, the natives 
 declared the third era of the world began, assigning ±0 it a duratioh of 
 four cycles of 416 years. The 3 2 itzpapalotl (obsidian butterflies) of the 
 edge of the rehef, each symbolical of a new fire, confirm this assertion. 
 One hundred and four years before the year 4992 of their chronology 
 it is declared that the quinametzin were destroyed. (Upon the prob- 
 able origin of these beings, consult Hamy, Anthropologie du Mexique; 
 we speak of it also in our Historia de Puebla.) The Toltec savants 
 met together then and discussed the creation of the world, the calami- 
 ties that had occurred, and the movement of the heavens : this means 
 that they proceeded to the regulation of the calendar, basing it upon 
 the observations of the heavenly bodies. Sahagiin says that "the 
 Toltecs knew the movement of the heavens and this by the stars.'' 
 "Clavijero met with data that suggested something analogous, since 
 he declares that the astronomer Huemantzin, governing Ixtlilcuecha- 
 huac, made the sacred book, the Teoamoxtli, wherein was explained 
 the movement of the heavens, and assigns to the event a date suffi- 
 ciently near, the year 660. It is this same date that Boturini fixes 
 for the beginning of what he calls the third age. Both authorities 
 agree in the fundamental fact, but the rigorous and most minute 
 chronology of the Anales, recording the dates 674 and 700, is irre- 
 proachable; to it we ought to attach ourselves, supported by the double 
 authority of Torquemada and Chavero: that the year 700 was Ce 
 tecpatl is certain. How not to record permanently the account of that 
 reunion in which had been condensed the wisdom, the legends, and 
 even the auguries and predictions of a race which lived ever scrutinizing 
 
 31 
 
the secret of the firmament! No more fitting means existed than to 
 sculpture it in indestructible material, which should preserve the 
 marvelous secret for following ages. 
 
 If the relief of the museum is that commemorative monument, we 
 must admit that its glyphs, so long mysterious, were the work of a 
 master-workman and the conception of a mind which in genius does 
 not yield before Hipparchus, nor Kepler, nor Newton, nor Arago. 
 Thus Bullock was impelled to declare: ". . . . The stone is a con- 
 spicuous proof of the perfection to which those races had attained in 
 certain sciences: even in the most enUghtened cities of the present 
 day, there are few persons who would be capable of executing such 
 a work." 
 
 Slow has been our analysis, and we have succeeded in making the 
 decipherment only step by step, strengthened with the most important 
 codices and confirmed by the most notable monuments, as we shall see 
 later on. But to the eyes of the Mexicans of Tenochtitlan, who placed 
 the relief in a prominent part of their temple, whether they worked 
 it themselves or received it already made, the reading was easy and 
 significant in the extreme. Translating it, so far as is possible, its 
 form would be more or less as foUows: 
 
 In the year 4992 the third age of the world came to an end; with four 
 more great rounds, four ages. At its termination Tonatiuh and Quetzalcoatl 
 met in the heavens, and in the ionaldmatl it was Ce cipactli, the first of the 
 count. It was the end of the year 13-dcail. One hundred and four years 
 later the Toltec savants founded their city and elected a king, and the old 
 men, the astronomers, and the principal diviners having assembled said: 
 We are about to commence again the count of time. And they did so with 
 the commencement of the following year, Ce tecpatl, which was the SjOgyth 
 year from the creation. And they added that this age would have to end 
 through terrestrial calamities, after 4X416 years, since the preceding ages 
 had come to end through the force of water, of air, and of fire, because so 
 the two lords of heaven, who come together every 8 and 104 years, will it. 
 And they decided to record it in a monument, strong and eternal as time, 
 that it should be preserved in the history of the world. 
 
 Strange coincidence! Four hundred and sixteen years after the 
 foundation in 11 16, the flourishing empire of the Toltecs is destroyed ! 
 This is not a date which we arbitrarily suppose : Torquemada, placing 
 the last monarch Achauatzin at that time, and Veytia give the testi- 
 mony; the learned Orozco y Berra states it; Chavero resolutely accepts 
 it. The Anales de Cuauhtitlan vary by just 52 years, which, even if it 
 
 32 
 
were erroneous, gives an indirect confirmation.* But the date is not read 
 upon the monument, nor would it be possible to find it there, admitting 
 that it was worked before that event in memory of the meeting of the 
 Toltec astronomers. There arises one question then: if the construc- 
 tor was that people, how did its monument come to be in the teocalH 
 of a Mexican city ? 
 
 Let us agree first that the people of Tenoch considered itself the 
 heir of the Toltec culture, and that it had accepted it almost in its 
 entirety; on that account it is often compared to the Roman con- 
 querors, conquered themselves in turn by the superiority of Greek 
 culture. 
 
 We know that they belonged to one ethnic family, since both 
 spoke Nahuatl. Moreover, a multitude of circumstances exist which 
 permit the affirmation that the Mexicans descended directly from the 
 Toltecs, with whom they had a very close relationship. It would not 
 be strange then that, encountering a monument which in so notable 
 a fashion summarized the wisdom classic for them, they should 
 carefully preserve it and even erect it in their greatest temple. The 
 question of transportation as little involves difficulty, supposing 
 that it was transported from the pyramids or from Tula. Taking 
 into consideration the data of geology, modern archaeologists 
 recognize that the rock mass must have been transported, at least 
 from the mountains of Aculco, the nearest locality where this kind of 
 basalt is to be found. If the Aztecs could transport a monolith of 
 30 tons' weight from there, they could have done so from a greater 
 distance, for example, from Teotihuacan, sacred city concerning which 
 more and more reasons accumulate for maintaining that it was the 
 Toltec metropolis. The pyramids are not much farther from Mexico 
 than Chalco; and it will be remembered that scarcely two or three 
 decades ago there was brought from there a monument, the one called 
 Omecihuatl, goddess of water or the moon, almost as large as the 
 relief of the museum. 
 
 We come now to another consideration. Ixlililxochitl expressly 
 declares against the thesis of various authorities, that the past ages 
 were three and that the Toltecs initiated the fourth in the year 
 Ce tecpatl. He says that the fourth age "has to finish," a phrase 
 signifying that it was the present one. The sign tecpatl, placed in the 
 relief to the left, above the face of the sun, eloquently confirms that 
 assertion: it initiates the epoch which the constructors held as con- 
 temporaneous. We know from Gama, Boturini, and other authorities 
 
 33 
 
that the initial character of the epoch among the Mexicans was 
 tochtli; hence t&cpatl belongs exclusively to the Toltec chronology. 
 There exist presumptions, then, for thinkmg that the relief condenses 
 the Toltec chronology, reckoning from the chronological reform 
 instituted by that people. Further, remember that in the border of 
 the stone, from whose position it is easy to infer that they refer to past 
 ages, are encountered gl3^hs cprresponding to three ages only, which 
 shows that the face of the monolith is destined to the actual or historic 
 sun, as is reasonable to suppose. 
 
 Why then are the ages represented in the figure of the naolin four ? 
 If the work were that of the Aztecs, the explanation is very simple : 
 the fourth age beginning in the year 700 of the Christian Era, or 5097, 
 of the Indian chronology, the people of Tenoch would consider it 
 ended with the destruction of Tula, reserving to their own history a 
 fifth sun, which is what Gama, Orozco y Berra, Chavero, and other 
 historians believe. Thus would be explained the fact that the numeral 
 situated below the arrow of the naolin is a little smaller than the 
 others: it represents the fifth age, not yet terminated; therefore it is 
 smaller. We confess that this reading has offered itself to our mind 
 with singular insistence. 
 
 Nevertheless, it does not harmonize with the tetranary preoccupa- 
 tion of the natives; and, above all, it is possible for the four figured 
 ages to be explained within the first hypothesis, that is, that the Tol- 
 tecs have been the constructors of the stone, or even that the Mexicans 
 did not believe that they lived in another than the fourth age. A 
 paragraph from Veytia will give us suggestive light upon the matter, 
 more especially as he speaks precisely of the meeting of the Tula 
 astronomers. He says: 
 
 In the city of Huehuetlapallan, famous and numerous population, 
 there came together not only the learned astrologers who were of that city 
 but others who came from the surrounding populations, who, after con- 
 ferring together at length over the errors which they had recognized in their 
 computations, determined that the duration of the world ought to be 
 divided into four periods or ages, which had to end by the violence of each 
 one of the four elements. The first age, Atonatiuh, from the Creation to 
 the Deluge, which they called the Age of Water, Atonatiuh. The second 
 from the Deluge up to the hurricanes in which, by the force of the winds 
 they had suffered the second calamity, and so they called this second age 
 Ehecatonatiuh. The third, in which they were, they said had to come 
 to an end by earthquakes, and so they called it Tlatonatiuh, sun of the- 
 
 34 
 
earth; and after this follows the fourth and last age of the world, which 
 has to end by the violence of fire, and thus they call it Tletonaiiuh, which is 
 to say sun of fire. 
 
 Certain discrepancies with respect to the order of the suns will 
 be noted, which is different in Veytia, in Ixtlilxochitl, and in the stone; 
 on the other hand, this (the stone) agrees in the said particular with 
 the "anonymous Codex of Gama" or Chimalpopoca. There also 
 appears an error of 104 years (a native century) in the accounts of the 
 Texcocan historian, and other divergencies are not lacking. This is 
 inevitable in treating of so remote events, necessarily vague in their 
 nature. But there is a fundamental accord in the data which cannot 
 be denied; in any event, the relief is the unimpeachable authority to 
 which in the last instance we must attend. 
 
 The Toltecs believed, as we have shown, that they lived in the 
 third age of the world, as Boturini and Veytia suppose, or at the 
 beginning of the fourth, as is stated by Ixtlilxochitl. Their traditions 
 told them that each one of the anterior ages had lasted a definite num- 
 ber of fixed periods of 416 years: the first 1,664 — or a bundle more, 
 according to the data of the Texcoco chronicler, apparently in error 
 by 52 years in this account; the second the same length. They found 
 themselves at the end of the third, and held it finished at the expira- 
 tion of four new cycles of 416 years each. Here indeed Ixtlilxochitl 
 appears exact, stating definitely the date 4992, which are 12 great 
 periods or 48 Indian centuries. Then occurred the destruction of 
 many of the autochthonous inhabitants of the plateau as the result 
 of a catastrophe (apparently volcanic eruptions) whose last mani- 
 festations the Toltecs themselves witnessed; one huehuetiliztli sepa- 
 rates this event from the consolidation of the monarchy of Tula. 
 
 Clavijero, who places the arrival of the people in the year 596 
 A.D., indirectly confirms the thesis, since from then to 700 there passed 
 just one native century. Torquemada also speaks of their wandering 
 for 104 years. Chavero admits the same date, 596 a.d., although he 
 refers it to the beginning of the peregrination. Buschmann also 
 states it. 
 
 They let these years go by then in consolidating themselves or in 
 wandering, and in the year 5097, Ce tecpatl, which was 700, they 
 initiated the fourth age of the world. Chavero claims that they then 
 elected their first monarch; Boturini, Gama, and the majority of 
 authorities agree that the Toltec chronology began with Ce tecpatl. 
 There are those who place the event at the year 713 and even 719 and 
 
 35 
 
721, an insignificant discrepancy. Motilinia comes much nearer, 
 giving the date 694. M. Remi Simeon, very competent in these 
 matters, says that in 690 the Toltecs established the state which was 
 to last more than four centuries, and we read it also in the Andes de 
 Cuauhtitlan and in Gomara. The assertion of this chronicler is of 
 particular precision: "Counting from then [the beginning of the 
 historic period among the Indians] until the end of 1552, their sun 
 [age] has 858 years." But it must not be forgotten that, according 
 to the tables, only the year 700 was Ce tecpatl, and Ixtlilxochitl has 
 told us that in that Ce tecpatl the meeting occurred. The illustrious 
 Orozco y Berra, whose scrupulousness in comparison of data and sub- 
 mitting the very last document to rigorous analysis, is proverbial, 
 states precisely the two most important dates 4993 and 5097, a fact 
 that lends irrefrangible value to our inferences; thus he himself points 
 out in the Andes that of 700 and admits that of 694, giving it for the 
 beginning of the epoch. 
 
 They celebrated at its time the famous assembly which left so 
 deep a trace in their traditions, which all the chroniclers mention: 
 there was narrated the history of the world; the calendar was arranged, 
 based upon the cycles of 52 and 104 years, through the interlocking 
 of the thirteens and the twenties (the tonddmatl) ; and it is probable 
 that the astrologers also indicated the end of the era beginning, and 
 which calculations, experience, and the tetranary concept had natur- 
 ally to fix in periods of 416 years. All this, finally, was condensed in 
 indestructible characters of basalt. 
 
 What strangeness then was there in seeing there stamped the four 
 ages of the world's history although only three had passed ? Veytia 
 says, alluding to the Toltecs, that "the future ages will be equal to 
 the past." Therefore their duration appears to be indicated on the 
 relief with the four numerals inclosed in each rectangle, and of which 
 we have not yet treated. Now one conjecture regarding their signifi- 
 cance offers itself to us : each one of these represents a great cycle 
 of 416 years and between them all 1,664, exact length of the three 
 periods gone by. It may be said that the stone confirms with mathe- 
 matical exactness the chronology of Ixtlilxochitl, followed by Boturini 
 and Veytia; the interpretations of the Codex Vaticanus, imagined by 
 Humboldt and admitted in great part by Chavero and other authors 
 who give to the native cosmogony about 18,000 years existence for 
 the world, fall to the ground. The basalt, unimpeachable text of the 
 Nahoan cosmogony, and chronology, proves that Ixtlilxochitl was very 
 
 36 
 
near the correct; he gives the total number precisely and only exceeds 
 by a single bundle (52 years) in the two first partial figures, indicating 
 1,716 instead of r,664. 
 
 And indeed, here again a hypothesis which seems probable to us; 
 the Toltecs persuaded that the fourth age was to be the last and that it 
 would have to endure another 4X416 years, judged in accordance with 
 the tetranary philosophy, did not hesitate to carve its symbol on the 
 monolith, assigning to it the duration which they believed foreordained 
 by the lords of the firmament. 
 
 In this mode the figures of the relief are reconciled with the sup- 
 position that the Toltecs were its constructors. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are those who, in the numerals of the rectangles 
 read the names of the days in which the catastrophes occurred. That 
 the ages had their end in those days (4-ocelotl, 4-ekecaU, 4-quidhuitl, 
 and 4-atf) in fact is stated in the Leyenda de los soles, which is added 
 to the manuscript of the museum, which contains the Anales de 
 Cuauhtitlan, and in this codex itself, both declaring that the fifth sun 
 would have to end in the day 4-ollin. Chavero, and, following his 
 example, many competent contemporary authors (Seler, Joyce, 
 Spinden, etc.) have adopted an analogous point of view. 
 
 Were not the said reading supported in so important documents, 
 we should not take the supposition, really almost puerile, into serious 
 consideration. Further, it contradicts the Codex Vaticanus, picto- 
 graph which assigns to the catastrophes — and be it noted to three 
 only, which is also done by the Tellerian Codex — very different dates, 
 lo-atl, for atemoztli, i-ocelotl for pachtli, and g-ollin for xilomaniztli. 
 But the assertion fits so well with the data of the relief, that the 
 hypothesis that this was the work of the Toltecs receives a rude blow. 
 The reading of the four rectangles appears simple : they are the dates 
 when the four first ages ended: as to the naolin at the center, with its 
 great numerals, it may be interpreted as the fifth, or Mexican age, 
 which has to end with the day 4-ollin. In such event, it was inscribed 
 by that people, who then appear the constructors of the monoliths. 
 
 The argument is strong, although, as has been seen, Rios, Boturini, 
 Veytia, and IxtUlxochitl do not agree with the Anales in the matter. 
 Nevertheless, our museum possesses a most important specimen, 
 which supports our first and logical reading, reinforcing the narra- 
 tions of the Texcocan writer. It is a stone of cubical form, approxi- 
 mately 0.50 m. on a side, with a border of solar and Venus gylphs 
 
 37 
 
identical with those of the relief. Upon the lateral faces of the cube, 
 the four ages are represented with their respective dots, being identical 
 with the symbols of the chronographic stone or relief of the museum. 
 
 The fifth age is met nowhere. We must beheve that if the 
 aborigines had conceived a fifth sun, the Ollintonatiuk, they would 
 have engraved its figure upon the upper face of the cube: there is no 
 such thing on it. The reality is expressed in the monolith which is 
 called the monohth of Tenanco: four are the ages figured, and the last 
 (here, as in the Codex Fuenleal, is that of water) is not inclosed, as 
 are the others, by means of a band, which demonstrates that they did 
 not consider it as concluded. Also there are seen, joined to each 
 epoch, three great dots and other two smaller that is to say, four 
 larger numerals together: they represent the duration of the four 
 epochs equal in all. 
 
 In her most important work {The Fundamental Principles of Old 
 and New World Civilizations), Mrs. Nuttall, showing in this an analo- 
 gous mode of thought, maintains that the Mexicans (not the Toltecs) 
 beheved that they lived in the fourth age of the world; Dr. Henning, 
 author of profound studies in these particulars, supposing the begin- 
 ning to be the sun of air, the Ehecatonatiuh, says that at the time of the 
 discovery of America the natives were living precisely in the fourth 
 era — this in his Study of the Date 4-Ahau; Charencey suggests a 
 similar idea in the study Des dges ou soleils apres la mythologie; the 
 same savant has told us that this belief prevailed among the Cak- 
 chiquels, and Dr. Brinton makes us know a similar thing with respect 
 to the chronicles of Chilam Balam, that is to say, with respect to the 
 Mayas. 
 
 It is possible, therefore, to read in the relief the expression of the 
 cosmogonic ages, admitting that its constructors believed themselves 
 to belong to the fourth. The great ollin, with the head of Tonatiuh 
 in the middle, alludes not to a fifth era but only to the movement of 
 the orb between the solstices and the equinoxes, as Gama supposed; 
 and the numerals signify the four huehuetiliztli which we have read in 
 them. 
 
 MARKS or THE AZTEC CIVILIZATION 
 
 The presence of the four ages represented in the asps of the naolin 
 having been explained in a manner sufficiently rational and supported 
 upon respectable historians, the hypothesis that the Toltecs were the 
 authors of the relief remains in the field. And in truth, whoever they 
 may have been, the monument expresses nothing but the history, the 
 
 38 
 

 
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THE FOUR CHRONOGRAPHIC CYCLES OF VENUS (QUETZALC6aTL) 
 Page 72 of the Borgian Codex 
 
traditions, and the chronology of that so long mysterious race. The 
 so-called Aztec Calendar, which would better be called the Toltec 
 Calendar, is the expression par excellence of the culture of the subjects 
 of Huemantzin, worthy hieroglyph of the people who left to posterity 
 renown of artistic and wise. Here could not be met a higher conden- 
 sation of beauty and of genius! There is no necessity of a better 
 argument to prove that that race, inventor of the astronomical 
 religion and of the worship of the beautiful twin (Quetzalcoatl), who 
 was in reality but the morning and the evening star, had a real exist- 
 ence and was not a myth as has been suggested. Here is, at last, 
 basis for the first chapter of the uncertain and so many times discussed 
 history of the aboriginal civiUzations. 
 
 But we have to subject to a rigorous study the possibility certainly 
 not weak, that the Aztecs have been the constructors. Before all, we 
 ought to ask ourselves: Would it be possible that the subjects of 
 lUiuicamina or of Axayacatl would have worked with exquisite ele- 
 gance and art a stone which contains the expression of the science 
 and traditions of another people ? Although remarkable, the case 
 is not absurd, considering that it treated of the science, traditions, and 
 calendar, fully admitted by the nation, which they considered as the 
 fountain of all their culture. We yet preserve the Greek Zodiac in 
 such wise that an Athenian of the time of Hipparchus, if he were to 
 live again, would be astonished to see in plates and maps the conception 
 of the heavens which his contemporaries had. 
 
 But it cannot be believed that the Aztecs would fail to leave some 
 trace, some mark, some date peculiar to themselves in a work of such 
 an extraordinary kind. If investigators do not succeed in discovering 
 something characteristic, some datum definitely Aztec, it will have to 
 be decidedly admitted that, encountered where the monoUth was, the 
 Mexi limited themselves to transporting it to Tenochtitlan, erecting 
 it in a site adequate to its merit (and the Aubin Codex, in its first 
 pages, narrates something which might lend support to the con- 
 jecture). 
 
 We have minutely examined the monument, and we shall honestly 
 say what appears, without claiming certainty, in so difficult a point. 
 That it expresses Toltec ideas and dates is for us indisputable; but 
 it is possible to admit that the tenochca should have engraved the 
 same fundamental ideas upon a reUef , adding some date of their own, 
 and this is what we desire that the reader shall infer from our study, 
 limiting ourselves to presenting the elements of the analysis. The 
 
 39 
 
account of Fray Diego Duran, invoked by Don Alfredo Chavero to 
 demonstrate that this is the monument of Axayacatl, possesses much 
 importance ; but it does not command complete confidence, since it 
 may refer to another stone. No one is ignorant of how many con- 
 fusions have been produced in this direction, insistently calling, for 
 example, a "sacrificial stone" a monument which has nothing of that 
 character, or declaring another to be a "gladiatorial stone" which is 
 totally dissimilar to one. There are reasons for admitting that the 
 relief of the museum was the stone described by the friar; but until 
 now it has not been proved, and we believe that Seiior Chavero worked 
 upon a contestable supposition. 
 
 Although the date inscribed in the frame corresponds to the date 
 1479, of the reign of Axayacatl, it corresponds also to the date 699 
 of the vulgar era, 5096 from the creation of the world in the Toltec 
 chronology; and as we read this last number in the figures that adorn 
 the body of the serpents, and precisely the extreme triangles of the 
 serpents indicate the frame with their tips, it would not be absurd 
 to understand the thought of the artist in this mode: the stone com- 
 memorates the year 5096, which was ij-dcatl in the chronological series. 
 Consulting the tables of the calendar of the Indians it is seen that in 
 fact the year 699 was 13-dcatl. 
 
 Therefore the date with which we deal will not by itself alone 
 decide the problem, since it gives occasion to two apparently legiti- 
 mate interpretations. But we believe it possible to read, and actually 
 without violence, a frankly Aztec date in the glyphs of the relief. 
 Already we have said how it is met, counting one by one the ciphers 
 stamped on the scales or divisions of the serpents. These divisions 
 are 24; each one inclosing the glyph of fire, its value complete would 
 amount to 52 years; but the half-circle added to each scale indicates 
 that only half is to be taken, that is to say, 26. This gives us 624 
 years; summing these to the 5,096 before read, we get the number 
 5,720. The number issues, so to say, from the body of the serpents, 
 added to the actual elements those which their positiofi shows are 
 past. We might attribute their complete value to the scales: they 
 represent in this manner 1,248 years which summed with the 416 of 
 the Uttle bars distributed in the bodies reaches precisely the number 
 1,664; but this is not the actual date, but the future end of the current 
 age. When the artist engraved the half-circles, it is reasonable to 
 assume that he had a definite purpose: his entire problem consisted 
 in distributing the elements. 
 
 40 
 
We introduce nothing new or arbitrary into the calculation, except 
 considering the scales on divisions of the serpents as indicative each of 
 onexipoualli. Thisdoes not involvean absurd conjecture. The serpent 
 is time, which grows by fixed periods; each part of its body represents 
 without doubt a new period. What could this be except that symbol- 
 ized in the tails of the emblematic beings, the cycle of 52 years ? The 
 native belief that serpents carry their age marked in this part of their 
 body is well known. 
 
 The result has been the number 5,720 of the Indian chronol- 
 ogy. Related to our calendar, starting from the year 5097, which we 
 already know was the year 700 of the vulgar era, we find it to be 
 1323 of the Christian Era. The date not only belongs sharply to the 
 Aztec history, but is in a certain sense the most important in its annals, 
 since it was the date of the founding of Mexico. This the Icazbalceta 
 Codex, commonly known as the Fuenleal, clearly affirms. Very 
 natural that the Tenochca, whether they were of the time of Axaya- 
 catl or whatever other monarch, in putting upon the relief their 
 chronological system (admitting the supposition) such as they had 
 received it from the civilizing race, should desire to add to it the record 
 of the foundation of their own metropolis, date memorable for them. 
 If our reading is correct, the monument decides definitely a historic 
 point, which has been bitterly discussed: Tenochtitlan was founded in 
 the year which, with little variation, the Mendoza Codex, Chimal- 
 pahin, Clavijero, and the learned Orozco y Berra maintain. 
 
 No one is ignorant of how much historical writers have vacillated 
 upon this point. Duran, the illustrious Don Jose F. Ramirez, and 
 Chavero have decided upon 13 18, upon the authority of the Anales de 
 Cuauhtitlan; on their part, the Tira de Tepechpan, the Aubin and the 
 Vatican codices lend their support to the date 13 12, although the two 
 first documents apparently declare the year 1364;' the cacique of 
 Tlaxcala, Juan Ventura Zapata, incUned to 1321; Tezozomoc pre- 
 ferred 1326: and Sigiienza y Gongora, Vetancurt, and the Franciscan 
 relations arrive at 1327, although Torquemada fixed 1341 and Enrico 
 Martinez 1357. But the Mendoza Codex, Mendieta, Chimalpahin, 
 Clavijero, and Don Manuel Orozco y Berra incline in favor of the 
 years 1324 or 1325; and the said Codex Fuenleal, most important 
 document, gives exactly 1323. The stone, unimpeachable text, 
 demonstrates that, with very slight difference, these last find them- 
 selves in the certainty, at least so far as relates to the official 
 
 ' See our study, La fundacidn de Tenochtitlan. 
 
 41 
 
date, as we might say the year in which they made the celebration of 
 the event. This was the one always recorded in their annals by the 
 Indians, who customarily made them fall upon the termination of a 
 cycle. 
 
 Some other Aztec date ought to be found upon the reUef. Perse- 
 cuted and miserable as the Aztecs were at the time of the foundation 
 of their city, the Mexicans were not in condition to work so grand a 
 monument. .And if they erected it later, it is clear that they would 
 have desired to mark the date of the work. All peoples proceed in 
 this way in a similar case. 
 
 Let us seek this date. Around the cylinder, over the projected 
 part, there are 156 dots in a continuous series, which we may under- 
 stand as so many other numerals. If we add them to the date 
 5720, we reach the 5876 of the native calendar. Singular fact! 
 That year is precisely 1479 of our era, in which it is said that the 
 emperor Axayacatl inaugurated a commemorative stone. From 
 1323, date of the foundation of Mexico, to 1479 precisely 156 years 
 passed, the date of the commemoration being again a 13-dcatl. 
 Is this merely a coincidence ? Is the monolith of the museum then 
 the stone of Axayacatl ? 
 
 According to whether the procedure whereby we have found these 
 last dates appears forced or legitimate, may be repudiated or accepted 
 those which we suggest as Aztec marks; in any event, the d tes 
 directly expressed are of the Toltec chronology. 
 
 The reader will decide whether the 156 points may be interpreted 
 as has been said. In any case, the monument expresses the Indian chrono- 
 logical system and cosmogony, the centuries of 104 years and the cycles of 
 416, the era of 1040 and that of 1664, begun, all these periods, with the 
 character Ce tecpatl and ended in 13-dcatl. Such a reading which is 
 indisputable, suffices to constitute it, in the highest sense, the text 
 par excellence which the aboriginal civilizations have left us. We may 
 add that it is the key of the great monuments, codices, and inscriptions 
 before enigmatical : the Rosetta Stone of Mexican archaeology. It 
 permits the inference that those fundamental concepts, everywhere 
 distributed, were the common property of many primitive families, 
 who received them from one civilizing people, trunk of the cultures 
 anterior to the discovery of America. 
 
 Moreover, there is one kind of considerations relative to the date 
 which we have supposed of the Aztecs which we ought not to omit. 
 
 42 
 
It is necessary to exhaust this aspect of the matter, because the fact 
 that the stone embodies Toltec ideas is not irreconcilable with the fact that 
 Mexicans were its constructors. We have said that many reasons exist 
 for maintaining that the Mexicans were a later branch from the same 
 trunk as the Toltecs. If we admit that artificers and astronomers 
 of the time of Axayacatl are the constructors of the rehef , it would be 
 desirable to ascertain what circumstance might influence their minds 
 to erect the monument at the time claimed. If it were found to be 
 of especial interest, that in itself would strengthen the conjectures of 
 those who incline to this thesis. 
 
 Let us recall the tradition that the ages of the world were measured 
 in exact or very approximate terms by series of 416 years. We do not 
 in any manner, think that the events accommodated themselves to this pre- 
 occupation; but we believe that the coincidence having been repeated 
 two or three times with sensible approximation by accident, the natives 
 were deeply impressed, and they themselves so arranged matters as 
 to force the principal events of their history to coincide with the end 
 of the sacred cycles. They undertook peregrinations, founded cities, 
 elected their monarch in special years. There are many testimonies of 
 this, especially in the annals of the Toltecs, a fact which has brought 
 discords to those who could not expla'n to themselves, for example, that 
 the kings all ruled for 52 years. It was because the public life was 
 subordinated to the astronomico-religious beliefs. Their predilection 
 for the year Ce t&cpatl was above all manifest: creation of the world, 
 beginning of the Toltec monarchy, exodus from Aztlan, election of 
 Acamapichtli, etc., etc. That people, learned as no other of antiquity, 
 lived dependent upon the movement of the stars, adjusting all their 
 acts to it; tendency, rooted so deeply, that this is really what is read in 
 the stone of the museum: the destiny of the world is developed in 
 periods of 104 and 416 years, directed by the two lords of heaven. 
 Moreover, the tetranary conception ran through the totality of the 
 ideas of the ancient Mexicans, manifesting itself continually, as Mrs. 
 Nuttall's most learned book has demonstrated. 
 
 Singular fact, which must have profoundly impressed the imagi- 
 nation of the Mexicans! The Toltecs commencing their era in 5097, 
 year 700 of the vulgar era, one great cycle (416 years) later Tula was 
 destroyed and its inhabitants exterminated or dispersed. The able 
 Clavijero gives to the event the dates of 1052: Brasseur de Bour- 
 bourg 1 1 20, placing the death of the queen Xochitl in 1103; other 
 authors have indicated mo or 1070; the Anales de Cuauhtitlan 
 
 43 
 
mark one exact Indian century of difference, which is a reason for 
 conjecture; but Chavero, exhausting the chronological analysis, fixes 
 the date: it was in 1116, the year 5513 of the Indians. Here we 
 repeat again that these shght discrepancies manifest the fundamental 
 exactness of the data; at all events, if the event was hastened or retarded 
 slightly, the aborigines in accordance with their custom, accommodated 
 it in their annals to the great sacred cycles. 
 
 Ah well, the Aztecs themselves had commenced their peregrination 
 about the year 1064 of our era (5460 of their calendar), a fact supported 
 by Gama with data of the native writers Tezozomoc and Chimal- 
 pahin; Veytia, too, incUnes to that date. There has been much 
 discrepancy between authors with reference to this; but the monolith 
 demonstrates that the date is correct, confirming incidentally the 
 legitimacy of one of the most important documents of our archaeology, 
 the Tira de la Peregrinacidn. In this codex, 183 years are counted 
 from the time of exodus from Aztlan until the making of the new fire 
 at the station of Chapultepec. The same appears in the Anaglifo or 
 Codex Aubin, this precise accord between pieces completely independ- 
 ent corroborating the exactness of the date. The date named (that of 
 the new fire kindled at Chapultepec) has been determined by Don 
 Alfredo Chavero: the event took place about 1247; the beginning of 
 the journey, 183 years earlier, was consequently in 1064, Ce tecpatl. 
 Well, from then to 1479 there passed just 416 years, if we include the 
 one that served as starting-point. There results one grand cycle 
 completed between the two events. 
 
 What stronger reason for the commemoration than that one of 
 those grand periods at the end of which the natives awaited the 
 destruction of the world had happily ended ? It may be assumed that 
 the stone was prepared in good season before so solemn a festival; A 
 suggestive incident supports this supposition: according to Duran's 
 account, the relief completed on the date inscribed in the tablet was 
 not inaugurated until one or two years later. It is easy to think that 
 Axayacatl would await the fulfilment of the prophecies, and until 
 priests and people were convinced that no calamity occurred, when 
 they resolved to celebrate the festival — the greatest that their annals 
 record — in which they sacrificed an enormous number of victims as 
 thank-offering to the gods who prolonged their existence. 
 
 There exists another date which seems interesting to us. The 
 Tellerian-Remense Codex as well as the Vatican Codex 3738 have the 
 year 1479 marked by a highly conventionalized arboreal design, which 
 
 44 
 
the commentators do not study and which we believe has not been 
 interpreted. What can be the meaning of this elaborate tree located 
 precisely with this date ? Trees are usually the representation of 
 cycles and grand periods, as may be seen in the Palenque tablet and 
 in a multitude of codices. Perhaps it is then the symbol of the 
 cozcaxihuitl, the sacred cycle which had just then concluded. We will 
 add that the Tira de Tepechpan has with the same year divisions which 
 seem to mark the end and beginning of counts. 
 
 Lastly, omitting altogether any transcendental allusion, cosmo- 
 gonic, mythical, or cyclical, the little bars of the body of the serpents, 
 which terminate in the date of the tablet, give this most simple and 
 perhaps incontrovertible reading: from the beginning of our history 
 until the present year (ij-dcatf) have passed 416 years. 
 
 In resume, if the monolith was finished in 1479 as is inferred from 
 the text of Duran, there can be no doubt as to the motive that inspired 
 the work. We insist upon the fact that the stone agrees with the 
 precious Tira del Museo, proving unimpeachably its authenticity. 
 The race of Tenoch did not begin its march either in 648, or 820, or 902, 
 or 1116, or 1160, or 1168, or in 1194, as Buelna, Duran, the Ramirez 
 Codex, Clavijero, Humboldt, the Vatican Codex, Chavero, Garcia 
 Cubas, and other authorities say; but in the year 1064. The learned 
 Gama and Vey tia are right ; the notices of Chimalpahin are good. This 
 writer declares that the first ceremony of the new fire was celebrated 
 by the Aztecs at Acahualtzinco in 1091 and that 27 years before they 
 had started from Aztlan, which would be 1064. The Tira del Museo 
 places the beginning of the march in Ce tecpatl, 27 years before the 
 first new fire. The Codex Aubin, on its part, affirms that in 1507 the 
 Aztecs completed the eighth century of their annals, kindling the new 
 fire: and, in fact, from 1091 to 1507 there are eight periods of 52 years, 
 which was the sacred cycle of the Indians. This document also places 
 the exodus 27 years before the first new fire. 
 
 The reUef and the Tira del Museo then fix with apparent definite- 
 ness one of the most disputed and important dates of the history of 
 ancient Mexico.' The Aztecs, in boats, sallied from a place which we 
 will call Aztlan, Culhuacan, or what you please, in the year of 1064 
 of the Christian Era wandering for the space of 260 years, significant 
 cycle, until founding the metropolis of what was later a proud empire. 
 And this is a new proof that the city of Tenochtitlan was founded in 
 1323, since it is already known how the natives adjusted the capital 
 
 ' See our study La fundacion de Tenochtitlan. 
 
 .45 
 
events of their collective existence to the sacred periods; from which 
 the tradition that they ever carried with them the sacred book, the 
 Teoamoxtli, on their journeyings. The Teoamoxtli was the book of 
 chronological reckoning, it was the tonal dmatl, it was in fine the 
 calendar. Perhaps they found the cactus (nochtK) a little earlier, in 
 131 2; but they waited until the cycle should end before celebrating 
 the event, giving the foundation as inaugurated. 
 
 It is not diflScult to imagine now how events ^occurred. Four 
 hundred and sixteen years had been completed since the adventurous 
 tribe issued by water from a place the situation of which has not been 
 convincingly determined, and that date finds them prosperous and 
 increased as they never had anticipated. The year had passed by 
 without a mishap. Nothing strange then that they should desire to 
 solemnize the fact, fixing it indelibly in an enduring mommient. In 
 such case, this ought to bear the date 1479, this is to say, ij-dcatl and 
 5,876 numerals. We see them there in fact: 
 
 5,096+624+156=5876.' 
 
 But there was another date which they awaited with misgiving. 
 Counting from the creation of the world, or simply from the beginning 
 of the Toltec era, from the year 5097 of their chronology, the destruc- 
 tion of Tula marks the end of a period of 416 years. Starting from 
 this catastrophe, the new grand period had to finish in 5929, that is to 
 say, in 1532 a.d. The subjects of Axayacatl found themselves in the 
 year 5877 of their chronology: exactly one tying, one xiuhmolpia, was 
 lacking for the feared date. Thirteen years before its completion, 
 in 1519 of the vulgar era, after desolating the coasts of Yucatan and 
 and Tabasco, a group of fierce and resolute adventurers disembarked 
 near Sacrificios, who left a trail of blood and slaughter behind them. 
 They came from the Orient, from the direction from which a mythical 
 personage of their traditions, Ce Acatl, had prophesied his own return, 
 in a year of his own name, to conquer the earth and take possession 
 of it; to re-establish, in fine, his ancient kingdom. And the year 
 in which such an extraordinary event took place was precisely the 
 year Ce dcatl (1519). 
 
 ' And at the same time it ought to mark the beginning of their historic exist- 
 ence, commencing with the Toltecs, as. is plainly evident in the three relations 
 made by Dona Isabel Motecuhzoma, where the Toltec and Tenochca kings form 
 one continuous series. And there appears the cipher 1,479 — 624—156 = 699, 
 that is to say, 700, the initial year being counted. Or according to the Indian 
 chronology {lydcatl) 5,876 — 624 — 156 = 5,096 {Ce tecpatl). 
 
 46 
 
Would it be strange that Montezuma, great astronomer and priest, 
 should see in these signs the clear fulfilment of prophecies and have a 
 presentiment of the catastrophe destructive of his nation and his 
 people ? Could the Aztecs feel any confidence in an armed resistance 
 against the inexorable fate decreed by their own deities? No, cer- 
 tainly, and they fought without hope of victory: for this, their last 
 monarch proudly bore the name of "The Eagle who Falls." Last 
 representatives of an indomitable race, they truly desired to end with 
 the dignity which corresponded to their past glory; and in the s'ege 
 of Tenochtitlan, disheartened but stubborn, not weakening before the 
 crushing weight of numbers, nor before fafliine, pestilence, and the 
 cruel attacks of the enemies, nor before desertion and treason of com- 
 patriot races, nor before the fires of earth and the lightnings of heaven 
 let loose upon them, they gave to the world an example of heroism 
 greater than histories can record. If the ancient Mexicans had not 
 been persuaded that their ruin was a thing determined from above, the 
 phalanx of Cortez, in spite of its undaunted courage, would have been 
 undone at the first vigorous assaults of the warriors of Cuauhtemoc ! 
 
 COMPARATIVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION 
 
 Let us proceed to pass in review the more important opinions for- 
 mulated, in way of interpretation, with regard to the monolith of the 
 museum; let us mention at the same time the monuments and the 
 codices which confirm our views, citing some of those which the stone 
 itself now permits to be understood easily, since once the key is dis- 
 covered it appears to Uft the veil which concealed the enigma of our 
 antiquities. We shall add the filiation of ideas which carried us to 
 the discovery, in order that its origins shall be exactly known, indicat- 
 ing the development of the conception. 
 
 Here is the enumeration of the glyphs of the reUef : 
 
 ist circle— (o) Face of the sun, with distinctive signs. 
 
 2d circle — (6) Great numerals of the following circle. 
 
 (c) Squares or rectangles of the same circle. 
 
 (d) Dates and signs of this zone. 
 3d circle — (e) Aztec month. 
 
 4th circle — (J) Groups of fives. 
 Sth circle— (g) Solar glyphs. 
 6th circle — Qi) Pentagons or trapezoidal figures, 
 (i) Rays and asps. 
 
 47 
 
7th circle — (j) Flames or feathers from the inner border of the serpent 
 bodies. 
 {k) Groups of four little bars in the body of the serpents. 
 (0 The serpents themselves, with their parts; scales or divisions 
 
 of the body; numeral dots and tyings of the tails, 
 (w) Date inscribed in rectangular frame. 
 Margin of («) Glyphs — Ucpatl and iztpapdlotl — of the projection of the 
 the relief. relief. 
 
 (o) Numerals distributed in various parts of the relief. 
 7 th circle — (j>) Heads of the serpents with the plumage decoration. 
 
 These glyphs may be grouped as follows : 
 
 I. Dates of the relief. Letters b, d, k, I, m, n. 
 II. Solar gljrphs. Letters a, g. 
 
 III. Cycles. Letters a, b, c,f, g, h, k, p. 
 
 IV. Division of the day. Letter i. 
 
 V. Ages of the Indian cosmogony. Letter c. 
 
 a) All have seen the image of the sun in this central face. It is 
 Tonatiuh or Xiuhtecuhtli ("Lord of the Day") under the especial 
 form of the Huehueteotl. It is an old sun, a huehuetiliztli, which 
 represents the entire Indian century. The sign which adorns the 
 forehead constitutes one of the enigmas of the monument and has given 
 rise to the most divergent opinions: among others that it is the pho- 
 netic of the word Mexico, an unsustainable supposition. Its impor- 
 tance is, beyond doubt, capital. It has been claimed that the two 
 numerals that accompany it express Ome dcatl, symbol of the correc- 
 tion of the calendar. No thesis is apparently more substantial, more 
 interesting, more plausible. There is none which we ourselves would 
 more desire to see fully confirmed. If established, it would corroborate 
 the hypothesis that the monolith was Aztec work, since the transfer of 
 the initial of the year from Ce tochtli to Ome dcatl, which is the essence 
 of the correction, was realized in the year 1091 (as Chimalpahin and 
 Gama claim), or in 1143 (which is what Orozco y Berra says), or in 
 145 s (according to the assertion of Don Alfredo Chavero); under all 
 three suppositions it was the work of the Mexicans. If then the stone 
 of the museum bears inscribed upon the most visible portion of the 
 relief, the sign of this most important operation, there is no doubt that 
 the monument belongs completely to Mexican civilization. 
 
 Also it has been claimed that Ome dcatl was a second name for 
 the sun, the reason why many of his representations show that sign. 
 
Gama states that Ome dcatl was a deity and a particularly propitious 
 sign, for which reason they placed his sign anywhere possible. 
 
 But it is a fact ihat, the more carefully it is examined, the sign in 
 question is not a cane. Chavero himself came to that conclusion, and 
 radically changing his view, claimed that the sign was tecpatl and that 
 it referred to Mars, planet symbolized in the central face; a thesis 
 in all points arbitrary. (See the work Dioses astrondmicos de los 
 antiguos Mexicanos.) Neither does the glyph have anything of 
 tecpatl nor does it symbolize Mars, but the star Venus; nor can the 
 image at the center of the stone, with the splendid rays which sur- 
 round it, be confounded with anything except the radiant face of 
 Tonatiuh. 
 
 Incapable of categorically undoing the difficulty, we will only 
 venture a conjecture: the glyph considered is that distinctive of the 
 orb itself, since it also appears on the forehead of the solar snake of 
 the same relief. The numerals might indicate that the chronological 
 value of the face ought to be taken twice in some computation. What 
 might this be ? The central zone of the relief, circumscribed by the 
 serpents, by its position on the face of the monument easily denotes 
 the present epoch, or the historic sun. In this, of course, there should 
 continue, as in the previous ones, 1664 years. The elements of the 
 circles which compose it (and this is explained by the repetition, at 
 first sight without object) actually give the number: 
 
 Circle of the glyphs of Quetzalcoatl or pentagons 416 years 
 
 Circle of the solar glyphs 104 years 
 
 Circle of the groups of fives, 260 Venus years or 416 years 
 
 Four great numbers affecting the face 416 years 
 
 Two numerals upon the forehead of the kuehueteotl. . . 208 years 
 
 The very face of Huehueteotl 104 years 
 
 Total 1,664 years 
 
 c) Of the cosmogonic ages figured in the four rectangles, we know 
 nothing to add to the masterly study of Don Alfredo Chavero; but we 
 understand him to have erred as to their duration, determined by the 
 very numerals inscribed in the rectangles.' The illustrious archae- 
 ologist did not restrict his attention to them, preferring to resort to 
 the chronology of the Vatican Codex, not entirely happy in our judg- 
 ment. We have elsewhere stated that each dot represents 416 years, 
 and the four 1,664, datum confirmed in Ixtlilochitl and by the 
 
 49 
 
stone itself (Abadiano erroneously attributed 104 years to the dots, 
 which would give 1,664 to the combined rectangles, or of the four 
 epochs, supposition which does not agree with the testimonies of the 
 codices and particularly not with those of the Texcocan historian). 
 According to this cosmogony, the world should have concluded 6,656 
 years from the creation. Each age reached 4 cycles of 416 years. 
 (Ixtlibcochitl adds one bundle of years to the first epochs: and sec- 
 ondary catastrophies were accustomed to happen in the intermediate 
 cycles.) 
 
 The monolith of Tenanco expresses analogous ideas: each age is 
 accompanied by three large dots and two little ones, and there are 
 bands inclosing them which below are conventionalized into knots, 
 except the last epoch, which shows that it was not considered as closed. 
 The cubical stone of the museum, to which we have already referred, 
 upon whose lateral faces appear the emblems of Ehecatonatiuh, Tle- 
 tonatiuh, Atonatiuh, and Tlaltonatiuh , with the four numerals corre- 
 sponding, carries a border formed of solar and Venus glyphs identical 
 with those of the relief, new proof that time was counted by the inter- 
 locking of the two celestial bodies. Neither the upper nor the lower 
 face bear inscription or any design. It may be inferred that there was 
 no fifth age, a thesis incompatible with the fundamental tetranary 
 conception the Mexicans considered themselves within the epoch 
 initiated by the Toltecs. 
 
 In his seventh Relacidn, published by M. Remi Simeon (Paris, 
 1889), written about 1629, Chimalpahin affirms that then they found 
 themselves in the year 6471 of the world, that is to say, within the 
 fourth age, which was not yet terminated; less would it have been 
 terminated at the time of the working of the monolith. 
 
 There is a fact that deserves to be noted. The Codex Fuenleal 
 narrates the history of the world, with the description of the four 
 successive suns. It declares the first to have been controlled by 
 Tetzcatlipoca ; the second by Quetzalcoatl ; the following was presided 
 over by Tlaloc; and the fourth and last of the suns remained under the 
 influence of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, divinity of water. Ah well, 
 the tiger (ocilotl), figured in the upper rectangle of the left of the solar 
 face, joined to a great tecpatl beginning of the chronology, presents in 
 the ear, according to certain authors, the mamalhuaztli, and according 
 to the opinion of others, the distinctive attribute of Tezcatlipoca; the 
 mask of the rectangle to the right is the well-known mask of Ehecatl, 
 second name of the god of the air, Quetzalcoatl; in the inferior rec- 
 
 5° 
 
tangle of this same side, a face is believed to have been recognized 
 similar to that of Tlaloc; and the last of the rectangles shows vaguely 
 the outUne of a female face, which might be that of the goddess " of the 
 emerald skirt." This coincidence is very curious. The same order 
 of the ages is encountered in the document called "Anonimo de Gama" 
 or "Chimalpopoca"; in accordance with the stone, Tlaltonatiuh is the 
 first. The data of the Codex Fuenleal differ indeed from those of the 
 reUef as to the duration of the epochs: the document assigns to them 
 respectively 676, 676, 364, and 312 years, or 2,628 in all; this agrees 
 neither with the tetranary concept nor with the figures of Ixtlilxochitl. 
 
 As to the figure of the naolin, the arc of a circle which it embraces 
 represents very well the amplitude of the movement of the sun toward 
 both sides of the line of the equinoxes; a savant so illustrious as Sir 
 Norman Lockyer has declared that " the symbol figures correctly and 
 appropriately the annual course of the sun " (citationof Mrs. Nuttall). 
 
 b) We have said how we interpret the four great numerals of the 
 following zone, distinct in size and details from the fifth one placed 
 below the naolin. They affect the central image, clearly expressing 
 4 huehuetiliztli or Indian centuries. There are those who see in them 
 and the numeral below the five nemoteni, mistaken assumption which 
 does not fit well with the etymological meaning ("superfluous, extra, 
 useless days"). . In fact, these are Encountered, almost concealed, to 
 the number of four, under the claws of the snakes, in accordance with 
 the deprecative and superstitious idea which the Mexicans attributed 
 to them. 
 
 d) Concerning the dates inscribed in this zone we have no con- 
 tingent to bring. The thesis of Gama may be admi :ted with respect 
 to those whose general interpretation of the monument, we may say 
 in passing, is the only one among all those that have been offered that 
 maintains a respectable footing. Our reading of the stone is not 
 unreconcilable with the thesis that the reUef might serve in the manner 
 of a sundial, vertically placed, with the face toward the south, and 
 that the shadows of some gnomons have indicated the hours of the day 
 and the time of the spring equinox and the summer solstice. For the 
 great archaeologist these two dates are the Ce qui&huitl and Ome 
 ozomatli, which are seen below the naolin (although in truth, we do not 
 read Ome, two but Chicome, seven, ozomatli). The fact is easy to 
 prove by calculation, or experimentally by constructing a model in 
 plaster, arranging it in the form indicated by Gama and observing the 
 shadows on the corresponding days March 2 1 and June 21). Chavero 
 
 SI 
 
believes another thing: that the dates indicate the days on which the 
 sun passes by the zenith of the city (May 17 and June 26), which is 
 possible and can be tested by experiment; but it cannot be fitted with 
 the theory that the stone had to be placed horizontally. Various 
 modern interpreters of the stone have fallen into this error; adopting 
 in general the explanation of the dates proposed by Gama, they claim 
 that the stone had to be laid down, as Chavero affirms; without 
 observing that the theory of the first archaeologist requires the verti- 
 cal position of the monolith. Only so can the shadows be produced. 
 
 Concerning the symbol Ce tecpatl, placed in a prominent part, 
 near to the face of the sun, we know that it represents the beginning 
 of the chronology, beginning of the creation, and the first day of the 
 fourth age of the world, which was the present one for the constructor 
 race (Toltec or Aztec). For such a reason it bears the mamalhuaztli, 
 glyph of the new fire. The count begun with this character necessarily 
 concludes in ij-dcatl, the date inscribed in the frame at the top of the 
 monolith, at the end of 52, 104, 416, and 624, 1,040 or 1,664 years. 
 And all these cycles are read in the stone, but especially that of 416. 
 The nature of the system determines this result, in which may be 
 seen the capital idea of the relief, although omitting the reading of 
 dates alluding to concrete incidents; the present age, begun in Ce 
 tecpatl (for this reason the copilli, royal symbol, accompanies the 
 character — idea of Senor del Paso y Troncoso communicated to Sefior 
 Batres, although this archaeologist believed that the symbol ruled 
 only one tlalpilli) wiU end on the day ij-dcatl, upon the completion 
 of the development of the serpent of time. 
 
 We repeat that in this may be seen the culminating reading of the 
 rehef, and the conception harmonizes perfectly with what we know 
 of the cosmogony and chronology of the Toltecs, with so much the 
 more reason as the initial character of the computations of the Aztecs 
 was tochtli, and not tecpatl. The thesis that the monument expresses 
 the ideas and history of that people possesses without doubt extreme 
 substantiality. Nevertheless, it is not absurd to admit that 780 
 years, of the present historic epoch, the fourth in any case, had 
 passed at the moment of working the stone, 624 of the scales affected 
 by the half-circles, until the founding of Tenochtitlan, in the year 
 13-dcail (1323), and 156 more which we take from the dots of the edge 
 or cyhndrical projection. With these there is reached the year 1479 
 {ij-dcatl also) of Axayacatl. Because we must agree that the half- 
 circles and the dots were placed with some object, such a mode of 
 
 52 
 
thought involves the indirect confirmation that, for whatever reason, 
 the system was considered as estabhshed from the beginning of the 
 year 700 of the vulgar era — so prominent in the chronicles — ^probable 
 beginning of the fourth age of the world in the beliefs of the natives; 
 and reveals that the Mexicans, descendants of the Toltecs, adopted 
 completely the culture of the people of Huemantzin, reproducing its 
 fundamental ideas. Speaking of the Ehecatontiuh, fourth age of the 
 world in his conception, Henning has said that it "is an event, if not 
 absolutely, at least relatively, modern" {Sttidy of the Date 4-Ahau). 
 It has been fancied that there are traces of the face of Tliloc in 
 the figure of <ec/>a/Hn the relief: it is certain that what the sign carries 
 is the mamalhuaztli, or the attribute of Tezcathpoca; it might indicate 
 that the first of the epochs was presided over by this deity, as the 
 Codex Fuenleal aflirms; then Ehecatonatiuh would be the historic sun, 
 it being conceived that some have seen in the central face that of 
 Quetzalcoatl, idea truly vigorous. The glyph has at the left its 
 guardian,' Tletl, symbol of fire, and the copilli of the kings. 
 
 There are not lacking some who think that this figure phonetically 
 expresses the name of Motecuhzoma or that of Chimalpopoca. The 
 copilli also denotes the creative goddess. Sometimes we think that it 
 is the name of the artificer or astronomer maker; or indeed of Cipactli, 
 the first light and the first day, breaking from the divine throne and 
 from the tlachco (ball ground) of heaven; also it might be presumed 
 that the character Ce tecpatl, year in which AcamapichtU, the first 
 monarch of Mexico, was elected, joined with the royal copilli, alludes 
 to the beginning of the Tenochco monarchy; but there would be much 
 to object to, and we strongly prefer to see in the figure the sign of 
 royalty, that is to say, of that which is now in force, with the guard- 
 ian of the first day: the idea of Senor Troncoso. 
 
 There is one fact deserving notice. Conformably with the data 
 of the Codex Borbonico we know that the quecholli or guardian of the 
 year Ce dcatl is TepeyoUotl. Ah well, the year 1519 of the vulgar era, 
 when the Spaniards arrived at our country, was precisely Ce dcatl. 
 Counting back in the tables, in accordance with the order of the 
 guardians indicated in the codex, it is found that the first day of the 
 year 700 corresponds to the character Tletl. New proof of our read- 
 ing of the stone. 
 
 I The author uses the word acompanado: it might be translated "companion," 
 "guardian"; it is usuaUy given in English as "lord of the night"— there being 
 nine "lords of the night," acompanados or quecholli. 
 
 S3 
 
Gama states that in the day Ce tecpatl the Indians celebrated one 
 of their principal festivals, consecrating- it to the flint knife (tScpatl) 
 itself, deified under the name Teotecpatl, this being joined with the 
 festival of fire. This is not opposed to our reading of the monolith, 
 we have said that a part of the hypothesis of the savant remains 
 intact. 
 
 We do not believe it inopportune to reproduce here some para- 
 graphs from our study De SahagHn a Del Paso y Troncoso, which 
 condenses the principal ideas of the interpretation of Gama: 
 
 So far as concerns the figures which immediately surround the face 
 of the sun, he interprets them as the nahui ollin, or the four movements of 
 the orb between the solstices and the equinoxes (as well as of its two pas- 
 sages through the zenith of the city) ; the figures themselves indicating the 
 dates of the Aztec year in which the phenomena occur (Ce quidhuitl, Ome 
 ozomatli, Nahui ocSlotl, and Nahui quidhuitl) ; and particularly the symbols 
 inclosed in the four rectangles he interprets as the foiu" cosmogonic ages 
 or periods in the life of the human species. The monolith gives these 
 indications of the movements of the orb, the year jj-dcail, engraved in the 
 quadrangle at the top of the stone, because this year falls at about the 
 middle of the Aztec cycle of 52 years, when "there takes place with sufficient 
 approximation the arrival of the sun at its equinoctial, at the solstitial 
 points, and at the vertex or zenith of the city, the twice in the year when 
 it passes that point, on the dates which are indicated upon the stone, and 
 consequently the time fixed for celebrating their festivities." In order 
 that such a result should be secured, the stone must be supposed placed 
 vertically upon a horizontal plane (as now it is found) and with the sculp- 
 tured surface looking toward the south; moreover, exactly directed from 
 east to west. In this position the monolith registered the movements of the 
 sun during a portion of the year, or be it in the period during which the orb 
 advances from the equinoctial to one of the tropics, which assumes that 
 there was another similar stone (Gama believed it buried) in which should 
 be figured the dates of the remaining festivals, comprised during the space 
 of time which the sun tarried in coursing through the other part of the 
 ecliptic. At the same time the savant believed that the stone was a solar 
 timepiece, which by means of gnomons indicated the hours of the day, 
 some threads stretched between these gnomons serving to indicate the 
 days of the solstices and the equinoxes, since at the time of the latter the 
 shadows would be parallel and at the summer solstice they would be con- 
 founded, while at the winter solstice the shadow of the upper thread would 
 fall above the stone or in the line where the vertical plane of the monument 
 cut the ground. These gnomons were placed in the eight sockets, which, 
 in fact, appear near the border of the cylinder. 
 
 54 
 
Although differing in some points, our interpretation of the relief 
 is not in complete disaccord with the ideas of the illustrious archaeolo- 
 gist since it is possible to admit that the stone has been as he says, and 
 that the gnomons would give something of the indications that he 
 mentions; it is possible to admit that the Ce Ucpatl indicates one of 
 the festivals, as well as the first day of the fourth age, the figure 
 near being the acompanado of this day. We differ indeed as to the 
 meaning of the ij-dcatl, which does not fall toward the middle but at 
 the end of the cycle (except when this begins with Ce tochtli, conform- 
 ably to the Mexican system, which date is not seen on the stone, which 
 bears the Toltec Ucpatl); we differ at the same time in some other 
 particulars, as the reader will see. 
 
 /) The following zone is the one from which we begin to pro- 
 ceed through the field of conjecture, according to the phrase of 
 Don Antonio Pefiafiel. It is the circle of the quinaries or numerals 
 distributed in groups of five units. There are in all 260 units of 
 this kind, perfectly counted, but not explained until now. 
 
 Chavero and the majority of archaeologists see in these the 
 tonaldmatl, sacred reckoning which really consists of just this number 
 of days. But it must not be forgotten that it is distributed in thir- 
 teens, and in the zone which we study the thought of making the 
 distribution in groups of five units appears very clear. 
 
 In reality it treats of Venus years. The explanation is moreover 
 simple. The period of the planet measures eight solar years, equiva- 
 lent to five in the Venus calendar, phenomenon unquestionably 
 observed by the natives, as the festival atamalqualiztli proves. In 
 other terms, five synodical movements of Venus, each one of which 
 lasted very near to 584 days, is equivalent to eight years in the solar 
 calendar, knowledge which the aborigines could acquire by observing 
 the march of the planet. This was the origin of the festival which was 
 celebrated every eight years. According to this, the fives represent 
 the five revolutions of the planet which make a set with the solar 
 calendar; to which we add the following: Only five of the twenty- 
 day characters or symbols of the native month were initials of the 
 year in the Venus calendar. The selection then of the groups 
 of five seems perfectly motived. And as the numerals distributed in 
 this form are 260, the indication is of that number of synodical 
 movements of the evening star, that is to say, it treats of 260 Venus 
 years. The number, which also constitutes the basis of the tonald- 
 matl, was sacred, and the period, especially significant, is found in 
 
 55 
 
harmony with the other elements of the relief; 260 Venus years adjust 
 themselves to a grand cycle of 416 solar years and equal exactly 584 
 tonaldmatl. 
 
 Another proof that these elements do not allude to days, but to 
 years, we shall see in the two objects, which are considered in the next 
 paragraph, in which fives appear combined with gl3T)hs denoting the 
 solar years; it would not be logical to suppose that elements signi- 
 fying a day should be arbitrarily mixed up with elements signifying a 
 year. This is the error into which have invariably fallen Chavero, 
 Valentini, Abadiano, and most of the interpreters of the monu- 
 ment. 
 
 g) Glyphs follow which have been counted by Chavero and other 
 authors; bu^, except for that archaeologist, who saw in them a cycle 
 of 104 years, without decipherment. They represent solar years, and 
 they are seen combined with the preceding in many astronomical 
 monuments of the museum; in the cubical stone with the four ages 
 of the world of which we have spoken before; in the stone known as 
 the Stone of Tizoc, on whose border Abadiano read the same num- 
 ber of 1,664 which we know represents one of the ages of the world; 
 in a most interesting stone box {tepetlacalli) from Texcoco, which also 
 belongs to the museum, etc., etc. 
 
 The finding of the two classes of units in the cubical stone suffi- 
 ciently proves that they denote years, since it is not logical to com- 
 pute in another manner ages of prolonged duration. 
 
 The same glyphs, in diverse combinations, appear in a great 
 number of monuments: pages of the codices; a precious vase 
 (cuauhxicalU) in Berlin of which Kingsborough published an engraving ; 
 the admirable stone of Tepetzuntla, symbolism of Quetzalcoatl, which 
 shows under the teeth the 8 glyphs of the solar years equivalent to the 
 five Venus years which the god has on the forehead; the frieze of Mitla, 
 copied by the great German archaeologist Seler; the figure from a 
 Tacubaya garden which is called Tetzcatzdncatl. 
 
 h) No one has deciphered the so-called "pentagons." We iden- 
 tify these glyphs with the conventionalized signs, sufficiently analogous, 
 which adorn the body of the so-called Cipactli of Xochicalco and that 
 of the four serpents of page 72 of the Borgian Codex. Four plumed 
 serpents appear in the codex, with 13 circles distributed over the 
 body (including the eye of the monster). The figure forms a sort of 
 frame within which the initial characters of the Venus year are encount- 
 ered. We already know that there are five of these. The circles 
 
 56 
 
indicate that the combination is separated 13 times in one huehue- 
 Hliztli. Each one of the fantastic beings has then the value of 65 
 Venus or 104 solar years. 
 
 Seen with attention, the gl3^hs of the Cipactli of Xochicalco have 
 no small similarity with the pentagons. It has been said (Ramon 
 Mena) that their outline is that of a snail, relating them to Quetzal- 
 coatl; this is correct, since it concerns a conventionalization of the 
 jewel of that deity which alludes to his marine origin (the deity pro- 
 ceeded from the sea of the east). The giant stromhus is truly the 
 most beautiful shell of the Antillean seas and of the Gulf; its hollow 
 interior reproduces the murmur of sea waves; for this reason they 
 adopted it as the emblem of the deity come from that direction. 
 Sahagun, describing the representations the Indians made of him, twice 
 mentions the shells that served him as adornment: "He has a collar 
 of gold, from which hang some very precious sea shells .... some 
 leggings of tiger skin, from the knees down, from which hung some 
 sea shells." 
 
 In the pentagons of the relief there is very evident a curve or 
 ' hollow in the lower part, which in the figures of Xochicalco very clearly 
 presents the outUne of an ear or shell. Both characters contain the 
 same symboUsm: they are Venus symbols each of which represents 
 2,920 days, equivalent to eight years. Assuming the planet to be 
 morning star at the beginning, this period having run its course, it will 
 occupy the identical position in the heavens. Ah well, the Cipactli 
 of Xochicalco have thirteen signs, like the groups of pentagons of the 
 rehef. Each one, therefore, denotes 65 and the four groups 260 Venus 
 years, which are 416 solar years. The stone, the codex, and the edifice 
 say the same thing. The groups of pentagons might be replaced 
 around the face of the relief by the four serpents of the codex or by 
 the Cipactli of Xochicalco. 
 
 The initial page of the Fejervary-Mayer Codex, the page of the 
 cruciform trees of the Vatican Codex B, and others of the most notable 
 pictographic representations are to be read in the same way, as we 
 shall demonstrate further on. 
 
 We insist that the pentagons of the stone allude to Venus cycles 
 and not at all to days. Abadiano sees in them the groups of twelve 
 and thirteen intercalary days, which the natives, according to the 
 theory of Gama and Orozco y Berra, added at the end of each 104 
 years to adjust the calendar with the tropical year. But, apart from 
 the fact that the codices bring no conclusive proofs of such correction, 
 
 57 
 
as Seler has shown, we will repeat that the elements of this central part 
 of the magnificent relief are glyphs symboUcal of special cycles and of 
 complete years; but in no case of days. These find their representa- 
 tion by means of dots upon the bodies of the serpents and with their 
 own proper characters in the zone outside the sun's face; the other 
 characters of the central part of the stone possess a much larger 
 significance, in consonance with the importance of the monument. 
 The objects of this kind that deal with the representation of a simple 
 year are very few; usually the natives figured knottings or tyings and 
 the cycle of 52 years, which appears with great frequency in the codices 
 and in the inscriptions of stone. It happens thus in the tableland of 
 Mexico the same as in Yucatan; in Mitla and Xochicalco as in the 
 zone of Palenque, Copan, and Quirigua. With greater reason may we 
 suppose analogous meaning in a colossal relief, which is but the 
 Teoamoxtli made stone or the allegory of the world's history, con- 
 formable to the cosmogonic and astronomical beliefs of the aborigines. 
 It is obvious that, in an allegory of this kind, the component elements 
 shou'd represent periods o' a certa'n duration. 
 
 Let us undertake now to explain rationally the necessity of" 
 inscribing four groups of Venus cycles in place of one, since one 
 suffices to indicate the century of the chronological counts, 104 
 years. We might limit ourselves exclusively to facts, indicating the 
 pages already mentioned of the Borgian, Vatican B, and Fejervary- 
 Mayer codices, which show the frequency with which the native 
 astronomers repeated in their pictographs what we see in the basalt 
 relief. Also the Dresden Codex gives the number of 151,840 days, 
 which are 260 Venus years. But we must explain the data which are 
 observed. The reason of the fact reveals how perfect were the astro- 
 nomical observations of the ancient inhabitants of America, and to 
 what height their knowledge of the phenomena of space attained. 
 The value of the apparent revolution of Venus not being exactly 
 584 days, but 583 days 22 hours, 6 minutes, and 14 seconds, it seems 
 that the natives knew this difference, at least' as regards the 22 hours 
 over and even a little more. -In the development of the series of 
 days, it results that at the end of 104 years (65 Venus years) the calen- 
 dar of the planet was five days behind with reference to the 
 solar; and the Indians, proceeding as astronomers, had to make some 
 correction. This was secured by initiating in a special calendar 
 (probably reserved for chiefs and priests, and but little known to the 
 vulgar) the second huehuetiliztU, with another five of the twenty day 
 
 58 
 
characters, and making them run thirteen times, as the preceding 
 until termmating a new sacred cycle. This concluded, they continued 
 the falling behind with other five days, making use of the third group 
 of characters; and, finally, at the closing of the fourth cycle of 104 
 solar years, theoretically have entered into the arrangement, as initial 
 years, all of the twenty day characters of the month, permitting that 
 the new period of 416 years should commence anew with Cipactli. 
 The idea, for which there exist no conclusive proofs, has been very 
 ingeniously suggested by Mrs. Nuttall. Each time that the long- 
 drawn-out period arrived at its end, the calendars of the two stars 
 actually adjusted themselves, at the time when they returned to con- 
 cur in the same respective position in the firmament. The harmony 
 and beauty of this arrangement are indeed marvelous. 
 
 The distribution of the day signs in the planet's calendar results 
 as follows: 
 
 First huehnetiliztli: Cipactli, Coatl, Atl, AcatI, and Ollin 
 Second huehuetiliztli: Miquiztii, Itzcuintli, Ocelotl, Tecpatl, and Ehecatl 
 Third huehuetUiztli: Ozomatli, Cuauhtli, Quiahuitl, Calli, and Mizatl 
 Fourth huehuetiliztli: Cozcacuiuhtli, Xochitl, Cuetzpallin, Tochtli, and 
 Malinalli 
 
 The great cycle ended in Malinalli, to begin with Cipactli in the 
 one and the other calendar. We shall see this confirmed in the edi- 
 fice of Xochicalco, where Malinalli separates the allegorical repre- 
 sentatives of 416 years; let us say for the moment that these groups 
 of day symbols are those which are met with in the four serpents of 
 page 72 of the Borgian Codex. Their true significance has eluded 
 the archaeologists until now. Seler limits himself to see in the page 
 mentioned the four parts of the tonaldmatl} This would not explain 
 satisfactorily why the monsters have thirteen divisions in the body; 
 by our hypothesis, the thing is simple; they are the number of times 
 which the five chronographic signs run in one huehuetiliztli. In 
 total, 52 occasions: the number of the pentagons of the monoHth. 
 
 At the same time, the number 151,840 (number of days in 416 
 solar years) has the notable property, not yet observed so far as we 
 know, of being a multiple, with the difference of a single unit, of the 
 
 • Although the same savant ventures the hypothesis that this page expresses 
 some great period of time. And Don Jose Fernando Ramirez affirms literally, 
 studying the Borgian Codex, that "the Mexicans had a cyclical period much larger 
 and more perfect that Gama concedes to them, and all the other writers who have 
 followed in his steps" (the period of 104 years). — ^Letter to Andrade, July, 1850. 
 
 59 
 
number 9; the characters of the /owa^tf ma// known as the queckolU or 
 acompanados de la noche close in that period a complete round, since 
 in the last day there are superposed two characters in accordance 
 with the invariable practice of the arrangers of that book. The same 
 result is not secured at the end of 104 years, because in 37,960 days 
 seven quecholli remain, it being necessary that this cycle repeat itself 
 four times in order that the important and mysterious nocturnal 
 characters should combine with the diurnal in a harmonious man- 
 ner. And this is a new confirmation of the special importance which 
 the Indians attributed to the great period; in it, all the chronological 
 elements combined: 
 
 151, 840-^ 9 = 16,871+1 
 
 151,840-r 13 = 11,680 
 
 151,8404-20= 7,592 
 
 Now we may understand why the cycle of 416 years is found 
 repeatedly stamped upon the relief. Although the movements of 
 the sun and Venus are adjusted every 104 years, that is to say, the 
 planet finds itself then in the same relative position to the principal 
 star (for example, at the beginning of its heliacal rising as the morning 
 or in the first day of its apparition as evening star) ; on the other 
 hand, the calendars of the one and the other celestial body are not 
 rigorously equal, just as also they are equal each eight years; it being 
 necessary that 416 (260 Venus) years shall pass for initiating themselves 
 with Cipactli on the same day and with the numeral i, the two bodies 
 occupying the same relative position as they had before in the firma- 
 ment. This is the reason why the sign Cipactli appears in the heel 
 strap of the so-called piernas colosales (" colossal legs ") of Tula, two 
 pairs of which monoliths present eight knots or tyings, that is to 
 say, precisely 416 years, since each tying has the value 52. The heel 
 strap symbolizes the support, the basis of the entire cyclical 
 edifice, the initial character of which is Cipactli at the same time the 
 "lords of the night" close a complete round, and the tonatdmatl finds 
 itself exactly contained (584 times) in the period. 
 
 151,840 days= 260X584. 
 
 Admirable combination of observations, which prove no less 
 patience and perspicacity than knowledge and genius in the people 
 who made the basis of their chronology from such phenomenon. 
 
 60 
 
A pictograph of Quich'e or Maya origin confirms the preceding, 
 proving incidentally also the identity of the conceptions regarding 
 the calendar between the Nahuas and the peoples of Chiapas and 
 Yucatan. We refer to the famous "page of the Bacabs," second page 
 in the Codex Cortesianus, published by M. Leon de Rosny. This 
 painting indicates in essence the same great period; but it is expressed 
 in Venus years. Within a peripheral zone which contains a total of 
 260 dots, there is noted a central square, in the sides of which, dis- 
 tributed in four groups, appear the twenty day characters of the 
 month. These symbols do not present the normal order of their 
 series: they alternate in a form apparently irregular, but which is in 
 resume the same as the initials of the Venus year, supposing that the 
 twenty characters are applied to the measure of the movement of the 
 planet, or be it that they run by successive periods of 584 days. 
 Here is the order which they manifest: 
 
 Imix (the Cipactli of 
 
 Ik 
 
 Akbal 
 
 Kan 
 
 the Maya) 
 
 
 
 
 Chichan 
 
 Oc 
 
 Mamik 
 
 Lamat 
 
 Muluc 
 
 Ix 
 
 Chuen 
 
 Caban 
 
 Ben 
 
 Ezanab 
 
 Men 
 
 Ahau 
 
 Eb 
 
 Cimi 
 
 Cauac 
 
 Cib 
 
 Replaced by the corresponding characters of the Nahua calendar, 
 with insignificant variations, we shall have the four groups of the 
 Venus calendar that appear on the pages already mentioned of the 
 Borgian and Vatican B codices, and on the initial page of the 
 Fejervary-Mayer. The conclusion is clear: Mayas and Mexicans 
 computed simultaneously, by means of the tonaldmatl, the movements 
 of the sun and Venus, forming with this combination their chronological 
 system: from which were born the cycles of 416 years. 
 
 0) Immediately connected with the pentagons, 14 wheels or circles 
 are found. We do not attempt to decipher them, except to say that 
 they designate the complete number of periods of 416 years which have 
 passed from the creation of the world (in the native traditions) until 
 the time of the construction of the monument; this would strengthen 
 the idea that the Aztecs made it. Bemg 14 the cycles, they give the 
 year 5804 of the Indian chronology; and in the year 1479 of our era 
 the subjects of Axayacatl were in that of 5875. They were scarcely 
 beginning the fifteenth period; they could not then mark it upon the 
 relief. The conjecture is somewhat arbitrary, though not absurd. 
 
 61 
 
There are eight other wheels, a little smaller, with respect to which 
 we find ourselves equally in ignorance. 
 
 p) We arrive at the famous serpents, the two serpents which border 
 the relief. They have been described many times; but as their pre- 
 cise significance was unknown, the descriptions have been confined 
 within the generality and vagueness suited to the uncertain and 
 involve crass errors. 
 
 In a general way (and this is certain though vague) it has been said 
 that they allude to time. The serpent was in fact, among the abo- 
 rigines of Mexico as among the Egyptians, the symbol of time, most 
 beautiful symbol in truth. They have been called the creative 
 duahsm, CipactU and Oxomoco (the inventors of the calendar), 
 xiuhcdatl or the diurnal celestial arch, the pendent of the zodiac, 
 etc., etc. The scales of the bodies have been considered as conven- 
 tionalizations of fire (not erroneously; but there is something more 
 concrete in them), the specialty, the strange signs of the back of the 
 figures, which have given rise to many extravagances, being taken for 
 plumes, for flames, for a rain of fire, and so on at fancy. 
 
 As to the human heads inclosed in the throats of the serpents, 
 the mode of interpretation has been most varied. While Dr. 
 Valentini attributed them to the reformer of the chronology 
 (Votan according to some authors), Don Alfredo Chavero af- 
 firms that they are Ometecuhtli, that is to say, that they relate 
 to fire as creator or dios dos (two-god). This conception of du- 
 ality has greatly preoccupied the archaeologists — now in a general 
 and vague form calling the figures creative duality, and even double 
 duality, or the tetranary concept (Mrs. Nuttall); or seeing in them 
 the inventors of the calendar; now nocturnal deities (Penafiel); now 
 the earth and fire; now in other ways. Abadiano declared that they 
 were the sun and the moon. Chavero, man of undoubted genius, 
 arrived at the suggestion that they were Tonatiuh and Quetzalcoatl; 
 although he did not give precision to the conception, or express the 
 reasons or the combination, and thus remained in generalities and 
 indetermination which say little. There have not been lacking those 
 who in these heads have seen Huitzilopochtli himself. 
 
 Nothing of all this is encountered in these figures. They are the 
 deities who preside over the chronological periods of 104 and 416 
 years. It is the same idea as that of the Gladiatorial Stone, of the 
 " page of the Bacabs," of the famous cross of the Codex Fejervary. The 
 attributes of the heads permit clearly identifying them. One of the 
 
 62 
 
faces has the solar glyph on the forehead, the double cane or bunch of 
 herbs, the nose turquoise placed transversely, the distinctive ear 
 ornament (nacochtli); it is the star of day. The other face has a 
 net and the yacaxiuitl of a form not well seen, but which differs from 
 the xiuhtecuhtli. Having placed net and ear ornaments to both faces 
 is the only defect in Iriarte's admirable lithograph; in reaUty, only 
 the face to the right of the relief has the netting, lacking on the other 
 hand the ear ornament. The other engravers (Engberg, etc.) saw 
 these details with exactness. 
 
 The deity in question, face to face with one that represents Tona- 
 tiuh, is also met with in the stone called the Gladiatorial Stone. His 
 headdress there presents a peculiar form, identical even to the position 
 of the face, with the great figures of pages 43, 44, 45, and 46 
 of Codex Vaticano B; he has in his hand the plumed serpent of 
 QuetzalcoatI and carries at the shoulder the sign miquiztli, because 
 the planet Venus is considered of unfavorable augury. They are then 
 two perfectly differentiated deities, whose combination forms the cycles 
 of 104 and 416 years (65 and 260 Venus years); they are Venus and 
 the sun. 
 
 In the edifice of XocWcalco only the figures which the first (Venus) 
 give, are directly read by means of the Cipactli (13X5 = 65); the solar 
 cycles are understood only by equivalence and with dates. Papantla 
 alludes directly to Venus years (65) and by equivalence to solar. 
 Cholula was consecrated to Quezalcoatl. The "page of the Bacabs" 
 and those of the Fejervary and Borgian Codices directly express 
 260 Venus years and symbolically the corresponding solar period. 
 Only the rehef of the museum, perfect conception, shows the grand 
 circle engendered by the two stars which unite in order to produce it. 
 
 k) The serpents as time express indefinite duration; that which 
 concretely denotes a huehuetiliztli is in the encounter of the faces, the 
 union of the tongues. (Also the figure of the Cipactli appears in a cer- 
 tain mode to denote it, as we shall see later on.) But as the perfect 
 correlation of the calendars came tabe effected only each 416 years, it 
 was necessary to state this number in some way in the bodies of 
 the serpents, thus determining their chronological sense. No one 
 until now has read this period there. Nevertheless, it cannot be , 
 more clearly indicated; it is in fact the most apparent reading of the 
 monument, proving by itself alone the rest of the interpretation. 
 The number is encountered in those groups of four little bars, dis- 
 tributed in the bodies of the serpents. Each group says dcatl, tecpatl, 
 
 63 
 
calU, tochili, reading which has escaped the interpreters. They are 
 the classic names of the chronological series: therefore they appear in 
 the serpent of time. 
 
 Ah well, the total number of the bars attains exactly to 416, a fact 
 which could not be a mere coincidence. There are 52 groups in each 
 serpent, distributed as follows: 
 
 Groups of four little bars: 
 
 4 joined to the face enclosed in the throat of the serpent. Most of the 
 
 engravings and drawings show errors here: the Kthograph published 
 
 in the second volume of the Anales del Museo is correct; also that 
 
 of Iriarte, which is the best we know. 
 3 in each one of the 1 1 scales that follow, up to the tyings. In all there are 
 
 33 groups. 
 3 in the scale following the tyings. (Here Abadiano and Pedro Gonzales 
 
 arbitrarily place other groups in the outer border of the scale. Gama, 
 
 Iriarte, and Engberg are correct.) 
 
 5 in the terminal triangles of the tails. (From Gama on, all the lithographs 
 
 seem correct in this.) 
 
 3 in the border of the relief above the triangles. (Gama overlooks these : 
 
 the other engravers place them.) 
 
 4 in the bands which spring from the tails. (All have them.) 
 
 In total, there are 52 groups of little bars in each serpent; 
 summed, they give 416 years, most eloquent and irrefutable confir- 
 mation of our interpretation. The first beginning with the char- 
 acter Ce tScpatl controlHng, as the copilli shows, wiU conclude on 
 the day 13-dcatl. 
 
 The stone presents a curious anomaly; in the mandible of the 
 solar serpent there are four groups of Uttle bars; but in that of 
 Quetzalcoatl, a profane hand has attempted to place a fifth group, 
 which has made the reproducers of the rehef commit errors. Gama 
 did not see these httle bars of the heads and omits them in his drawing, 
 otherwise sufficiently correct. Who could be the author of such an 
 offense ? Someone who had access to the monolith for having it 
 modeled or some other circumstance; but as he lacked the skill of the 
 natives, he made the group visibly imperfect, the bars result much 
 more narrow, and they do not show the clear relief which without 
 exception the others show. What was the object of the offense? 
 To combine some of those arbitrary periods — Egyptian, Persian, 
 Chaldean, or Hebrew — ^which they had desired to read on the Toltec 
 relief. Always the archaeological discord of affinities with the Old 
 World damaging the knowledge of autochthonous things! 
 
 64 
 
j) The archaeologist Hermann Beyer interprets the figures 
 stamped on the scales of the serpents as conventionalizations of fire; 
 we find the supposition very probable. But each scale represents at 
 the same time the renovation of a period of time (idea also proposed 
 by Dr. Valentini); and that period can be nothing but that figured 
 by the fire which they enclose: 52 solar years. As the scales are 24, 
 the combination expresses 1,248 years, which added to the 416 of the 
 little bars sum the 1,664 of which the entire age had to be composed. 
 The number possesses another peculiarity— 1,664 solar years equal 
 1,040 Venus years, a figure which was also considered sacred. On the 
 other hand, if we sum 416 (taking them from the Uttle bars) and 624, 
 number obtained from the scales affected by the half-circle the same 
 number, 1,040, will be obtained, this time referring to solar years. 
 No one is ignorant of the extreme importance which the ancient 
 Indians of Yucatan and the Plateau ascribed to their numerical 
 combinations, which has given basis for tracing affinities between the 
 authors of these sculptures and the old Pythagorean School (little 
 probable in our opinion, though not impossible). 
 
 We repeat that the immediate, natural, and simple reading of the 
 stone is that which corresponds to the data of the Toltec tradition: 
 Three ages of the world have passed, and we find ourselves in the 
 fourth, begun with Ce tecpatl, and which will end with the year 13- 
 dcatl. In this sense, the relief is neither more nor less than the expres- 
 sion of the historic sun or present epoch of its constructors, and it is 
 in accord with the grand fresco of Teotihuacan, in which two high 
 priests celebrate the renovation of a new epoch, symbolized by a 
 great sun with four knots — ;4i6 years. 
 
 With respect to Aztec datef, it is possible to encounter them: but their 
 reading is less obvious, though not strained. To admit it depends upon 
 the inductive value which may be assigned to certain circumstances, such 
 as the monolith having been found in a Mexican city, the fact that the year 
 1479 was 13-dcatl, the relationship of the Toltecs and the Tenochcas, the 
 narrative of Durdn, and the mathematical adjustment of the numbers 624 
 and i$6 with the capital events of the history of the people of Motecuh- 
 zoma, accepting the year joo as a point of departure. 
 
 We may add that Abadiano reads the number 1,664 in the border 
 of the commemorative stone known as that of Tizoc (and in fact, it is 
 found there), a monolith which he supposes closely related to that of 
 the Calendar. But, apart from the fact that he claims to find in the 
 relief an infinity of cyclical and chronological periods proceeding from 
 
 6S 
 
the Bible (the date of the Deluge, that of the confusion of tongues, 
 etc., etc.), and others like the Sothic period of the Egyptians, a 
 totally inadmissible h3fpothesis, he connects the date ij-dcatl of the 
 rectangle with 1352 of our era, date in his opinion of the foundation of 
 Mexico; the statement is doubly false, for neither was Tenochtitlan 
 founded in that year, nor was that year 13-cane in the native chronol- 
 ogy, but 3-iecpatl, as the tables of Veytia prove. We saw before that 
 1323 was the true 13-dcatl, and already it is known that the Codex 
 Fuenleal refers the foundation of the Mexican metropolis to that time. 
 Although his knowledge of archaeology was no great thing, it should 
 be said that in his work Anahuac Tylor suggested that the date of the 
 rectangle mentioned referred to this same year 1323. 
 
 Let us pass to another point. It has been claimed that the 
 divisions of the body of the xiuhcoatl correspond to the constellations 
 of the native zodiac, idea of the archaeologist, Hermann Beyer. 
 Without opposing so fertile and strong a thesis, we will make some 
 concrete observations. As well in the Cipactli of Xochicalco as on 
 page 72 of the Borgian Codex, the 13 divisions manifestly indicate 65 
 Venus years: the chronographic characters in the codex and the 
 accompanying dates prove it without any sort of doubt. In Xochi- 
 calco each front of the edifice has tyings for the value of 416 years, 
 corresponding to the two sculptured Cipactli, and two more suggested 
 by means of glyphs adjacent to the body of the monsters. These free 
 symbols are 26 in each front; it may be seen with clearness in the 
 magnificent plates of Penafiel's book (Monumentos de arte mexicano 
 antiguo) and in Castaiieda's drawing, reproduced by Kingsborough. 
 Summed to the 26 directly inclosed in the bodies, we encounter 52 
 gl5rphs of 8 solar or 5 Venus years each. Each front or side of the edi- 
 fice then expresses the number of 416 solar or 260 Venus years, value 
 expressly confirmed in the 8 respective signs of tyings. In the codex 
 the sign of tying affected by two numerals accompanies the serpents. 
 According to this, 104 years or 416 in the four serpents is the matter. 
 If in the museum relief, the proposition had been to represent the 
 constellations, they would not have been upon the serpents, but on 
 the quadrangular base of the monument, the preserved part of which 
 shows still traces of some; this thesis appears to us more probable than 
 that of Mr. Beyer. 
 
 /) With respect to the knots or tyings of the relief, they might 
 signify the same 416 years figured by little bars, since there are eight. 
 The so-called "Colossal Legs" of Tula are nothing else but the 
 
 66 
 
symbolism of this grand cycle, with the suggestive coincidence that 
 there are two pairs of different size, each pair with eight knots (two 
 for a leg), or be it the expression of 416 years. The Cipadli which 
 they have on the heel strap confirms our interpretation, since the said 
 character is the initial in the three computations: Venus calendar, 
 solar calendar and tonaldmatl. In the magnificent monument of 
 Cuauhtemotzin, the architect (Senor Francisco M. Jimenez), probably 
 without intention, reproduces the great sacred period, since pairs of 
 columns with eight knots support the statue. 
 
 But what is currently admitted with respect to the knots or tyings 
 of the serpents of the relief, is that they are of the value of thirteen 
 years, indicating a xiuhtlalpilli of 52 years in each serpent and between 
 the two the 104 years read in the meeting of the heads. As the period 
 of 416 years is already expressed by the little bars, we do not find it 
 inconvenient to accejJt this interpretation, which offers advantages of 
 which we shall speak later. They are then the four tlalpilli of 13' 
 years, which make up the period at the end of which the ceremony of 
 the new fire took place; perhaps this is why they are seen united, 
 while when the knots represent a complete cycle, each appears as 
 separated from the others. 
 
 The dots of the serpents have been counted by Sefior Chavero, who 
 forms the year with them; we make a double reading encountering as a 
 result of the first the tonaldmatl, and of the second 366 days. 
 
 p) We have not spoken of the seven stars which crown the plumes 
 of the heads. The line that traverses them midway clearly indicates 
 that they are stars. It has been said that they represent the Pleiades, 
 mentioned by Sahagun in his description of the xiuhmolpia (festival 
 of the renovation of the fire), and we have no reason for denying it. 
 The meeting of the tongues representing a great cycle in which two 
 xiuhmolpia fit, it is explained why these stars appear repeated, that is 
 to say, why two groups of seven are counted in the plumages; each 
 xiuhmolpia supposes the culmination of the constellation, signal indi- 
 cated for the ceremony. 
 
 Let us state in this connection an hypothesis which does not 
 basally alter the preceding. If the Mexican year began in the winter 
 solstice, between December 21 and 26 as there are various reasons to 
 believe, the constellation which then culminated at midnight is Orion 
 and not the Pleiades. Orion shows clearly the form of a great butter- 
 fly, in which we ourselves recognize the beautiful Itzpapalotl (butter- 
 fly of obsidian knives, or of sparks) of the Indians. The Aztecs, not 
 
 67 
 
seeing in the said constellation the figure of a warrior, but that of a 
 gigantic butterfly of brilliant sparkling (a more beautiful conception), 
 must have considered it formed of seven principal stars, three of the 
 belt and four of the great parallelogram, whose corners correspond to 
 the eyes of the butterfly's wings. This being so, we can already 
 explain the figures of the butterfly which appears on the edge of the 
 relief: they mark a succession of xiM^wo^^^a*. The same sign is seen, 
 among celestial signs, in the pages of the tonaldmatl; and here we recall 
 that in the Mixtec codex from Santa Maria Yolotepec there is a 
 butterfly placed upon a throne. It is to be noticed also that this 
 figure is the motif ^zx excellence of many worked stones in the museum 
 and of stones, slabs, columns, and figures of great size. 
 
 It seems more natural that a primitive people should take into 
 account, at the solemn moment of making the new fire, the movements 
 of a great constellation like this butterfly than of the little group of the 
 Pleiades. We repeat that it is reasonable to see in Orion the symboli- 
 cal Itzpapalotl, so many times mentioned in the codices; we believe 
 that it is this which is represented by the stars of'the plumes. It will 
 be noticed that there are fourteen: this is natural, because in the 
 kuehuetiliztli the constellation culminated twice, marking the begin- 
 ning of a cycle. 
 
 _;■) Let us see the figures of the inner border of the serpents. They 
 have been called Cipactli, phonetics of water, plumes, half-plumes, 
 clouds, flames, rain of fire, and various other things. We believe it 
 probable that they are conventionalizations of fire. But the groups 
 of four stout bars in which they terminate, by their unusually regular 
 form, their position, and their arrangement, are clearly shown to be 
 numeral signs. In agreement with the general meaning of the rehef, 
 we can do no less than to assign to them the value of 416 years, or 
 what is the same, each flame symbolizes the huehuetSotl of the center 
 with four numerals. The supposition is not at all forced; a modern 
 artist, before a similar problem, would not proceed very differently. 
 On the other hand, the thesis of Senor Abadiano is inacceptable, since 
 he claims to find in the combination of the flames the years anterior 
 to the Christian Era, in which the family of Israel penetrated the 
 Promised Land. The relief cannot refer to that event. 
 
 But it is evident, from the position of the glyphs, separating almost 
 from the serpent of time, that they refer to past epochs, in contra- 
 distinction to the present, which is displayed in the body of the ser- 
 pents, allegory as simple as beautiful. Therefore, the serpents have 
 
 68 
 
life, open their throats, and have upon themselves indications of time 
 past and data of that which ought to follow. 
 
 Our reading of the flames offers this surprising result: it indicates 
 the date 4992, date mentioned in Ixtlilxochitl as the end of the third 
 age of the world. By error, in the edition made by Chavero, the date 
 4996 appears; but as the Texcocan chronicler himself adds that 
 between this date and that of 5097 or Ce tecpatl, with which the Toltecs 
 began their era, there was an interval of 104 years, it is evident that the 
 year is 4992. This is that which the flames of the relief indicate; the 
 value which we have attributed to them is thus confirmed. Adding 
 the number of 104 years, of the meeting of the heads, we arrive exactly 
 at the 5096of the world in the chronology of the Indians, which was a 
 13-dcatl year. 
 
 This last date being inscribed in the frame which the two serpents 
 indicate with the tips of their tails, it appears to us that the stone says 
 •what is here read: that the number of the year figured in the body of the 
 symbolical beings is 5,096. In other words, that the date in question 
 was 13-dcatl. 
 
 Moreover, our reading shows what device was employed by the 
 Indians to escape the defect of their system, which causes the dates of 
 each 52 years to become confounded with each other: to repeat 
 them in different modes, when they were important. Thus every 
 reason for equivocation ceases. 
 
 n) Many authors have seen in the glyphs of the projection of 
 the monoUth the Milky Way or the symbol of the firmament. They 
 appear in analogous fashion in other monuments, such as the stone 
 called the stone of Tizoc and a multitude of cuaukxicalli. They are 
 tecpatl which face each other and figures in which we see the con- 
 stellation Itzpapalotl. There are in the museum many stones where 
 the butterfly occupies the principal place in a large sculptured 
 surface. 
 
 The said signs in the relief counted, and attributing to them the 
 value which, in consonance with the rest of the interpretation, ought 
 to correspond to them, the date 4992 before read is repeated. There' 
 are thirty-two butterflies and thirty-two groups of tecpatl, that is to 
 say 64 elements of the last class. The fact that these face each other 
 might strengthen the thesis that the monument expresses Toltec con- 
 ceptions. We know that that people began their chronological counts 
 by ticpatl. Ah well, if a xipoualli (cycle of 52 years) began with the 
 day Ce t&cpatl in a year of the same name, the first day of the following 
 
 69 
 
cycle also would be tecpatl, which may make clear to us the position 
 mentioned. A value of 52 years being assigned then to each group of 
 these symbols, we obtain the number 1,664, that is to say, 3,328 in all. 
 The butterflies complete the year 4992 already read on the face of the 
 monument. If this is but a coincidence, there could not be one more 
 extraordinary. 
 
 Why have not the three ages been represented by the same glyph ? 
 One hypothesis occurs to us: Orion or the Pleiades were not selected 
 to mark the new fi^es until the third age; before that, either they had 
 properly no history and the counting of the earher epochs was a 
 simply theoretical concept, or they did not attend to the astronomical 
 phenomenon for dividing the cycles. 
 
 We may add that Senor Abadiano sees flowers in the figures which 
 we take as Itzpapalotl; in his conception they signify the last of the 
 day signs of the month, which was xdchitl. He gives no attention to 
 the signs of stars (circles with a line across the middle) which make up 
 the butterflies in question. The httle stars alternate with tecpatl 
 or flint knives, symbol expressive of luminous gleams, sparks, flash- 
 ings: the glyph unquestionably treats of a constellation. 
 
 We have analyzed and discussed the glyphs of the relief, avoiding 
 arbitrary assumptions so far as possible. The majority of our inter- 
 pretations are supported in important monuments, and among them- 
 selves they are found in harmony on the stone, the explanation of 
 which results congruent, complete, and unitary. It could not be 
 otherwise: a monument of such magnitude necessarily responds to a 
 clear and logical thought. 
 
 As Beyer has said, many of the principal theories offered do not 
 stand scientific criticisni. The central face and the four quadrangles 
 which inclose the symbols of the ages have been satisfactorily explained; 
 there are hypotheses, susceptible of verification, concerning the dates 
 inscribed near to the sun's face; the fives, the solar glyphs, the penta- 
 gons, and the dots of the body of the serpents have been counted, but 
 only of the last does any reasonable explanation exist (Chavero hit 
 the mark very weU in the interpretation of the 104 solar glyphs) ; and 
 nothing or only ambiguous, poetical, and indefinitely general concep- 
 tions have been formulated concerning the pentagons, the plumes or 
 flames, the true meaning of the serpents, the heads inclosed in their 
 throats, the groups of four bars, the great numerals of the center 
 of the stone, and the glyphs of the projection of the relief. Also 
 
 70 
 
attention has been called to the dots on the margin of the stone; 
 but the mode of interpreting them rested upon a false assumption. 
 
 With respect to the date of the quadrangle above, there may be 
 no mode of detemining it, as it may express at once various important 
 dates in the past of Mexico . The sign upon the forehead of Tonatiuh, 
 the dates Ce qui&huitl and Chicome ozomatli,^ and a definite decision 
 when the stone was made and who worked it remain in doubt. But 
 that it expresses the Toltec chronology based upon the cycles of 104 
 and 416 years, engendered by the movement and calendars of two 
 stars, we believe is now a conquest of science. Our explanation, 
 harmonious in its other parts, still has two gaps in it: the five solar 
 glyphs at the base of the arrow of the naolin and the numeral 
 located in the same place. Perhaps these may be the five interca- 
 laries of the end of the year; their position indeed suggest it. 
 In resume, the Indian century or cycle of 104 years appears: 
 In the face of huehueteotl (metaphorically) ; 
 In the circle of the solar glyphs (directly) : (104) ; 
 In the heads which join each other: (52+52 = 104). 
 The xipoualli or bundle of 52 years: 
 In each scale or division of the body of the serpents; 
 In the tyings of the serpents, assigning to them the value of a 
 
 tlapilU; 
 In the butterflies and the tecpatl of the projection or edge of the 
 stone. 
 The cycle of 416 years appears: 
 In the great numerals which surround the huehueteotl; 
 In the pentagons distributed in four groups of i3(4X 13 X8=4i6) ; 
 In the groups (52 in each serpent) of four little bars: (directly): 
 
 (52X4X2 = 416); 
 In the flames of the back of the serpents: (104X4 = 416). 
 By equivalence: 
 
 In the numerals (260) distributed in fives. 
 
 The year appears in the body of the serpents; there also the 
 
 tonaldmatl is encountered, and at the same time it is possible to make 
 
 the reading of the period 1,040 in its glyphs and especially of the great 
 
 era of 1,664 years, repeated four times in the rectangles of the center. 
 
 ' I believe that these dates express a correction: that is to say, the actual 
 difference of time which is produced at the end of 416 years, between the respective 
 positions of the sun and Venus. If this is so, these dates constitute, pre-eminently 
 the astronomical touchstone of this admirable monument. 
 
 71 
 
 / 
 
We may add that the general respresentation of the monument is • 
 of years and not of days, a fact which for the most part has escaped 
 archaeologists; for this reason they did not succeed in the reading. 
 
 The stone expresses directly (that is, with signs of fixed value 
 among the Indians) the dates 4992, 5096, 5097, of the Indian chronol- 
 ogy; also the years 624 and 780 may be read, which added to the last 
 (itself being included) read 5720 and 5876 of the Indians, which corre- 
 spond to 1323 and 1479 A.D. The former is the date of the founding 
 of the city of Mexico; 1479 is a year in the reign of Axayacatl. 
 
 The date 4992 appears twice, that of 5096 once. Ce Ucpatl is 
 the year following, 5097 (700 of our era). InferentiaUy it is possible, 
 and not inconsistently or by straining the truth, to encounter the date 
 1064 of the Christian Era, date of the exodus from Aztlan. This 
 would suppose that the date of the tablet is not 699 A.D. , but 1479; 
 an exact cycle of 416 separates this from 1064, an observation which 
 did not escape Dr. Valentini. We ourselves arrive at it in a different 
 manner: 
 
 1064 (inclusive)-|-4i6= 1,479. 
 
 Ixtlilxochitl gives the years 4992, 5096, and 5097, and Orozco y 
 Berra admits them; Clavijero also has the date 4992 (596 of the vulgar 
 era) setting at it the arrival of the Toltecs upon the Plateau; the 
 Texcocan historian asserts the same. Motolinia (with a difference of 
 six years), and the Anales de Ctiauhtitlan mention the year 5097 (700 
 of our era) ; the date is assigned as that of the foundation of Tula, 
 or, perhaps better, as that of the election of the first monarch; thus 
 Chavero understands it. Torquemada states it, referring it to the 
 king Totepeuh. We believe it more probably should be the beginning 
 of an era, as Fray Toribio and Gomara declare. The illustrious 
 writers, Count Juan Reinaldo Carli and Juan Carlos Buschmann, also 
 name it, having encountered it in their investigations. 
 
 The canon Ordonez de Aguiar gives approximately the year 3432 
 of the natives (964 B.C.) alluding to the Quich'es. Chavero admits 
 it with reference to the Vixtoti. The Anales mention it in connec- 
 tion with the Ulmecas, from which we infer affinities between these 
 peoples. 
 
 Tezozomoc, Chimalpahin, Veytia, and Gama mention the year 
 10.64 of our chronology as the date of the beginning of the wanderings 
 of the Aztecs; and it is inferred from the Tira del Museo, codex which 
 places the exodus of the Aztecs from Aztlan 183 years before the fire 
 
 72 
 
kindled in Chapultepec, which event took place in 1247 according to 
 the study of Don Alfredo Chavero. Clavijero and Humboldt thought 
 the same. 
 
 The year 1323, named in the Codex Fuenlealor Icazbalceta, is that 
 of the foundation of Tenochtitlan, when the Indians began to con- 
 struct substantial houses, an event somewhat subsequent to their 
 finding the cactus (nochtli) as is inferred from the comparison of the 
 data of the Anales de Cuauhtitlan and of the Codex Aubin. The said 
 year 1323 corresponding to 5720 of the aborigines may be found on 
 the monoHth. 
 
 Finally, the year 1479 of our era is the one mentioned by the 
 friar Diego Duran and may be referred to the 13-dcail of the tablet. 
 Nevertheless, this native date fits equally to the dates 1323 and 699 
 A.D. Perhaps the triple anniversary, the triple 13-dcatl, gave origin to 
 the construction of the relief, admitting the latest of the dates (1479); 
 in no case, however, was it the beginning of the historic or fifth sun, 
 as Seler, Joyce, and Spmden claim, because the new era, for the Toltecs 
 as for the Mexicans, who afterward adopted the tochtli, began with 
 Ce tecpail, sign inscribed near the face of the sun, where such a meaning 
 truly fitted it. We will say again: either the subjects of Motecuh- 
 zoma were a family from the Toltec trunk, or the great stone of the 
 museum is a monument of the race of Quetzalcoatl and Huemantzin. 
 
 Our interpretation is supported upon the authorities quoted; at 
 the same time they receive irrefrangible weight which the stone, from 
 today even more than ever, the first chapter of the history of Mexico, 
 gives them. 
 
 THE FIRST CHAPTER OE MEXICAN HISTORY 
 
 Founded then in the monument itself and other authorities who 
 present data in agreement with it, we believe that we can assert, now 
 . with certainty, the following facts: 
 
 The Toltec race has a historic reality and attained notable advance- 
 ment. 
 
 It arrived on the Mexican Plateau about the year 596 of the 
 Christian Era; there were just ending, in particular in the valley of 
 Mexico, violent manifestations, probably eruptive, which buried under 
 their lavas human reUcs and fossils of the Quaternary and Pleistocene. 
 This was the catastrophe to which they attributed the end of the third 
 age of the world, considering the remains of the animals that they 
 found to be those of giants. Apparently the flows of tezontle (lava of 
 
 73 
 
Ajusco, of Xictli, and of the Sierra de Santa Catarina), described with 
 so much precision by the Anales de Cuauhtitlan when it says that 
 "the red rock boiled, " date from then. 
 
 Toward the year 700 the Toltecs were organized and elected a 
 monarch, establishing themselves in a city to which they gave the 
 name of another older one where they had lived in earlier times. 
 There are reasons to believe that the first Tula, or at least the ancient 
 place of origin of the people of Huemantzin, lay to the southeast, in the 
 famous kingdom of the Quich'es of Chiapas, race with which the 
 Ulmecas present more than one affinity, and the first notices of which 
 date back to about a thousand years B.C. Only the southern fertility 
 and the opulent resources of that zone could engender in primitive 
 times a culture such as that attained by that people. When the Tol- 
 tecs established themselves on the Plateau, we must believe that 
 they were already civilized. If by any chance, they came from the 
 north on the last occasion, the origin of their culture must anyway 
 have been in the southern districts. This is so much the more likely, 
 since there are data of the fall of an empire in Yucatan toward the end 
 of the sixth century a.d., which perhaps started the migration that 
 appeared on the Plateau in 596. 
 
 The Toltec power ended about 1070-1116; but the capital ele- 
 ments of their civilization were transmitted to the surviving races, 
 and at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Acolhuas, Mexicans, 
 Mayas, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, etc., etc., preserved them in greater or less 
 degree. All accepted the same chronological system, which is the 
 original and loftiest contribution of the aborigines to human culture; 
 it is necessary to attribute it to a race which has served as trunk to the 
 others, or which has at least, imposed its culture upon all. Tracing 
 back in the traditions of the peoples most widely separated geographi- 
 cally and most foreign to each other in their languages (Cakchiquels, 
 Mayas, Nahuas, etc.), the name of the Toltecs is always found. It is 
 not impossible that these have received from the Ulmecas some ele- 
 ments of culture, which they developed until bringing them to their 
 maximum flower and splendor; barring that they were the Ulmecas 
 themselves. 
 
 Also, the various races, inhabitants of the ancient territory which 
 today is Mexico, resembling each other in many characteristic quali- 
 ties, reveal an extraordinary artistic tendency; in the greater number 
 of cases they applied this skill to expressing the ideas of the theogony, 
 the cosmogony, and principally of the astronomy and chronology 
 
 74 
 
which were in essence derived from the Toltecs. Grandiose in 
 architecture, skilled although not perfected in painting, they sur- 
 passed in sculpturing stone and had no rival as decorators. Most 
 beautiful their stucco decorations and works in freestone; their 
 sculptures and reliefs in hard rock are masterpieces, unsurpassed as 
 to beauty and workmanship in any country of the earth. 
 
 In the year 1064, the tribe of the Aztecs, also of Nahua race, 
 undertook a pilgrimage, going out from a place the exact location of 
 which is not yet known; it is nevertheless a fact— the codices state 
 it — that the Aztecs began their journey in water craft. 
 
 In 1227 they arrive at Chapultepec and in 1247 kindle the new fire 
 in that place. Their chronological system is the same as that of the 
 Toltecs; the cycles of 52 years show it. 
 
 In 1323 they definitely found the city of Tenochtitlan; a little 
 before, ten or twelve years, they had encountered the eagle upon the 
 cactus. About 1479 a grand cycle of 416 years from the beginning of 
 their pilgrimage was completed, a fact which the Aztecs celebrate 
 with extraordinary sacrifices and festivities; perhaps then they con- 
 structed a notable commemorative monument. 
 
 Finally, 13 years (a tlalpilli) before the chronological cycle (104 
 years) should end, reckoning from the creation of the world according 
 to their ideas, the Spanish conqueror arrived, and in the year Yd 
 colli (1521) the empire of the Mexicans was destroyed, the last of its 
 monarchs being the hero, whom they symbolically called " The Eagle 
 Who Falls." The year 1521 a.d. was 5918 of the chronology of the 
 autochthonous nation. As an original and most valuable contribu- 
 tion to human culture it left, as we have already said, its arts and 
 calendar, which is based totally on astronomical abservations. Arts, 
 history, and calendar are found in synthesis in the stone of the museum. 
 
 NAME AND POSITION OF THE MONOLITH 
 
 As concerns the name of the stone, considering that it is the sum 
 total of the chronological system of the aborigines, founded in mathe- 
 matically defined cycles, none is more exact than that proposed by 
 Don Alfredo Chavero, the "Mexican Cyclographic Stone"; but we 
 beUeve that it will not be possible to displace the designation "Aztec 
 Calendar," imposed by the first eminent interpreter of the monument, 
 and by which it is universally known. Strictly it is a calendar, in the 
 elevated and broad sense, since it contains the measure of time; but 
 we cannot absolutely assert or deny that it is Aztec work. The name 
 
 75 
 
"Stone of the Sun" fits without doubt, though only partially since 
 it is really " Stone of the Sun and of Venus." 
 
 Concerning the position in which the Aztecs maintained it, we 
 cannot bring ourselves to admit that it was placed horizontally. 
 Incredible and even absurd to sculpture, with infinite art and labor, 
 such marvelous works that they should remain almost concfealed! 
 Nevertheless, Seler, following Chavero in this as in some other points, 
 holds that the purpose of the stone was the practicing of sacrifices 
 upon it, attempting to identify it with a simple cuauhxicalli, which had 
 wrought upon it the face of the sun and the signs of the days. It is 
 well understood that this stone was something of much less impor- 
 tance than the relief of the museum, synthesis of the history of the 
 world and of the science of the aborigines. Much less can we 
 admit, as Mrs. Nuttall claims in her erudite study (Key-Notes of 
 Ancient American Civilizations) that it was placed in the ceiling of a 
 building with relief downward, in such a position that certain of the 
 symbols were to the east; the thesis is so strange that we will not 
 discuss it. 
 
 No, the central Tonatiuh, in the height of the zenith, with the 
 claws opened, magnificently suspended in space, eloquently proclaims 
 how the natives placed the monument. In the imagination of those 
 men, the sun, when he crosses the firmament suggested an eagle cleav- 
 ing space in his powerful flight; and, in fact, the star of day and the 
 eagle appear intimately associated in the codices. They called the 
 sun Quauhtleuatl or Quauhtleoauitl, "The Eagle That Ascends." 
 On the other hand, the dates inscribed below the arrow, giving them 
 the meaning ascribed to them by Gama and Chavero, result without 
 sense under the preceding unacceptable theses. The suflSciently 
 probable theory that the stone was used in the mode of a solar time- 
 piece, by means of gnomons, the sockets for which are clearly pre- 
 served, also falls to the ground. Lastly, how could the point of the 
 arrow indicate the meridian of Mexico, if the monolith were in a 
 horizontal position ? 
 
 It is necessary to convince one's self of this: the relief was placed 
 vertically in the great teocalli, as we see it today, although with its face 
 to the south and oriented exactly with reference to the east and west. 
 If this stone is the one described by Duran, we must suppose that 
 they laid it down in order to make sacrifices upon it; but, the 
 cruel ceremony ended and innumerable victims sacrificed to the god 
 of blood, they would again erect it in the only position admissible, that 
 
 76 
 
in which the Indians could contemplate the face of their deity and read 
 the Teoamoxtli, the marvelous page written on the surface of the relief; 
 the history of the world divided into periods of 416 years, formed by 
 the continuous gyration of the 20 days of the month, of the 260 days 
 of the tonalAmatl, of the 365 days of the civil year, of the 2,920 of the 
 Venus period, of the 18,980 of the sacred cycle in which they adjusted 
 the tying, of the 37,960 of the greater cycle in which the movements of 
 the sun and star combine, and of the 151,840 of the great era in 
 which all the elements of the chronology harmoniously adjust their 
 admirable mechanism. And as reUgion and time measurement formed 
 with the observation of the heavens one single body of ideas, the stone 
 came to be actually the sum total of the mythologico-astronomical 
 conceptions of the natives. 
 
 In the cycle of 52 years the elements of the solar calendar closed 
 their round, in order to repeat themselves in the following period: 
 this was the famous festival of the making of the new fire, of which 
 aU the histories speak. The cycle of 104 years, adjustment of the 
 calendars of the sun and Venus, was much less celebrated, because of 
 its long duration; the citation from Sahagun and the hieroglyphs of 
 codices and momunents demonstrate, nevertheless, that the Indians 
 considered it also, certainly with extraordinary solemnity. Lastly, the 
 great period of 416 years, of extreme amplitude, was rather a calcula- 
 tion of mathematicians, a theoretical rather than practical arrange- 
 ment; nevertheless, the occasion for its celebration presented itself 
 once during the history of the Aztecs: when the people of Tenoch 
 counted 416 years from the time of their exodus from Aztlan. It 
 occurred in 1479. The unusual importance of the anniversary 
 explains the construction of so grandiose a monument: they de- 
 sired to stamp thereon, succeeding admirably, the fundamental 
 ideas of their culture and the supreme dates in their past. The great 
 stone of the museum, Cyclographic Stone of the pre-Columbian 
 civilizations of America, is certainly the stone of the history of the 
 world, according to the cosmogony and beliefs of the Indians, and in 
 particular of the history of the constructing race up to the moment 
 when the monolith was erected. We know of no people which has 
 raised another more admirable and marvelous. 
 
 77 
 
■"•■"'"■'^ „ni, a.*' 
 
 GREAT CHRONOLOGICAL CYCLE OF 
 
 416 YEARS. MAUSOLEUM NO. Ill 
 
 OF CHICHEN ITZA