It is remarkable that, in one case water and in another smoke, indicating fire, issues from the socket of Tezcatlipoca's fire-drill, and that, opposite to the picture in the Borgian Codex, representing the kindling of fire on the fire-altar, we have the image of a pool of water from which four figures spring toward the cardinal points (see fig. 29).
It is only after recognizing that, like the people of the Old World, the Mexicans associated with the fire-drill and socket not only the distribution of fire and heat, but also of water, that we also fully grasp the symbolism of the symbol of the “Black or Night Sun,” [pg 506] from the “Life of the Indians,” which is but one of many simple forms exhibiting main features which recur on the highly elaborated Mexican stone of the Great Plan (fig. 73b). When placed in juxtaposition the undoubted resemblance between the Babylonian image of Shamash and the Mexican image, as well as the deep-seated identity of these two quadruplicate symbols stands out clearly: in the Babylonian, wavy lines emanating from the centre convey the idea of some fluid essence. In the Mexican, instead of the wavy lines, the conventional representation of a drop of water is depicted—the idea in both cases being obviously identical and agreeing with the primeval universal conception of heat or fire, and water emanating from a common source, and flowing to the cardinal points. In both cases an axle or socket is represented, and it is instructive to study the different ways in which the symbol recurs in the Mexican Codices.
Referring back to fig. 1, 1, reproduced from the Codex Borgia, we see the axle with rays issuing from a circular band of water. A receptacle filled with water occupies the centre and contains a tecpatl, the symbol of the north, the same associated with the fire-drill god in the next figure. In fig. 1, 4, the central fountain is surrounded, as in many instances, by stars which connect it with the nocturnal heaven, and it contains a rabbit=tochtli, the rebus figure employed to express the word octli, by which the rain was designated as “earth wine” (see pp. 95 and 185).
As I write, I have before me a whole series of painted representations from the Codices of what has heretofore been misinterpreted as images of the diurnal sun. In some of these the open centre is painted blue or green, in others it is filled by a heart from which flows, in some cases, a stream of blood, the essence of life. In several instances a tree with four main branches grows from the [pg 507] centre.148 In one case the tree grows from a pool and holds in its branches the image of the axle, in the centre of which, as in the Humboldt Tablet preserved at the Berlin Museum, a figure is seated. The centres of others exhibit the head of a divinity painted red, a single eye, or the ollin. All examples establish the fact that the Mexican “axle of the North” represented fire and water emanating from a single source. In notable examples, where the axle is carved in stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is situated. An analogous but shallow depression occurs in the great circular monument, the Conquest Stone of Mexico (see p. 259), around which Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed fire-drill god, is represented sixteen times, each time in the act of receiving the enforced homage of the chief or chieftainess of a different locality.
The above monuments, as well as a rudely-carved representation of the “sun” recently discovered and unearthed by Dr. Ed. Seler, lying on a substructure of stones in the centre of an open space, presumably a market place, definitely proves that the design was intended to be placed in a horizontal position. This intention has already been noted in the case of the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico (fig. 56), on which the rays and intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of the divine Twain.
A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as far as is known, employed no means of extracting [pg 508] oil or juice or of grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process,149 come to employ as a sacred symbol, the axle or “mill-stone” which, in India, had been adopted as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the fire-drill and the oil-press?
The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was associated in Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards described as a “stone wheel,” is termed in the Nahuatl text as a “te-malacatl” i. e. a “stone whorl.” Further evidence of the close association of such “stone whorls” with thread or cord, the product of spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was attached by one foot to the open centre of the “stone whorl” and circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was associated with the cosmical axle, or disk.
It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the Assyrian-Babylonian image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot, oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any conclusions or conjectures on this point, however, a number [pg 509] of other questions must be investigated. One fact, however, stands out quite clearly: Whereas in figure 73, b, we have the rudimentary form of the quadruplicate symbol, closely resembling that which was already ancient and almost obsolete in Babylonia in the ninth century B.C. and pertained to a cult of Shamash, the North and Heaven, which had flourished in that country about 1850 B.C., the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico represents the highly advanced development and elaboration of the identical cult, as actually established there until the year 1519 of our era.
Pausing here and looking back upon the foregoing summary of the universal spread of identical forms of social organization and of rituals suggested by the use of the fire-drill, in association with a primitive pole-star cult, there are a few distinct and unrelated points which claim special attention: First of all, the identity in the form of the fire-altar and the cult of the fire-socket, among the Maghas and Nahushas of India and the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico. Secondly, the striking resemblance of plan and numerical scheme which unquestionably existed between the ideal “divine polities,” recorded by Plato, and the states which actually existed, of ancient Peru and Mexico. It is impossible to read Plato's scheme of an all-pervading division into 12, and his plan for the laying out of the capital and state and not to recognize the fact that, in Peru, as set forth on pp. 133-149 of the present work, these identical principles were actually carried out by the alien Incas who, in comparatively modern times, collected the natives together and organized them into a settled community. Thirdly, the undeniable fact that the numerical scheme of the Maya and Mexican Calendar and state-organization is identical with that adopted by Constantine, in establishing New Rome.
Postponing a closer examination of these points until further on, let us now continue our comparative review.
The universal spread of the identical scheme of organization, vouched for by documentary evidence, is further demonstrated by the results of archaeological and historical research and a comparative study of ancient symbolism. Thus it is impossible not to admit the striking and deep-seated analogy between the Assyrian four-fold division of city and state, the title “lord of the four regions” and the image of Shamash, the “four-spoked wheel;” the Indian, Egyptian and Grecian philosophical conceptions of four elements, culminating in Plato's Cosmos and Theos (an entity, [pg 510] spherical in shape, incorporating four elements) and, for instance, the quadruplicate symbol carved in the centre of the Mexican Cosmical Tablet, which exhibits the symbols of the same four elements embodied in a single symbol, representing the supreme power, who is thus proven to have been conceived by the Mexicans, as well as by the Peruvians, as “the Air, Earth, Fire and Water in One,” or the source of the four elements.150
When it is likewise considered that the Mexicans employed the divine title, “four times lord,” that the Maya title “Kukulcan,” signifies the “Divine Four,” that the ancient map of Mayapan proves that, like the Kushite confederacy, and the kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt and Peru, it was a “Four provinces in One” or a “four-fold state,” the identity of the principles underlying the archaic civilizations of the Old and New World becomes more and more apparent. It likewise becomes evident that in each of these countries the significance and symbolism of the archaic cross-symbol and swastika must have been identical, and that, like the pyramid (the form of which, in the ancient Greek alphabet, is given [pg 511] to the letter delta which expresses, numerically, four, a quatuor, or 4,000) and the square stone altar or column, it figured the Four in One, the mystic Five or the Four and all-embracing One. The following array of facts demonstrates further the universal association of archaic cross-symbolism with the conception of an all-embracing, stable, central power.
A striking demonstration of this is furnished by the diagonal cross, employed as a Chinese character, to express the word wū=five, just as it is used, in Egyptian hieratic script, to express the syllables uu, un or ur (see fig. 60). Sometimes, in Chinese, a horizontal line is drawn above the cross and another beneath it, and John Chalmers informs us that, according to the Shoh Wan, this “full form means the five elements between heaven and earth, the upper line being heaven and the lower earth.” The sign thus obviously constituted an image of the Cosmos, the 5+2=heaven [pg 512] and earth, thus furnishing the familiar seven directions in space, the chief and synopsis of which is the sacred Centre.
The association, in ancient America, of the cross-shape with central stable power, has already been discussed in the case of the Copan swastika, p. 222. At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelæ found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. 220, namely, that the personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelæ, were high-priest rulers, who bore the title “Divine Four,” and were “rulers of the four regions.”
Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon's report, published in vol. i, no. i, of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that, beneath several stelæ examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of these artificially cosmical centres.
What seems quite clear is that the subterraneous vault constituted a sacred cosmical chamber and that the stelæ were memorial stones, which probably represented the image of a lord, and the record of his fixed term of office which formed a period or era of the native calendar (see p. 221). The stela which formed the stable, visible centre of the hidden substructure may also have been employed as a gnomon during some period of time, and in the monument the initiated must undoubtedly have recognized the underlying cosmical conceptions, and regarded it as a highly developed form or variant of the archaic cross, the primitive record of a year. It is remarkable how closely analogous are the Central American stelæ with their hidden cruciform vaults, to the conception of the Egyptian “star of Horus” explained by Hewitt as the meridian pole raised in the centre of a cross denoting the four quarters.
[pg 513]The most striking evidence of a close affinity between the ancient Central American ah-men, or master-masons, who built cruciform windows in the walls of temples and designed the cruciform vaults under the stelæ at Copan and Quirigua, and the amanteca or tolteca, the master-architects and builders of Mitla, Mexico, is furnished by Mr. M. H. Saville's recent excavation of three remarkable subterraneous, cruciform chambers, the largest of which is situated on the summit of a high hill near Mitla. The interior of the latter is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs, like those on the exterior of the Mitla palace. The extreme length from east to west is 9m. 71cm., from north to south 8m. 18cm., and its roof was composed of large flat stones. The entrance to this and the other cruciform vaults is situated at the extremity of the western arm, which in the case described was longer than the other arms.
The most remarkable example of such a cruciform crypt is, however, that situated beneath the palace of Mitla, which has been figured by Dupaix in Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. ix. This vault is also built of the shape of a so-called “Greek” cross, but in its centre stands a large circular stone column reaching from floor to ceiling. It is impossible not to recognize the symbolism of this pillar situated in the centre of a structure, the form of which symbolizes the Four Quarters and the fundamental identity of the column occupying the centre of the Mitla chamber and the Copan stelæ standing above the centre of the hidden cruciform vault. Details associated with the pillar which stood in the Great Temple of Mexico (p. 53), and the “pedestal” erected on the hill of justice at Guatemala (p. 79) definitely show that, in ancient America, the column was also associated with star-cult, with the administration of justice and central celestial and terrestrial government. Investigation has shown that precisely the same ideas were associated with the circular, square or octagonal columns of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Japan, where they either constituted the images of the central supreme divinity, formed the support for the statues of earthly “divine” rulers, or marked the centres of the cosmos or state, bearing inscriptions of the sacred laws as in Athens, or of the distances to all points of the empire, viz. the Roman Milliarum Aureum.
It is remarkable to find that, whereas in ancient Byzantium the centre of the city had been marked by a column surmounted by a colossal statue of Apollo, a pillar or pole god, Constantine erected [pg 514] a “spacious edifice, from the centre of which all roads of the empire were measured.” Considering that, at the time when this edifice was built, the ancient quadruplicate plan had been revised and the empire of New Rome had been divided into four parts by Constantine, it seems reasonable to infer that the form of the great edifice which marked the territorial centre of the new empire bore the impress of the cruciform plan, and that the shape of the cross should have been adopted throughout the empire, in edifices marking central consecrated places. How much of the true spirit of the Christian ideal of universal brotherhood entered into the constitution of Constantine's New Rome it is impossible to conjecture. Niebuhr denies that Constantine was a Christian, records that he was only baptized shortly before his death, and states that the religion of Constantine “must have been a strange compound indeed, something like the amulet recently discovered at Rome, which is an example of that curious mixture of Judaism, Christianity and Paganism which we so frequently meet with from about the beginning of the third century.”151
In an extremely interesting monograph “On the origin of the cruciform plan of the mediæval Cathedral,” by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M. Wheelwright, published in the “Transactions of the Boston Society of Architects, 1891,” I find the significant fact that what is now the little church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the time of Constantine.
The same monograph teaches that “de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the congregation assembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are also found in the catacombs. In [pg 515] the fifth or sixth century cruciform buildings became in the East, and wherever Byzantine influence was potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings commemorative of holy places. These types seem to have been given, by Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their construction and to have appeared to them as monuments requiring a symbolical expression of plan, while they evidently did not consider such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general congregations, which, although of types without distinct association with the Christian faith, were held, for several centuries, to be sufficiently well adapted to purposes of Christian worship without material change from their ancient form [that of the Roman Basilica].”
Referring the reader to Mr. Wheelwright's monograph for interesting data concerning the Byzantine influence discernible in the early types of Christian churches of cruciform plan erected in northern Italy and Europe, I merely note here that in St. Sophia, founded by Constantine, and completed by Justinian, “the load of the dome is thrown on four great piers disposed at either corner of a square. These great piers, with the corresponding buttresses of the outer wall, suggest a possible symbolical intent in the arrangement ... otherwise the cruciform plan here suggested is expressed neither externally nor internally.” I venture to suggest that in St. Sophia, “Holy Eternal Wisdom,” as in the case of the Pantheon, the dominant idea may have been the all-embracing unity, but that, as the number four was identified with “wisdom and justice” by the widespread Pythagorean philosophy, that number must have seemed, to the initiated, to pervade the entire structure. In the case of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where it was Justinian's intention to mark a sacred locality, we find the cruciform plan clearly carried out. “The church of St. Simeon Stylite at Kelat Seman Syria, built about A.D. 500, is a most interesting example of a cruciform church, marking a sacred spot [and associated with a sacred column].”
“The church of the seventh century built at Sichem, over the well of the Samaritan, shows a distribution of plan similar to that of S. Simeon Stylite, the holy object being at the crossing.... There are existing at St. Wandrille and at Querqueville in Normandy, two (cruciform) triapsidal churches of a date prior [pg 516] to the Norman conquest ... a well preserved four-apsed tomb chapel exists at Montmajour near Arles, built in 1019; the detail and plan of which point to a Syrian prototype and resembles two buildings of an early date now existing in Dalmatia.” The use of the cruciform type of church, anterior to the great revival of purely Christian religious architecture in the thirteenth century, was confined to Picardy and the Rhenish provinces, fine churches of this type being at Cologne, Bonn, Marburg, etc.
It is interesting to recall that the building of sacred structures is attributed to “secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative masons which existed during the middle ages, and possessed grades of officers and secret signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.” To this day, in some parts of Germany and Bohemia, the swastika is the sign or mark of the stone-mason's guild which has survived from the mediæval times. In the organized bands of masons whose mark was the swastika and who introduced Eastern cosmical symbolism into Europe and gradually developed, upon this basis, a purely Christian form of architecture, we may perhaps see the descendants of those ancient builders who, filled with the conception of the sacred Central power, the Four Quarters, the Above and Below, planned the square, seven-stoned zikkurats of Babylonia-Assyria, the pyramids, obelisks and sphinxes of Egypt, the columns and cruciform tombs and sanctuaries of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, the cruciform temples and the topes of India and the domes of the Pantheon and St. Sophia.152
It would appear that these ancient builders were also the designers and founders of cities and states. It is, for instance, known that Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon, a Milesian, and by profession an architect, gained celebrity in his own art by constructing the Piræus at Athens and by improving the method of distributing [pg 517] streets and planning cities ... and also wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government.
A kinship of thought undoubtedly exists between the trained builders of cosmical structures in the Old World and the ah-men, the amantecas and toltecas of Central America and Mexico, who also reared pyramids, cruciform vaults, circular temples, with openings to the four quarters (see fig. 30, p. 97), altars and pillars, and in their temples wrought, in stone, endless variations of the great human theme: the sacred central, stable power, the four quarters and elements, and the heaven and earth with the dualities of Nature, and likewise instituted an artificial scheme of social organization, a calendar and religious rites based on these same fundamental principles, which can be traced back to primitive pole-star worship. It has been of utmost interest to me, as I was approaching the end of the present investigation, to become acquainted with Hewitt's work and his view that it was the seafaring Turanians, originally a northern race, the worshippers of Tur=the pole, who claimed descent from the seven stars of Nāgash, the serpent=Ursa Major, and, from India, extended their trade and carried their form of social organization and religious cult first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where they were known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians.
The subjoined detached passages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of pole-star worshippers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who, according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe but also to America.153 Hewitt bases [pg 518] the latter assertion upon the identity be perceived “between Akkadian and American mythological traditions.”
As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias, related to the Zuñis), as “Mexican” (see vol. ii, p. 243, etc.), a term which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the truly Mexican, “teo-cipactli” as a “fish-god” is unfortunate, as numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that cipactli signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an identity of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake [pg 519] of gaining information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt's further assertion that “the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians ... and who continued in their new land, America, the worship of the rain god, to whom, as their fathers in central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross” (Hewitt, p. 492).
“The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-worshippers who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia, as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the mother-goddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill; who is also worshipped as the mother Maga under the form of the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem.” In Essay viii [pg 520] Hewitt states that these “sons of the great witch-mother Maga” lived in Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the “city of the Magnetes” referred to by Plato as “the mother of laws.” The word mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. ii, p. 54).
“As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of towns.... They adored the god of the twirling or churning fire-drill.... They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and thunder god and star-god who guides the stars in their courses and rules the beginning of the year” (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian “Ukko is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly mountain” (vol. ii, p. 155).
[pg 521]“They worshipped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of Naga=the Nahushas. They worshipped the Pleiades=the mother stars....”
“The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phœnicians ... the red men, who worshipped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North, Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the Akkadians, Egyptians and Kushites.... They reverenced the sacred ‘shu’ stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the world ... as the sacred Shu stone.”
It should be added here that the Hittite sign for Ishtar was a triangle enclosing a stone: “the mountain enclosing the stone of life.”
“Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uræus serpent as a sign of royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so widely distant from one another as India and Egypt....”
We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200), that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief survived in Phœnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found amongst the Semites. “Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an animal, plant or [pg 522] heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of Nahash, ‘or the serpent,’ the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest and decimation of the latter.”
“... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling air-god who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the Abyss, the Assyrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the magical rain-pole, called the god Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in front of every house ...” (p. 194). “They are the Canaanites, or dwellers in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the race of Achæans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent, the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the gods” (Hewitt, p. 175).
Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. 56), whose bodies may be seen to consist of a repetition of the conventional sign for tlalli=land, consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These girdling serpents, whose heads unite, [pg 523] being directly associated with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as springing from the sign Acatl (see p. 257).
On the other hand, the heavenly “feathered serpent” of Mexico and Yucatan is distinctly associated with the air and the circle; its conception curiously coinciding with that of the “girdling air-god” mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet, but also on the allegorical figure of the “Divine Serpent,” which may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake tribe, associated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their name. The undeniable association, in Mexico, of the serpent with Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the “sons of Achis, the serpent”=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.
In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man, the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned “... his people had replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple, the home and symbol of the creating god, who had been the pillar of the house.... But in their eyes the father-god was not the central pillar but the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the gates of god.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts—the pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of religious festivals.”
“The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human sacrifices in order to obtain rain” (Hewitt).
“The Phœnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and breasts to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices [pg 524] were made, to Moloch or Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice and the victim's cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes” (Sayce).