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ATa
QUEEN MOO
AND
THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX
AUGUSTUS LE PLONGEON, M.D.
I \
AUTHOR OF
“SACRED MYSTERIES AMONG THE MAYAS AND THE QUIC^^:S ”
A SKETCH OF THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF PERU AND THEIR CIVILIZATION, ETC., ETC., ETC.
SECOND EDITION
NEW YORK
1900
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
AGENT
London, England.— Kegan Paul, Trench, TrUbner & Co., Paternoster House
Charing Cross Road, W. C.
Entered according to act of Congress, April, 1896, by Augustus Le Plongeon, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington All rights of translation and reproduction reserved
Bequest
' Albert Adsit Olemona ^ Auff. 24, 193a (Not aTailable lor exchang*©)
Press of J. J. Little «fc Co. Astor Place, New York
TO MY WIFE,
ALICE D. LE PLONGEOX,
MY CONSTANT COMPANION DURING MY EXPLORATIONS
OF TUE
RUINED CITIES OF THE MAYAS,
WHO,
IN ORDER TO OBTAIN A GLIMPSE OF THE HISTORY OF THEIR BUILDERS, HAS EXPOSED HERSELF TO MANY DANGERS,
SUFFERED PRIVATIONS, SICKNESS, HARDSHIP;
MY FAITHFUL AND INDEFATIGABLE COLLABORATOR AT HOME;
THIS WORK IS
AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
AUGUSTUS LE PLOXGEON, M.D.
Brooklyn, February 15, 1896.
LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED
A.
Acosta, Jose de.
Acts of the Apostles. yElian, Claudiiius.
Alcedo, Antonio de.
Ancona, Eligio.
Aristotle.
B.
Bancroft.
Beltran de Santa Rosa, Pedro. Bernal Diez del Castillo. Berosns.
Bhagavata, Purana.
Birch, Henry.
Blavatsky, H. P.
Brasseiir de Bourbourg. Brinton, Daniel G.
British and Foreign Review. Brugscli, Henry.
Bunsen, Christian Karl Julius. Burckhardt Barker, William.
C.
Cartaud de la Villate.
Chablas.
Cliainpollion Figeac. Chainpollion le Jeune.
Charencey, Hyacinthe de.
Chou-King.
Chronicles.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius.
Cieza de Leon, Pedro.
Clement of Alexandria.
Clement of Rome.
Codex Cortesianus.
Cogolludo, Diego Lopez de. Colebrooke, H. T.
Confucius — Kong-foo-tse.
Cook, Captain James.
D.
Daniel, Book of.
De Rouge, Olivier Charles Camille. Diodorus Siculus.
Dion Cassius.
D’Orbigny, Alcide Dessalines.
Dubois de Jan'cigny, Adolphe Phili¬ bert.
Du Chaillu, Paul.
Duncker, Maximilian Wolfgang.
E.
Ellis, William.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED.
Eiiclydes.
Eusebius.
F.
Flaubert, Gustave.
G.
Garcilasso de la Yega.
Genesis, Book of.
Gordon Gumming, C. F.
Grose, Henry.
II.
Haeckel, Ernest.
Haliburton, R. G.
Heber, Bishop Reginald.
Heineccius, Johann Gott.
Herodotus.
Plerrera, Antonio de.
Hilkiah (the High Priest).
Homer.
Horapollo.
Horrack.
Hue, Abb(3 Evariste R(3gis. Humphreys, Henry Noel.
1.
Isaiah, Book of.
J.
Joshua, Book of.
Juvenal, Decimus Junius.
K.
Kenrick, John.
Kings, H. Book of.
Kingsborough (Lord), Edward King. Klaproth, Heinrich Julius.
L.
Land a, Diego de.
Las Casas, Bartolome de.
Layard, Sir Henry.
Lenormant, Fran9ois.
Le Plongeon, Alice D. ^
Le Plongeon, Augustus.
Lepsius, Karl Richard.
Leviticus, Book of.
Lizana, Bernardo.
London Times.
Lucius HI. (Pope).
Lyell, Charles.
M.
Macrobius.
Mahabharata, Adiparva Vyasa (other¬ wise Krishna Dwaipayana). Manava-Dharma-Sastra.
Marco Polo.
Marcoy, Paul (Lorenzo de St. Bricq). Markham, Clement R.
Matthew’s Gospel.
Molina, Cristoval de.
Moore, Thomas.
Moses de Leon.
Muller, Friedrich Maximilian.
N.
New York Herald.
O.
Oman, John Campbell.
Ordonez y Aguiar Ramon de.
Osburn, William.
Ovidius.
P.
Paley, Dr.
Papyrus IV., Bulaq Museum. Pausanias.
Philostratus.
Piazzi Smyth, C. '
Pictet, Adolphe.
Pierret.
Pio Perez, Juan.
LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED.
Plato.
Plinius.
Plutarcli.'
Popol-Vuh.
Porphyry.
Procliis.
Procopius.
R.
Ranking, John.
Rail, Charles. Rawlinson, George. Rawlinson, Sir Henry. Renan, Ernest. Rig-veda.
Ripa, Father.
Robertson, William. Rochefort.
Rockhill Wood vi lie, W. Roman, Fray Geronimo. Rosny, L6on de.
S.
Salisbury, Stephen.
Santa Buena Ventura, Gabriel de. Sayce, A. II.
Schellhas.
Schoolcraft, Henry R.
Sclater, P. L.
Seiss, Joseph Augustus. Squier, George E. Stephens, John L.
St. Hilaire, Barth616my. Strabo.
T.
Tertullian.
Theopoinpus de Quio. Thucydides. Torqueinada, Juan de. Troano MS.
Two Chelas.
V.
Valentini, Philipp J. J. Valmiki, Ramayana.
W.
Ward, William.
Wheeler, J. Talboys. Wilkinson, Sir Gardner. Wilson, John.
Wiittke, Heinrich.
Y.
Young, Dr.
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
Engraved hj F. A. Ringler & Co., of New Torh, from photographs and drawings hy the author.
PLATES PAGE
I. Fossil Shells . xviii
11. Map of Maya Empire, from Troano MS. .... xlii
III. Modern ]\Iap of Central America, with Maya symbols . . xliv
IV. Map of Drowned Valleys of Antillean Lands, by Prof. J. W.
Spencer, by his permission ....... xlv
V. Map of West Indies, from Troano MS . lx
VI. Banana Leaf, a token of hospitality among the South Sea
Islanders. From Captain Cook’s Atlas .... 3
A^II. Serpent Heads found in Cay’s ^Mausoleum, Cliiclieii . . 4
VIII. Serpent Head wdth Crown, carved on the entablature of the
east fa9ade of the west wing of King Caiiclii’s palace at
Uxiiial . 5
IX. Buins of Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall at Cliiclieii . . 7
X. Columns of the Portico *of Prince Coh’s Memorial Hall,
discovered by the author ....... 8
XL Altar at the Entrance of Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s
Memorial Hall, discovered by the author . . . .11
XH. One of the Atlantes supporting the Table of the Altar in
Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall . 13
XHI. Officials at Burmese Embassy at Paris . . . . . 13
XIV. ) Sculptured Wall in the Chamber at the Foot of Prince
XV. \ Coil’s Memorial klall . 14
XVI. Part of the East Fa9ade of West Wing of King Caiiclii’s
Palace at Uxiiial, with Cosmic Diagram .... 16
XVH. Maya Cosmic Diagram . 17
XVIII. Sri-Santara, Hindoo Cosmic Diagram . 32
XIX. Ensoph, Chaldean Cosmic Diagram . 36
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXIII.
XXXIV.
XXXV.
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
Head with Phoenician Features, discovered by the author in 1875 in the royal box tennis court at CliicPieii .
A Native Girl of Yucatan .
Caribs of the Island of St. Vincent. From Edwards’s “ History of the British Colonies in the West Indies” Portal of Eastern Fa9ade of the Palace at Cliiclieii. Tab lean showing the Creator in the Cosmic Egg .
Kneeling Cynocephalus. From the TemjDle of Death a
Uxiiial .
Portico, with inscription resembling those of Palenque Portrait of a Maya Nobleman called Cancoli. A bas relief on one of the antse of the portico of Prince Coil’s
Memorial Hall at Cliictieii .
Portrait of a Maya Nobleman called Clliicll. A bas- relief on one of the antee of the portico of Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall .........
Portrait of a Maya Chieftain called Cul. Bas-relief on one of the jambs of the entrance to the funeral chamber in Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall . . .
Priest and Devotee. Sculptured slab from Manchg, now in the Britisli Museum .......
Obelisk, from Copan. Photographed by Mr. Marshall H. Saville ; reproduced by his permission ....
Queen Zoo. One of the atlantes supporting the table of the altar in Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall A Maya Matron. One of tlie atlantes supporting the table of the altar in Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall .
A Caiiob Vase. Used in religious ceremonies Slab from Altar in the Temple of God of Rain. Palenque Restoration of the Portico of Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall. Drawing by the author .......
Fish. Bas-relief from Pontiff Cay’s Mausoleum at Clii-
cheii .
1 Sculptured Zapote Beam, forming the lintel of the en- f trance to funeral chamber in Prince Coil’s Memorial
Hall. Casts from moulds made by the author
XXXIX. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Queen Moo when yet a young girl consult¬ ing Fate by the ceremony which the Chinese call Pou XL. Fresco painting. Queen Moo asked in Marriage XLI. Attitude of Respect among the Egyptians
PAGE
58
68
64
69
77
81
82
82
82
82
82
84
84
86
109
120
121
122
128
130
131
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES PAGE
XLII. Attitude of Respect among tlie Mayas. Statue of Prince
Coll exhumed from his Mausoleum by tlie author . 132
XLIII. Attitude of Respect among the Mayas. Columns of Ka-
tuns at Ak(i . . . . . 132
XLIV. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Queen Moo’s Suitor consulting Fate . 133
XLV. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Citaiii, the Friend of Queen Moo, con- • suiting an Aruspicc . . . . . . .134
XLYI. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s ^Me-
morial Hall. Prince Aac in Presence in the H-iiieii . 134
XLVII. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Ilighpriest Cay consulting Fate . . 135
XLVIII. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Prince Coll in Battle .... 13C
XLIX. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s jMe- morial blall. A Village, assaulted by Prince Coil’s Warriors, abandoned by its Inhabitants .... 137
L. Fresco Painting in Funeral Chamber in Prince Coil’s Me¬ morial Hall. Prince Coil’s Body prepared for Cremation 138 LI. Fresco painting in Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall. Prince
Aiie proffering his Love to Queen Moo . . 139
LH. Queen 3l6o a Prisoner of War. Plate xvii., part ii., of
Troano ^IS . 143
LIH. Account of the Destruction of the Land of Mu. Slab in the building called Akab-aib at CliicTieii. Cast from mould made by the author ...... 146
LIV. Account of the Destruction of the Land of Mu. Plate
V., part ii., of Troano MS. ...... 147
LV. ) Calendar and an Account of the Destruction of the Land LVI. ( of 3Iu. From the Codex Cortesianus . . . .147
LVH. :Mausoleum of Prince Cob. Restoration and drawing by
the author . . . • 1^55
LVHI. A Dying Warrior. Bns-relief from Prince Cob’s Mauso¬ leum
LIX. Leopard eating a Human Heart: Totem of Prince Coll.
A bas-relief from his Mausoleum ..... 157
LX. Macaw eating a Human Heart: Totem of Queen 3Ibo.
A bas-relief from Prince Cob’s Mausoleum . . . 157
LXI. Salutation and Token of Respect in Thibet. From the
book by Gabriel Bondalot, “Across Thibet” . . 158
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES
LXII. A Dying Sphinx (a leopard with a human head) that was placed on the top of Prince Coil’s Mausoleum LXIII. Javelin Head and Arrow Points, found with the Charred Remains of Prince Coll in his Mausoleum LXIV. Egyptian Spliinx. Reproduced from a photograph by Mr.
Edward Wilson, by his permission ....
LXV. Portrait of Queen Moo. From a demi-relief adorning the entablature of the east fa9ade of the Governor’s House
at Uxnial .
LXVI. Portrait of Bishop Lauda, second Bishop of Yucatan.
From an oil painting in the Chapter Hall of the Cathe¬ dral at Merida ; reproduced by permission of the present bishop ..........
LXVH. Autograph of the Historian, Father Lopez de Cogolludo.
The original is in the possession of the present Bishop of
Yucatan . .
LXVHI. Mezzo-relievo in Stucco on the Frieze of the Temple of Kabul at Izamal. A Human Sacrifice .... LXIX. Fresco Painting in the Funeral Chamber of Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall. iVdepts consulting a Seer
LXX. Fresco Painting in the Funeral Chamber of Prince Coil’s Memorial Hall. A Female Adept consulting a Magic
Mirror .
LXXI. Part of Fa9ade of the Sanctuary at Uxnial. Image of the Winged Cosmic Circle ......
LXXH. The Lord of the Yucatan Forests. From life .
LXXHI. Part of Fa9ade of the Sanctuary at Uxnial. Cosmic symbols carved on the trunk of the Mastodon
PAGE
158
159 159
166
169
173
197
222
222
218
236
256
PKEFACE.
“ To accept any authority as final, and to dispense with the necessity of independent in¬ vestigation, is destructive of all progress.'’
(Man ly two Chelas.)
“ What you have learned, verify hy expe¬ rience, otherwise learning is vain.”
{Indian Saying,)
In this work I offer no theory. In questions of history theories prove nothing. They are therefore out of place. I leave my readers to draw their own inferences from the facts presented for their consideration. Whatever be their conclu¬ sions is no concern of mine. One thing, however, is certain — neither their opinion nor mine will alter events that have happened in the dim past of which so little is known to-day. A record of many of these events has reached our times writ¬ ten, by those who took part in them, in a language still spoken by several thousands of human beings. There we may read part of man’s history and follow the progress of his civilization.
The study — in situ — of the relics of the ancient Mayas has revealed such striking analogies between their language, their religious conceptions, their cosmogonic notions, their manners and customs, their traditions, their architecture, and the lan¬ guage, the religious conceptions, the cosmogonic notions, the manners and customs, the traditions, the architecture of the
/
viii PREFACE.
ancient civilized nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, of which we have any knowledge, that it has become evident, to my mind at least, that such similarities are not merely effects of hazard, but the result of intimate communications that must have existed between all of them; and that distance was* no greater obstacle to their intercourse than it is to-day to that of the inhabitants of the various countries.
It has been, and still is, a favorite hypothesis, with certain students of ethnology, that the Western Continent, now known as America, received its human population, therefore its civili¬ zation, from Asia. True, there is a split in their ranks. They are not quite certain if the immigration in America came from Tartary across the Strait of Behring, or from Hindostan over the wastes of the Pacific Ocean. This, however, is of little consequence.
There are those who pretend, like Klaproth, that the cradle of humanity is to be found on the plateau of Pamir, between the high peaks of the Himalayan ranges, or like Messrs. Kenan and Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who place it in the region of the Timaeus, in the countries where the Bible says the Gar¬ den of Eden” was situated ; while others are equally certain man came from Lemuria, that submerged continent invented by P. L. Sclater, which Haeckel ^ believes was the birthplace of the primitive ape-man, and which they say now lies under the waves of the Indian Ocean. The truth of the matter is, that these opinions are mere conjectures, simple hypotheses, and their advocates know no more when and where man first appeared on earth than the new-born babe knows of his sur¬ roundings or how he came.
The learned wranglers on this shadowy and dim point ^ Haeckel, Ernst, Hist, of Creation.^ vol. ii., p. 326.
PREFACE.
IX
forget that all leading geologists now agree in the opinion that America is the oldest known continent on the face of the planet ; that the fossil remains of human beings found in vari¬ ous parts of it, far distant from each other, prove that man lived there in times immemorial, and that we have not the slightest ray of light to illumine the darkness that surrounds the origin of those primeval men. Furthermore, it is now admitted by the generality of scientists, that man, far from descending from a single pair, located in a particular portion of the earth’s surface, has appeared on every part of it where the biological conditions have been propitious to his develop¬ ment and maintenance ; and that the production of the various species, with their distinct, well-marked anatomical and intel¬ lectual characteristics, was due to the difference of those bio¬ logical conditions, and to the general forces calling forth animal life prevalent in the places where each particular spe¬ cies has appeared, and whose distinctive marks were adapted to its peculiar environments.
The Maya sages doubtless had reached similar conclusions, since they called their country Mayach ; that is, “the land first emerged from the bosom of the deep,” “the country of the shoot; ” and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, boasted that “their ancestors, in the ^ Lands of the West,’ were the oldest men on earth.”
If the opinion of Lyell, Humphry, and a host of modern geologists, regarding the priority of America’s antiquity, be correct, what right have we to gainsay the assertion of the Mayas and of the Egyptians in claiming likewise priority for their people and their country ?
'It is but natural to suppose that intelligence in man was developed on the oldest continent, among its most ancient
X
PREFACE.
inhabitants; and that its concomitant, civilization, grew apace with its development. When, at the impulse of the instinct of self-preservation, men linked themselves into clans, tribes, and nations, history was born, and with it a desire to commemo¬ rate the events of which it is composed. The art of drawing or writing was then invented. The incidents regarded as most worthy of being remembered and preserved for the knowledge of coming generations were carved on the most enduring material in their possession — stone. And so it is that we find to-day the cosmogonic and religious notions, the rec¬ ords of natural phenomena and predominant incidents in the history of their nation and that of their rulers, sculptured on the walls of the temples and palaces of the civilized Mayas, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, as on the sacred rocks and in the hallowed caves of primitive uncivilized man.
It is to the monumental inscriptions and to the books of the Mayas that we must turn if we wish to learn about the pri¬ meval traditions of mankind, the development of civilization, and the events that took place centuries before the dim myths recorded as occurrences at the beginning of our written history.
Historians when Avriting on the unAersal history of the race have neAW taken into consideration that of man in America, and the role that in remote ages American nations played on this Avorld’s stage, and the influence they exerted over the populations of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Still, as far as Ave can scan the long vista of the past centuries, the Mayas seem to have had direct and intimate communications with them.
This/hc^ is indeed no neAV revelation, as proved by the uni¬ versality of the name Maya, Avhich seems to have been as AveU
PREFACE.
XI
known by all civilized nations, thousands of years ago, as is to¬ day that of the English. Thus we meet with it in Japan, the Islands of the Pacific, Ilindostan, Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Equatorial Africa, JSTorth and South America, as well as in the countries known to us as Central America, which in those times composed the 3Iaya Empire. The seat of the Govern¬ ment and residence of the rulers was the peninsula of Yucatan. Wherever found, the name Maya is synonymous with power, wisdom, and learning.
The existence of the Western Continent was no more a mystery to the inhabitants of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean than to those whose shores are bathed by the waves of the Indian Ocean.
Yalmiki, in his beautiful epic the Kamayana,” says that, in times so remote that the sun had not yet risen above the horizon,” the Mayas, great navigators, terrible warriors, learned architects, conquered the southern parts of the Indo- Chinese peninsula and established themselves there.
In the classic authors, Greek and Latin, we find frequent mention of the great Saturnian continent, distant many thou¬ sand stadia from the Pillars of Hercules toward the setting sun. Plutarch, in his ‘^Life of Solon,” says that when the famed Greek legislator visited Egypt- (600 years before the Christian era), Sonchis, a priest of Sais, also Psenophis, a priest of Heliopolis, told him that 9,000 years since, the rela¬ tions of the Egyptians with the inhabitants of the Lands of the W est ’ ’ had been interrupted because of the mud that had made the sea impassable after the destruction of Atlantis by earthquakes.
The same author again, in his work, De Facie in Orbe Lunae,” has Scylla recount to his brother Lampias all he had
PREFACE.
xii
learned concerning them from a stranger he met at Carthago returning from the transatlantic countries.
That the Western Continent was visited by Carthaginians a few years before the inditing of Plato’s ‘‘Atlantis,” the por¬ traits of men with long beards and Phoenician features, discov¬ ered by me in 1875, sculptured on the columns and antse of the castle at CliicTieii, bear witness. Diodorus Siculus attributes the discovery of the Western Continent to the Phoenicians, and describes it as “a country where the landscape is varied by very lofty mountains, and the temperature is always soft and equable.” Procopius, alluding to it, says it is several thousand stadia from Ogygia, and encloses the whole sea, into which a multitude of rivers, descending from the highlands, discharge their waters. Theopompus, of Quio, speaking of its magni¬ tude, says: “Compared with it, our world is but a small island; ” and Cicero, mentioning it, makes use of nearly the same words: “ Omnis enin terrse qu£e colitur a vobis parva quasdam est insula.” Aristotle in his work, “ De Mirabile Auscultatio, ” giving an account of it, represents it “ as a very large and fertile country, well watered by abundant streams ; ’ ’ and he refers to a decree enacted by the Senate of Carthage toward the year 509 b.c., intended to stem the current of emi¬ gration that had set toward the Western Lands, as they feared it might prove detrimental to the prosperity of their city. The belief in the former existence of extensive lands in the middle of the A tlantic, and their submergence in consequence of seis¬ mic convulsions, existed among scientists even as far down as the fifth century of the Christian era. Proclus, one of the greatest scholars of antiquity, who during thirty-five years was at the head of the Neo-Platonic school of Athens, and was learned in all the sciences known in his days, in his “ Com-
PREFACE.
xiii
mentaries on Plato’s Tima?us,” says: “The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did once, for Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such and so great an island once existed, and that it is evi¬ denced by those who composed histories relative to the external sea, for they relate that in this time there were seven islands in the Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine; and, besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred to Pluto, Jupiter, and Keptune; and, besides this, the inhabitants of the last island (Poseidonis) preserve the memory of the prodigious magnitude of the Atlantic island as related by their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the islands in the Atlantic sea. From this isle one may pass to other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land near which is the true sea.”
It is well to notice that, like all the Maya authors who have described the awful cataclysms that caused the submergence of the Land of Mu,” Proclus mentions the existence of ten countries or islands, as Plato did. Can this be a mere coinci¬ dence, or was it actual geographical knowledge on the part of these writers ?
Inquiries are often made as to the causes that led to the interruption of the communications betAveen the inhabitants of the Western Continent and the dwellers on the coasts of the Mediterranean, after they had been renewed by the Cartha¬ ginians.
It is evident that the mud spoken of by the Egyptian priests had settled in the course of centuries, and that the sea- Aveeds mentioned by Ilamilco had ceased to be a barrier suffi¬ cient to impede the passage, since Carthaginians reached the shores of Yucatan at least five hundred years before the Chris-
XIV
PREFACE.
tian era.^ These causes may he found in the destruction of Carthage, of its commerce and its ships, by the Romans under Publius Scipio. The Romans never were navigators. After the fall of Carthage, public attention being directed to their conquests in Northern Africa, in 'VYestern Asia, and in Greece; to their wars with the Teutons and the Cimbri; to their own civil dissensions and to the many other political events that jDreceded the decadence and disintegration of the Roman Em¬ pire; the maritime expeditions of the Phoenicians and of the Carthaginians — their discoveries of distant and transatlantic countries became well-nigh forgotten. On the other hand, those hardy navigators kept their discoveries as secret as possible.
With the advent and ascendency of the Christian Church, the remembrance of the existence of such lands that still lin¬ gered among students,* as that of the Egyptian and Greek civilizations, was utterly obliterated from the mind of the people.
If we are to believe Tertullian and other ecclesiastical writers, the Christians, during the first centuries of the Chris¬ tian era, held in abhorrence all arts and sciences, which, like literature, they attributed to the Muses, and therefore regarded as artifices of the devil. They consequently destroyed all ves¬ tiges as well as all means of culture. They closed the acade¬ mies of Athens, the schools of Alexandria ; burned the libra¬ ries of the Serapion and other temples of learning, which contained the works of the philosophers and the records of
iJuande Torquemada, Indiana^ lib, iii., cap. 3. Lizana
(Bernardo), Bewdonario de nuestra SeTiora de Itzamal, etc., part 1, folio 5, published by Abb6 Brasseur, in Landa’s Las Cosas de Yucatan^ pp. 349 et passim.
2 Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter viii., verse 12.
PREFACE.
XV
their researches in all branches of human knowledge (the power of steam and electricity not excepted). They depopu¬ lated the countries bathed by the waters of the Mediterranean; plunged the populations of Western Europe into ignorance, superstition, fanaticism; threw over them, as an intellectual mortuary pall, the black wave of barbarism that during the Middle Ages came nigh wiping out all traces of civilization — which was saved from total wreck by the followers of Ma- hornet, whose great mental and scientific attainments illumined that night of intellectual darkness as a brilliant meteor, too I soon extinguished by those minions of the Church, the members i of the Holy Inquisition established by Pope Lucius III. The inquisitors, imitating their worthy predecessors, the Metropoli¬ tans of Constantinople and the bishops of Alexandria, closed I the academies and public schools of Cordoba, where Pope Sylvester II. and several other high dignitaries of the Church had been admitted as pupils and acquired, under the tuition ' of Moorish philosophers, knowledge of medicine, geography, rhetoric, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy, and the other sciences contained in the thousands of precious volumes that formed the superb libraries which the inquisitors wantonly destroyed, alleging St. Paul’s example.'
Abundant proofs of the intimate communications of the ancient Mayas with the civilized nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe are to be found among the remains of their ruined cities. Their peculiar architecture, embodying their cosmo¬ gonic and religious notions, is easily recognized in the ancient architectural monuments of India, Chaldea, Egypt, and Greece; in the great pyramid of Ghizeh, in the famed Parthenon of Athens.- Although architecture is an unerring standard of the 'The Acts of the Apostles, chapter xix., verse 19.
XVI
PREFACE.
degree of civilization reached by a people, and constitutes, therefore, an important factor in historical research ; although it is as correct a test of race as is language, and more easily applied and understood, not being subject to changes, I have refrained from availing myself of it, in order not to increase the limits of the present work.
I reserve the teachings that may be gathered from the study of Maya monuments for a future occasion ; restricting my observations now principally to the Memorial Hall at Cliiclieii, dedicated to the manes of Prince Coli by his sister- wife Queen Moo ; and to the mausoleum, erected by her order, to contain his effigy and his cremated remains. In the first she caused to be painted, on the walls of the funeral chamber, the principal events of his and her life, just as the Egyptian kings had the events of their own lives painted on the walls of their tombs.
Language is admitted to be a most accurate guide in tracing the family relation of various peoples, even when inhabiting countries separated by vast extents of land or water. In the present instance, Maya, still spoken by thousands of human beings, and in which the inscriptions sculptured on the walls of the temples and palaces in the ruined cities of Yucatan are written, as are also the few books of the ancient Maya sages that have come to our hands, will be the thread of Ariadne that will guide us in following the tracks of the colonists from Mayacli in their peregrinations. In every locality where their name is found, there also we meet with their language, their religious and cosmogonic notions, their traditions, customs, architecture, and a host of other indications of their presence and permanency, and of the influence they have exerted on the civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants.
PREFACE.
xvii
My readers will judge for themselves of the correctness of this assertion.
The reading of the Maya inscriptions and books, among other very interesting subjects, reveals the origin of many narratives that have come down to us, as traditions, in the sacred books of various nations, and which are regarded by many as inexplicable myths. For instance, we find in them the history of certain personages who, after their death, be¬ came the gods most universally revered by the Egyptians, Isis and Osiris, whose earthly history, related by Wilkinson and other writers who regard it as a myth, corresponds ex¬ actly to that of Queen Moo and her brother-husband Prince Coh, whose charred heart was found by me, preserved in a stone urn, in his mausoleum at Cliiclieii.
Osiris, we are told, was killed by his brother through jeal¬ ousy, and because his murderer wished to seize the reins of the government. He made war against the widow, his own sister, whom he came to hate bitterly, after having been madly in love with her.
In these same books we learn the true meaning of the tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden ; of the temptation of the woman by the serpent offering her a fruit. This offer¬ ing of a fruit, as a declaration of love, which was a common occurrence in the every-day life of the Mayas, Egyptians, and Greeks, loses all the seeming incongruity it presents in the narrative of Genesis for lack of a word of explanation. But this shows how very simple facts have been, and still are, made use of by crafty men, such as the highpriest Hilkiah, to de¬ vise religious speculations and impose on the good faith of ignorant, credulous, and superstitious masses. It is on this story of the courting of Queen Moo by Prince Aac, the murderer of
xviii PREFACE.
her husband — purposely disfigured by the scheming Jewish priest Hilkiah, who made the woman appear to have yielded to her tempter, perhaps out of spite against the prophetess Hul- dah, she having refused to countenance his fraud and to become his accomplice in it^ — that rests the whole fabric of the Christian religion, which, since its advent in the world, has been the cause of so much bloodshed and so many atrocious crimes.
In these Maya writings we also meet with the solution of that much mooted question among modern scientists — the ex¬ istence, destruction, and submergence of a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, as related by Plato in his ^‘Timaeus” and ^^Critias,” in consequence of earthquakes and volcanic erup¬ tions. Of this dreadful cataclysm, in which perished sixty- four millions of human beings, four different authors have left descriptions in the Maya language. Two of these narratives are illustrated — that contained in the Troano MS.,^ the other in the Codex Cortesianus. The third has been engraved on stone in relief, and placed for safe-keeping in a room in a building at CliicTieii, where it exists to-day, sheltered from the action of the elements, and preserved for the knowledge of coming gen¬ erations. The fourth was written thousands of miles from Mayacli, in Athens, the brilliant Grecian capital, in the form of an epic poem, in the Maya language. Each line of said poem, formed by a composed word, is the name of one of the letters of the Greek alphabet, rearranged, as we have it, four hundred and three years before the Christian era, under the archonship of Euclydes.
' 2 Kings, chap, xxii., verse 14 et passim ; also 2 Chronicles, chap, xxxiv., verse 24.
2 See Appendix, note iii.
Page xviii
Plate I.
i
«»s
' I
-'•-i
PREFACE.
XIX
Fleeing from the wrath of her brother Aac, Queen Moo directed her course toward the rising sun, in the hope of finding shelter in some of the remnants of the Land of Mil, as the Azores, for instance. Failing to fall in with such place of refuge as she was seeking, she continued her jour¬ ney eastward, and at last reached the Maya colonies that for many years had been established on the banks of the Kile. The settlers received her with open arms, called her the ‘'little sister,” ioiii {Isis), and proclaimed her their queen.
Before leaving her mother-country in the West she had caused to be erected, not only a memorial hall to the memory of her brother-husband, but also a superb mausoleum in which were placed his remains and a statue representing him. On the top of the monument was his totem, a dying leopard with a human head — a veritable sphinx. Once established in the land of her adoption, did she order the erection of another of his totems — again a leopard with human head — to preserve his memory among her followers? The names inscribed on the base of the Egyptian sphinx seem to suggest this conjec¬ ture. Through the ages, this Egyptian sphinx has been the enigma of history. Has its solution at last been given by the ancient Maya archives ?
In the appendix are presented, for the first time in modern ages, the cosmogonic notions of the ancient Mayas, re-discov¬ ered by me. They will be found identical with those of the other civilized nations of antiquity. In them are embodied many of the secret doctrines communicated, in their initia¬ tions, to the adepts in India, Chaldea, Egypt, and Samothra- cia, — the origin of the worship of the cross, of that of the tree and of the serpent, introduced in India by the Kagas, who
XX
PREFACE.
raised such a magnificent temple in Cambodia, in the city of Angor-Thom, to their god, the seven-headed serpent, the Ah- ac-chapat of the Mayas, and afterward carried its worship to Akkad and to Bab}don. In these cosmogonic notions we also find the reason why the number ten was held most sacred by all civilized nations of antiquity ; and why the Mayas, who in their scheme of numeration adopted the decimal system, did not reckon by tens but by fives and twenties; and why they used the twenty-millionth part of half the meridian as stand¬ ard of lineal measures.
In the following pages I simply offer to my readers the re¬ lation of certain facts I have learned from the sculptures, the monumental inscriptions carved on the walls of the ruined pal¬ aces of the Mayas ; the record of which is likewise contained in such of their books as have reached us. I venture only such explanations as wiU make clear their identity with the concep¬ tions, on the same subjects, of the wise inen of India, Chaldea, Egypt, and Greece. I do not ask my readers to accept d priori my own conclusions, but to follow the sound advice contained in the Indian saying quoted at the beginning of this preface. Verify hy experience what you ham learned j ” then, and only then, form your own opinion. When formed, hold fast to it, although it may be contrary to your preconceived ideas. In order to help in the verification of the facts herein presented, I have illustrated this book with photographs taken in situ^ drawings and plans according to actual, careful surveys, made by me, of the monuments. The accuracy of said drawings and plans can be easily proved on the photographs themselves. I have besides given many references whose correctness it is not difficult to ascertain.
This is not a book of romance or imagination ; but a work —
PREFACE.
XXI
one of a series — intended to give ancient America its proper place in the universal history of the world.
I have been accused of promulgating notions on ancient America contrary to the opinion of men regarded as authori¬ ties on American archaeology. And so it is, indeed. Mine is not the fault, however, although it may be my misfortune, since it has surely entailed upon me their enmity and its conse¬ quences. But Avho are pretended authorities f Certainly not the doctors and professors at the head of the universities and colleges in the United States; for not only do they know absolutely nothing of ancient American civilization, but, judg¬ ing from letters in my possession, the majority of them refuse to learn anything concerning it.
It may be inquired. On what ground can those who have published books on the subject, in Europe or in the United States, establish their claim to be regarded as authorities? What do they know of the ancient Mayas, of their customs and manners, of their scientific or artistic attainments? Do they understand the Maya language? Can they interpret one single sentence of the books in which the learning of the Maya sages, their cosmogonic, geographical, religious, and scientific attainments, are recorded? From what source have they derived their pretended knowledge? Uot from the writings of the Spanish chroniclers, surely. These only wrote of the natives as they found them at the time of, and long after, the conquest of America by their countrymen, whose fanatical priests destroyed by fire the only sources of information — the books and ancient records of the Maya philosophers and historians. Father Lopez de Cogolludo, in his “ Historia de Yucathan,” ^ frankly admits that in his time > Cogolludo, Hidoria de Tucathan, lib. iv., cap. iii., p. 177.
XXll
PREFACE.
no information could be obtained concerning the ancient his¬ tory of the Mayas. He says: ‘‘Of the peoples who first settled in this kingdom of Yucathan, or their ancient history, I have been unable to obtain any other data than those which follow.” The Spanish chroniclers do not give one reliable word about the manners and customs of the builders of the grand antique edifices, that were objects of admiration to them as they are to modern travellers. The only answer of the natives to the inquiries of the Spaniards as to who the builders were, invariably was, We do not Icnow.
For fear of wounding the pride of the pseudo-authorities, shall the truth learned from the works of the Maya sages and the inscriptions carved on the walls of their deserted tem23les and palaces be withheld from the world? Must the errors they propagate be allowed to stand, and the propagators not be called upon to prove the truth of their statements ?
The so-called learned ]nen of our days are the first to oppose new ideas and the bearers of these. This opposition will continue to exist until the arrogance and self-conceit of superficial learning that still hover within the walls of colleges and universities have completely vanished ; until the generality of intelligent men, taking the trouble to think for themselves, cease to accept as implicit truth the ipse dixit of any quidam who, pretending to know all about a certain subject, pro¬ nounces magisterially upon it ; until intelligent men no longer follow blindly such self-appointed teachers, always keeping in mind that “to accept any authority as final, and to dispense with the necessity of independent investigation, is destructive of all progress.” For, as Dr. Paley says: “ There is a princi¬ ple which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance; this principle is contempt prior to examination.”
PREFACE.
xxiii
The question is often asked, '' Of what practical utility can the knowledge that America was possibly the cradle of man’s civilization he to mankind ? ” To some, of but little use truly; but many there are who would be glad to know the origin of man’s primitive traditions recorded in sacred books in the shape of myths or legends, and what were the incidents that served as basis on which has been raised the fabric of the various reli¬ gions that have existed and do exist among men, have been and still are the cause of so many wars, dissensions, and per¬ secutions. This knowledge would also serve to disclose the source whence emanated all those superstitions that have been and are so many obstacles in the way of man’s physical, intellectual, and moral progress; and to free his mind from all such trammels, and make of him, what he claims to be, the most perfect work of creation on earth; also to make known the fact that Mayacli — not India — is the true mother of nations.
Then, perhaps, will be awakened, in the mind of those in whose power it is to do it, a desire to save and preserve what remains of the mural inscriptions carved on the walls of the ruined palaces and temples of the Mayas, that are being torn to pieces by individuals commissioned by certain institutions in the United States and other places to obtain curios to adorn their museums, regardless of the fact that they are destroying the remaining pages of ancient American history with the reckless hand of ignorance, thus making themselves guilty of the crime of leze-history as well as of iconoclasm.
Perhaps also will be felt the necessity of recovering the libraries of the Maya sages (hidden about the beginning of the Christian era to save them from destruction at the hands of the devastating hordes that invaded their country in those
XXIV
PREFACE.
times), and to learn from their contents the wisdom of those ancient philosophers,, of which that preserved in the books of the Brahmins is but the reflection. That wisdom was no doubt brought to India, and from there carried to Babylon and Egypt in very remote ages by those Maya adepts (Naacal — ^^the exalted ”), who, starting from the land of their birth as missionaries of religion and civilization, went to Burmah, where they became known as Nagas^ established themselves in the Dekkan, whence they carried their civilizing work all over the earth.
At the request of friends, and to show that the reading of Maya inscriptions and books is no longer an unsolved enigma, and that those who give themselves as authorities on ancient Maya palaeography are no longer justified in guessing at, or in forming theories as to the meaning of the Maya symbols or the contents of said writings, I have translated verbatim the legend accompanying the image, in stucco, of a human sacrifice that adorned the frieze of the celebrated temple of Kabul at Izamal.
This legend I have selected because it is written with hie¬ ratic Maya characters, that are likewise Egyptian.^ ^ny one who can read hieratic Egyptian inscriptions will have no diffi¬ culty in translating said legend by the aid of a Maya diction¬ ary, and thus finding irrefutable evidence : 1. That Mayas and Egyptians must have learned the art of writing from the same masters. Who were these ? 2. That some of the ruined mon¬
uments of Yucatan are very ancient, much anterior to the Christian era, notwithstanding the opinion to the contrary of the self-styled authorities on Maya civilization. 3. That
^ See Le Plongeon’s ancient Maya hieratic alphabet compared with the Egyptian hieratic alphabet, in Sacred Mysteries^ Introduction, p. xii.
PREFACE.
XXV
nothing now stands in the way of acquiring a perfect knowledge of the manners and customs, of the scientific attainments, reli¬ gious and cosmogonic conceptions, of the history of the builders of the ruined temples and palaces of the Mayas.
May this work receive the same acceptance from students of American archaeology and universal history as was vouchsafed to Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches.” It is written for the same purpose and in the same spirit.
Augustus Le Plongeon, M.D.
New York, January^ 1896.
si
INTRODUCTION.
OEIGIN OF THE HAME MAYACH.
The country known to-day as Yucatan, one of the states of the Mexican confederacy, may indeed be justly regarded by the ethnologist, the geologist, the naturalist, the philologist, the archaeologist, and the historian as a most interesting field of study. Its area of seventy-three thousand square miles, covered with dense forests, is literally strewn with the ruins of numerous antique cities, majestic temples, stately palaces, the work of learned architects, now heaps of debris crumbling under the inexorable tooth of time and the impious hand of iconoclastic collectors of relics for museums. Among these the statues of priests and kings, mutilated and defaced by the action of the elements, the hand of time and that of man, lie prostrate in the dust. Walls covered with bas-reliefs, inscrip¬ tions and sculptures carved in marble, containing the pane¬ gyrics of rulers, the history of the nation, its cosmogonical traditions, the ancient religious rites and observances of its
INTRODUCTION.
xxviii
people, inviting decipherment, attract the attention of the traveller. The geological formation of its stony soil, so full of curious deposits of fossil shells of the Jurassic period (Plate I.); its unexplored caves, supposed dwellings of sprites and elves, creatures of the fanciful and superstitious imagination of the natives; its subterraneous streams of cool and limpid water, inhabited by bagres and other fish — are yet to be studied by modern geologists; whilst its flora and fauna, so rich and so diversified, but imperfectly known, aAvait classification at the hand of naturalists.
The peculiar though melodious vernacular of the natives, preserved through the lapse of ages, despite the invasions of barbaric tribes, the persecutions by Christian conquerors, ignorant, avaricious, and bloodthirsty, or fanatical monks who believed they pleased the Almighty by destroying a civ¬ ilization equal if not superior to theirs, is full of interest for the philologist and the ethnologist. Situated between 18*^ and 21° 35' of latitude north, and 86° 50' and 90° 35' of longi¬ tude west from the Greenwich meridian, Yucatan forms the peninsula that divides the Mexican Gulf from the Caribbean Sea.
Bishop Landa ^ informs us that when, at the beginning of the year 151 Y, Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, the first of the Spaniards who set foot in the country of the Mayas, landed | on a small island which he called Mugeres, the inhabitants, on j being asked the name of the country, answered U-luumil j cell (the land of the deer) and U-luumil cutz (the land of the turkey).^ Until then the Europeans were ignorant of the existence of such a place; for although Juan Diaz Solis and
^ See Appendix, note i.
2 Diego de Landa, Relacion delas Cosas de Yucatan., chap, ii., p. 6.
INTRODUCTION,
XXIX
Yicente Yanes Pinzon came in sight of its eastern coasts in 1506, they did not land nor make known their discovery.^
Herrera, in his Decadas, tells us that when Columbus, in his fourth voyage to America, Avas at anchor near the island of Pinos, in the year 1502, his ships Avere boarded by Maya navigators. These came from the west; from the country knoAvn to its inhabitants under the general name of the Great Can (serpent) and the Cat-ayo (cucumber tree).^ The penin¬ sula, then divided into many districts or provinces, each gov¬ erned by an independent ruler avIio had given a peculiar title to his OAvn dominions, seems to have had no general name.
•One district was called Cliacaii, another Cepech, another Clioaca, another Mayapaii, and so on.^ Mayapaii, hoAv- ever, was a very large district, Avhose king Avas regarded as suzerain by the other chieftains, previous to the destruction of his capital by the people, headed by the nobility, they having become tired of his exactions and pride. This rebellion is said to have taken place seventy-one years before the advent of the Spanish adventurers in the country. The poAverful dynasty of the Cocomes, Avhich had held tyrannical sAvay over the land for more than tAVO centuries, then came to an end.^
Among the chroniclers and historians, several have ven¬ tured to give an etymology of the Avord Maya. Hone, how¬ ever, seem to have known its true origin. The reason is very simple.
At the time of the invasion of the country by the turbu-
’ Antonio de Herrera, Hist, general de los hecjios de los Castellanos en las islas y la tierra firme del Oceano. (Madrid, 1601.) Decada 1, lib. 6, cap. 17.
Ibid. Decada 1, lib. 5, cap. 13.
® Landa, Relacion, etc., chap, v., p. 30.
* Cogolludo, Historiade Yucathan, lib. iv., cap. hi., p. 179. See Appen¬ dix, note ii.
XXX
INTRODUCTION.
lent and barbaric E’ahnatls, the books containing the record of the ancient traditions, of the history of past ages, from the settlement of the peninsula by its primitive inhabitants, had been carefully hidden (and have so remained to this day) by the learned philosophers, and the wise priests who had charge of the libraries in the temples and colleges, in order to save the precious volumes from the hands of the barbarous tribes from the west. These, entering the country from the south, came spreading ruin and desolation. They destroyed the principal cities ; the images of the heroes, of the great men, of the cele¬ brated women, that adorned the public squares and edifices. This invasion took place in the year 522, or thereabout, of the » Christian era, according to the opinion of modern computers.^
As a natural consequence of the destruction, by the invad¬ ers, of Cliiclieii-Itza, then the seat of learning, the Itzaes, preferring ostracism to submitting to their vandal-like con¬ querors, abandoned their homes and colleges, and became wan¬ derers in the desert.^ Then the arts and sciences soon declined; with their degeneracy came that of civilization. Civil war — that inevitable consequence of invasions — political strife, and religious dissension broke out before long, and caused the dis¬ memberment of the kingdom, that culminated in the. sack and burning of the city of Mayapaii and the extinction of the royal family of the Cocomes in 1420 a.d., two hundred and seventy years after its foundation. ^ In the midst of the social cataclysms that gave the coioj? de grdce to the Maya civiliza- ’
1 Philip J, J. Valentini, Katunes of the Maya History, p. 54.
2 Juan Pio Perez (Codex Maya), U Tzolan Katunil ti Mayab (§ 7): “Liaixtun u Katunil binciob Ali-Ytzaob yalan die, yalan aban, yalan ak ti iiumyaob lae.” (“Toward that time, then, the Itzaes went in the forests, lived under the trees, under the prune trees, under the vines, and were very miserable.”)
^ Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. iv., cap. 3, p. 179.
INTRODUCTION.
XXXI
tion, the old traditions and lore were forgotten or became dis¬ figured. Ingrafted with the traditions, superstitions, and fables of the Nahuatls, they assumed the shape of myths. The great men and women of the primitive ages were trans¬ formed into the gods of the elements and of the phenomena of nature.
The ancient libraries having disappeared, new books had to be written. They contained those myths. The Troano and the Dresden MSS. seem to belong to that epoch. ^ They con¬ tain, besides some of the old cosmogonical traditions, the tenets and precepts of the new religion that sprang from the blend¬ ing of the ceremonies of the antique form of worship of the Mayas with the superstitious notions, the sanguinary rites, and the obscene practices of the phallic cult of the I^ahuatls; the laws of the land ; and the vestiges of the science and knowl¬ edge of the philosophers of past ages that still lingered among some of the noble families, transmitted as heirlooms, by word of mouth, from father to son.^ These books were written in new alphabetical letters and some of the ancient demotic or popular characters that, being known to many of the nobil¬ ity, remained in usage.
With the old orders of priesthood, and the students, the knowledge of the hieratic or sacred mode of writing had disappeared. The legends graven on the facades of the tem¬ ples and palaces, being written in those characters, were no
* See Appendix, note iii.
® Diego de Landa, Relaeion de las Cosas de Yucatan (chap, vii., p. 42) : “Que ensenavan los hijos de los otros sacerdotes, y a los hijos segundos de los senores que los llevaban para esto desde ninos.”
Lizana (chap. 8), Historia de Nuestra Seflora de Ytzamal : “ La historia y autores que podemos alegar son unos caracteres mal entendidos de muchos y glossados de unos indios antiguos que son hijos de los sacerdotes de sus dioses, que son los que solo sabiau leer y adevinar.”
XXXll
INTRODUCTION.
longer understood, except perhaps by a few arcbaBologists, who were sworn to secrecy. The names of the builders, their his¬ tory, that of the phenomena of nature they had witnessed, the tenets of the religion they had professed — all contained, as we have said, in the inscriptions that covered these antique walls — Avere as much a mystery to the people, as to the mul¬ titudes Avhich have since contemplated them with amazement, during centuries, to the present day.
Bishop Landa, speaking of the edifices at Izamal, asserts ^ that the ancient buildings of the Mayas, at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards in Yucatan, were already heaps of ruins — objects of awe and A^eneration to the aborigines Avho liA^ed in their neighborhood. They had lost, he says, the memory of those Avho built them, and of the object for Avhich they had been erected. Yet before their eyes Avere their fa9ades, covered Avith sculptures, inscriptions, figures of human beings and of animals, in the round and in bas-relief, in a better state of preservation than they are now, not having then suffered so much injury at the hand of man, for the natives regarded them, as their descendants do still, Avith rev¬ erential fear. There Avere recorded the legends of the past — a dead letter for them as for the learned men of the present age. There, also, on the interior Avails of many apartments, were painted in bright colors pictures that Avould grace the parlors of our mansions, representing the events in the history of certain personages Avho had flourished at the daAvn of the life of their nation; scenes that had been enacted in former ages were portrayed in very beautiful bas-reliefs. But these speaking tableaux Avere, for the majority of the people, as
* Landa, Relacion de las Cosas (p. 328): “ Que estos edificios de Izamal eran xi a xii por todos, sin aver memoria de los fundadores.”
INTRODUCTION.
xxxiii
nmcli enigmas as they are to-day. Still travellers and sci¬ entists are not wanting who pretend that these strange build¬ ings were constructed by the same race now inhabiting the peninsula or by their near ancestors ^ — regardless of Cogolludo’s assertion 2 that it is not known who their builders were, and that the Indians themselves preserved no traditions on the sub¬ ject;” unmindful, likewise, of these words of Lizana: ‘^That when the Spaniards came to this country, notwithstanding that some of the monuments appeared new, as if they had been built only twenty years, the Indians did not live in them, but used them as temples and sanctuaries, offering in them sacrifices, sometimes of men, women, and children; and that their construction dated back to a very high antiquity.” ^
The historiographer excellence of Yucatan, Cogolludo, informs us that in his day — the middle of the seventeenth century — scarcely a little more than one hundred years after the Conquest, the memory of these adulterated traditions was already fading from the mind of the aborigines. Of the people who first settled in this kingdom of Yucathan,” he says,
‘ ^ nor of their ancient history, have I been able to find any more data than those I mention here.” ^
The books and other writings of the chroniclers and his¬ torians, from the Spanish conquest to our times, should there¬ fore be considered well-nigh valueless, so far as the history of the primitive inhabitants of the country, the events that tran¬ spired in remote ages, and ancient traditions in general are
* John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travels in Yucatan., vol. ii., p. 458. De¬ sire Charnay, North American Review., April, 1882.
’ Diego Lopez de Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. iv., chap, iii., p. 177.
’ Lizana, Historia de Nuestra Sefiora de Ytzamal, chap. ii.
^ Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. iv., chap, iii., p. 177.
XXXIV
INTRODUCTION.
concerned, seeing that Cogolludo says they were unable to pro¬ cure any information on the subject. It seems to me that it is time,” he says, ‘‘to speak of the various things pertaining to this country, and of its natives; not, however, with the ex¬ tension some might desire, mentioning in detail their origin and the countries whence they may have come, for it would be difficult for me to ascertain now that which so many learned men were unable to find out at the beginning of the Conquest, even inquiring with great diligence, as they affirm, particu¬ larly since there exist no longer any papers or traditions among the Indians concerning the first settlers from whom they are descended; our evangelical ministers, who imported the faith, in order to radically extirpate idolatry, having burned all char¬ acters and paintings they could get hold of in which were written their histories, and that in order to take from them all remembrances of their ancient rites. ’ ’ ^
Those who undertook to write the narrative of the Con¬ quest and the history of the country, in order to procure the necessary data for this, had naturally to interrogate the na¬ tives. These were either unable or unwilling to impart the knowledge sought. It may be that some of those from whom inquiries were made were descendants of the Nahuatls, igno¬ rant of the ancient history of the Mayas. Others ma}^ have been some of the Mexican mercenaries who dwelt on the coasts, where they were barely tolerated by the other inhabitants, because of their sanguinary practices. They, from the first, had welcomed the . Spaniards as friends and allies — had main¬ tained with them intimate relations during several years, ^ be-
* Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. iv., chap, iii., p. 170.
^ Nakuk Peek. An ancient document concerning the Nakiik Peck family, Lords of Ckicxulub, Yucatan. This is an original document be¬ longing to Srs. Regil y Peon, of Merida, Yucatan.
INTRODUCTION.
XXXV
fore the invaders ventured into the interior of the country. Fearing that if they pleaded ignorance of the history it might be ascribed to unwillingness on their part to answer the ques¬ tions; dreading also to alienate the goodwill of the men with long gowns, who defended them against the others that handled the thunderbolts — those strangers covered with iron, now mas¬ ters of the country and of their persons, who on the slightest provocation subjected them to such terrible punishments and atrocious torments — they recited the nursery tales with which their mothers had lulled them to sleep in the days of their childhood. These stories were set down as undoubted tradi¬ tions of olden times.
Later on, when the Conquest was achieved, some of the natives who really possessed a knowledge of the myths, tra¬ ditions, and facts of history contained in the books that those same men with long gowns had wilfully destroyed by feed¬ ing the flames with them, notwithstanding the earnest prot¬ estations of the owners, invented plausible tales when ques¬ tioned, and narrated these as facts, unwilling, as they were, to tell the truth to foreigners who had come to their country un¬ invited, arms in hand, carrying war and desolation wherever they went ; ^ slaughtering the men ; ^ outraging the wives and the virgins ; ^ destroying their homes, their farms, their cities ; ^ spreading ruin and devastation throughout the land;^ dese-
' Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. ii., chap, vi., p. 77.
* Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, chap, xv., p. 84, et passim. Bernal Diez de Castillo, Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, cliap. 83.
3 Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, chap, xv., p. 84. Bartholome de las Ca¬ sas, Tratado de la Destruccion de las Indias, Reyno de Yucathan, lib. viii., cap. 27, p. 4.
^ Cogolludo, Hist, de Yucathan, lib. hi., chap, xi., p. 151. Landa, Las Cosas, ch. iv.
® Hid.
XXX VI
INTRODUCTION.
crating the temples of their gods; trampling underfoot the sacred images, the venerated symbols of the religion of their forefathers ; ^ imposing upon them strange idols, that they said were likenesses of the onl}^ true God and of his mother ^ — an assertion that seemed most absurd to those worshippers of the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies, who regarded Ku, the Divine Essence, the uncreated Soul of the World, as the only Supreme God, not to be represented under any shajoe. Yet, by lashes, torture, death even, the victims were compelled to pay homage to these images, with rites and ceremonies the purport of which they were, as their descendants still are, unable to understand, being at the same time forbidden to observe the religious practices which they had been accustomed to from times immemorial.^ More, their temples of learning were destroyed, with their libraries and the precious volumes that contained the history of their nation, that of their illus¬ trious men and women whose memory they venerated, the
^ Cogolludo, Hist, cle Yucatlian, lib. iii., chajD. x., p. 147. Landa, Las Cosas, chap. iv.
Ibid., lib. iv., chap, xviii., p. 229. Landa, Las Cosas, chaji. iv.
^ Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, chap, xli., p. 816.
Cogolludo, Hist, de Yucatlian, lib. iv., chap, vi., p, 189. “Los religiosos de esta provincia, por cuya atenciou corrio la conversion de estos indios, a nuestra santa catolica, con el zelo qiie tienen de que aprouechassen en ella, no solo demolieron y quemaron todos los simulacros que adoraban, pero aun todos los escritos (que a su modo tenian) con que pudieran re- cordar sus meinorias y todo lo que presumiero tendria motiuo de alguna supersticion o ritos gentilicos.”
Then when speaking of tlie auto-de-fe ordered by Bishop Landa, wliich took place in the city of Mani towards the end of 1561, he says : “Con el rezelo de esta idolatria, hizo juntar todos los libros y caracteres antiguos que los indios tenian, y por quitarles toda ocasion y memoria de sus anti- guos ritos, quantos se pudieron hallar, se quemaron publicamente el dia del auto y a las bueltas con ellos sus historias de autiguedades ” (lib. vi., chap, i., p. 309).
INTRODUCTION.
XXXVll
sciences of their wise men and philosophers^ How, then, could it be expected that they should tell what they knew of the his¬ tory of their people, and treat as friends men whom they hated, and with reason, from their heart of hearts?— men who held their gods in contempt; men who had, without prov¬ ocation, destroyed the autonomy of their nation, broken up their families, reduced their kin to slavery, brought misery upon them, gloom and mourning throughout the land.^
Hoav that three hundred and fifty -five years have elapsed since their country became part of the domain of the Spanish Crown, one might think, and not a few do try to persuade themselves and others, that old feuds, rancor, and distrust must be forgotten; in fact, must be replaced by friendship, confidence, gratitude, even, for all the hlessings received at the hands of the Spaniards — not the least among these, the de¬ struction of their idolatrous rites, the 'knowledge of the true God, and the mode of worshipping He likes best — notwith¬ standing the unfair means used by their good friends, those of the long gowns, to force such hlessings and knowledge upon them, and cause them to forget and forego the customs and manners of their forefathers.^ To-day, when the aborigines are said to he free citizens of the Kepublic of Mexico, entitled to all the rights and privileges that the constitution is sup¬ posed to confer on all men born within the boundaries of the country, they yet seek — and with good cause — the seclusion of the recesses of the densest forests, far away from the haunts of their white fellow -citizens^ to perform, in secrecy, certain ancient rites and religious practices that even now linger
' Cogolludo, Hist, de TucatJian, lib. ii., chap, xiv., p. 108, et passim.
Lauda, Las Cosas de Yucatan., chap, xv., p. 84, et passim.
® Cogolludo, Hist, de Tucathan^ lib. v., cap. xvii., xviii., p. 296, et pas- sim. Las leyes mas en orden al hien espiritual de los Indies.
INTRODUCTION.
xxxviii
among them, to which they adhere with great tenacity, and that the persecution and ill-treatment they have endured have been powerless to extirpated Yes, indeed, up to the present time, they keep whatever knowledge of their traditions they may still possess carefully concealed in their bosoms ; their lips are hermetically sealed on that subject.
Their confidence in, their respect and friendship for, one not of their blood and race must be very great, for them to allow him to witness their ceremonies, or become acquainted with the import of certain practices, or be told the meaning of pecul- :
iar signs and symbols, transmitted to them orally by their j
fathers. This reserve may be the reason why some travellers, j
unable to obtain any information from the aborigines, have j
erroneously asserted that they have lost all traditionary lore; ]
that all tradition has entirely disappeared from among them.^ \
Maya was the name of a powerful nation that in remote |
ages dwelt in the peninsula of Yucatan and the countries, j
to-day called Central America, comprised between the Isthmus - of Tehuantepec on the north and that of Darien on the south. That name was as well known among the ancient civilized nations the world over as at present are the names of Spain, France, England, etc. As from these countries colonists, abandoning the land of their birth, have gone and still go ' forth in search of new homes in far distant regions; have car¬ ried and do carry, with the customs, manners, religion, civiliza¬ tion, and language of their forefathers, the name even of the mother country to their new abodes — so we may imagine it happened with the Mayas at some remote period in the past. '[
^ See Appendix, note iv. ; Cogolludo, Hist, de Tucathan, lib. v., cap. xvi., xvii., xviii.
2 John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travels in Yucatan., vol. ii., pp. 446, 449. ,
INTRODUCTION.
xxxix
For it is a fact that, wherever we find their name, there also we meet with the vestiges of their language and customs, and ‘ many of their traditions; but nowhere, except in Yucatan, is the origin of their name to be found.
Among the various authors who have written on that coun¬ try several have endeavored to give the etymology of the word Maya : none has succeeded; for, instead of consulting the Maya books that escaped destruction at the hands of the Zumarragas, Landas, and Torquemadas, they have appealed to their imagination, as if in their fancy they could find the motives that prompted the primitive inhabitant to apply such or such name to this or that locality.
Kamon de Ordonez y Aguiar ^ fancied that the name Maya was given to the peninsula on account of the scarcity of water on its surface, and intimated that it was derived from the two vocables ma, ‘‘no,” and lia, “water” — “ Avithout water.” Brasseur,“ folio Aving his own pet idea, combats such explana¬ tion as incorrect and says: “The country is far from being devoid of Avater. Its soil is honeycombed, and innumerable caves exist just under the surface. In these caves are deposits of cool, limpid water, extensiA^e lakes fed by subterranean streams.” Hence he argues that the true etymology of the Avord 3Iaya may possibly be the “mother of the Avaters ” or the “teats of the Avaters ma-y-a” — she of the four hundred breasts, as they were Avont to represent the Ephesian goddess.
Again, this explanation did not suit Senor Eligio Ancona,^
^ Ramon de Ordonez y Aguiar, the author of Historia de la Greacion del cielo y de la Tierra, was a native of the ciudad Real de Chiapas. He died, very much advanced in years, in 1840, being canon of tlie cathedral of that city.
* Brasseur (Charles Etienne), May a Vocabulary, yo\. ii., p.298, Troano MS.
® Ancona (Eligio), Hut.deYucatan, vol. i., chap. i. See Appendix, note v.
xl
INTRODUCTION.
for he ridicules the etymologists. What nonsense,” he says, ‘‘to thus rack their brains ! They must be out of their mind to give themselves the work of bringing forth these erudite elucidations to explain the word Maya, that everybody knows is a mere Spanish corruption of 3Iayab, the ancient name of the country. ’ ’ In asserting that the true name {nombre mr- dadero) of the peninsula in ancient times was Mayab, Senor Ancona does not sustain his assertion by any known historical document; he merely refers to the Maya dictionary of Pio Perez, that he himself has published. He is likewise silent as to the source from which Senor Pio Perez obtained his infor¬ mation concerning the ancient name of the ^^eninsula.
Landa, Cogolludo, Lizana,^ all accord in stating that the land was called U-liiumil cell, ^Hhe land of the deer.” Herrera ^ says it was called Beb (a very thorny tree), and the “ great serpent ” Can ; but we see in the Troano MS. that this was the name of the whole of the Maya Empire, not the peninsula alone. Senor Ancona, notwithstanding his sneers, is not quite sure of being right in his criticism, for he also tries his hand at etymologizing. Taking for granted that the state¬ ment of Lizana is true, that at some time or other two differ¬ ent tribes had invaded the country and that one of these tribes was more numerous than the other, he pretends that the word Mayab was meant to designate the weaker, being composed, as he says, of Ma, not,” and yab, abundant.”
I myself, on the strength of the name given to the birthplace of their ancestors by the Egyptians, and on that of the tradition handed down among the aborigines of Yucatan, admitting that one of the names given to the peninsula, Mayab, was cor-
' See Appendix, note v.
’ Antonio de Herrera, Decada 1, lib. 7, chap. 17.
INTRODUCTION.
xli
rect ; considering, moreover, the geological formation of its soil, its porousness ; remembering, besides, that the meaning of the word Mayal) is a sieve,” a tammy,” I wrote: ^ “It is very difficult, without the help of the books of the learned priests of Mayab, to know positively why they gave that name to their country. I can only surmise that they called it so from the great absorbent quality of its stony soil, which in an incredibly short time absorbs the water at the surface. This water, percolating through the pores of the stone, is afterward found filtered, clear and cool, in the senates caves, where it forms vast deposits.”
AVhen I published the foregoing lines, in 1881, I had not studied the contents of the Troano MS. I was therefore entirely ignorant of its historical value. The discovery of a fragment of mural painting, in the month of February, 1882,^ on the walls of an apartment in one of the edifices at Kabali, caused me to devote many months to the study of the Maya text of that interesting old document. It was with consider¬ able surprise that I then discovered that several pages at the beginning of the second part are dedicated to the recital of the awful phenomena that took place during the cataclysm that caused the submersion of ten countries, among which the “ Land of Mu,” that large island probably called “Atlantis” by Plato ; and the formation of the strangely crooked line \
of islands known to us as “ West Indies,” but as the “ Land of the Scorpion ” to the Mayas.^ I was no less astonished than gratified to find an account of the events in the life of the per¬ sonages whose portraits, busts, and statues I had discovered among the ruins of the edifices raised by them at Chicben
' Aug. Le Plongeon, Vestiges of the Mayas, p. 26.
’ North American Review, April, 1882. “ Explorations of the Ancient
Cities of Central America,” D6sir6 Charnay.
8 Troano MS., part ii., plates vi., vii.
xlii
INTRODUCTION.
and TJxmal, whose history, portrayed in the mural paintings, is also recounted in the legends and the sculptures still adorn¬ ing the walls of their palaces and temples ; and to learn that these ancient personages had already been converted, at the time the author of the Troano MS. wrote his book, into the gods of the elements, and made the agents who produced the terrible earthquakes that shook parts of the Lands of the W est ’ ’ to their very foundations, as told in the narrative of the Akab-oib, and finally caused them to be engulfed by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. ^
The author of the Troano MS. gives in his work the adjoin¬ ing map (Plate II.) of the Land of the Beb ” (mulberry tree), the Maya Empire.^ In it he indicates the localities which were submerged, and those that still remained above water, in that part of the world, after the cataclysm.
In the legend explanatory of his object in drawing that chart, as in many other places in his book,^ he gives the ser¬ pent head kaii, south, ” as symbol of the southern con¬
tinent. He represents the northern by this ^ m^ogram^g;^ that reads aac, turtle. ” By this sign^^S^ placed between the two others, he intends to convey to the mind of his readers that the submerged places to which he refers are situated be¬ tween the two western continents, are bathed by the waters of the Mexican Gulf, and more particularly by those of the Caribbean Sea — figured by the image of an animal, resem¬ bling a deer, placed over the legend. It is well to remark that this animal is typical of the submerged Antillean vaUeys, as it will plainly appear further on.
* Troano MS., part ii., plates ii., iii., iv.
’ Ibid., vol. i., part ii., pi. x.
^ Ibid., pi. xxiv., XXV., et passim.
Page ocUi.
Plate II.
I
I
am
I
I
• •
4
1
t
I
i
. f
I
• «
«
I
i
1
'V
•• I
I
I
ij
4^
I
r
»
INTRODUCTION.
xliii
The lines lightly etched here are painted blue in the origi¬ nal. As in our topographical maps the edges of the water¬ courses, of the sea and lakes, are painted blue, so the Maya hierogrammatist figured the shores of the Mexican Gulf, indi¬ cated by the serpent head. The three signs □ of locality, placed in the centre of said gulf, mark the site of the extin¬ guished volcano known to-day as the Alacranes reefs. The serpent head was, for the Maya Avriters, typical of the sea, Avhose billoAvs they compared to the undulations of a serpent in motion. They therefore called the ocean caiiali, a word Avhose radical is can, serpent,” the meaning of which is the ‘ ‘ mighty serpent. ’ ’
The lines of the draAving more strongly etched, the end of
which corresponds to the sign , are painted red, the
color of clay, kancab, and indicate the localities that Avere submerged and turned into marshes. This complex sign is formed of the ED emblem of countries near or in the Avater, and of the cross, made of dotted lines, symbol of the cracks and creAuces made on the surface of the earth by the
escaping gases, represented by the dots . . . . , and of small circles, O, images of A^olcanoes. As to the character is composed of tAA^o letters equivalent to Maya
and Greek letter A, so entAvined as to form the character
equal to the Greek and Maya K, but forming a mon- ogram that reads aac, the Maya word for ‘"turtle.”
Before proceeding with the etymology of the name May- ach, it may not be amiss to explain the legends and the other draAA^’ings of the tableau. It aa^IU be noticed that the charac¬ ters over that part of the draAving which looks like the hori¬ zontal branch of a tree are identical Avith those placed verti¬ cally against the trunk, but in an inverted position. It is, in
xliv
INTRODUCTION.
fact, the same legend repeated, and so written for the better understanding of the map, and of the exact position of the various localities; that of the Mexican Gulf figured on the left, and of the ideographic or pictorial representation of the Caribbean Sea to the right of the tableau. In order to thoroughly comprehend the idea of the Maya author, it is indispensable to have a perfect knowledge of the con¬ tours of the seas and lands mentioned by him in this instance, even as they exist to-day. Of course, some slight changes since the epoch referred to by him have naturally taken place, and the outlines of the shores are somewhat altered, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, as can be ascertained by consulting maps made by the Spaniards at the time of tho conquest.
The adjoining map of Central America, the Antilles, and Gulf of Mexico, being copied from that published by the Bu¬ reau of Hydrography at Washington, may be regarded as accu¬ rate (Plate III.). On it I have traced, in dotted lines, figures that will enable any one to easily understand why the Maya author symbolized the Caribbean Sea as a deer, and the empire of Mayacli as a tree, rooted in the southern continent, and having a single branch, horizontal and pointing to the right, that is, in an easterly direction.
A glance at the map of the “Drowned Yalleys of the^ Antillean Lands ” (Plate lY.), published by Professor J. W. Spencer, of Washington, in the “Bulletin of the Geological Society of America” for January, 1895, which is reproduced here with the author’s permission, must convince any one that the ancient Maya geologists and geographers were not far behind their brother professors, in these sciences, of modern times, in their knowledge, at least, of those
Page xUv.
Plate III.
1
Page xUv
Plate IV.
INTRODUCTION.
xlv
parts of the earth they inhabited, and of the adjoining coun- triesd
The sign tliat most attracts the attention is Phshop Landa says must be read Yax-kin, and that of the seventh month of the Maya calendar. Literally these words mean the vigorous sun.” If, however, we inter¬ pret the symbol phonetically, it gives us ^Hhe country of the king, which is surrounded by water; ” the kingdom in the midst of water.” It will also be noticed that it is placed at the top of the tree, to indicate that that tree ” is the kingdom. Xext to it, on the left, is the name Mayacli, which indicates that it is the ‘‘kingdom of Mayacli,” which will be- ^ come plain by the analysis of the symbols. To begin Avith, j | is a Aving or feather, insignia Avorn by kings and AA^arriors. ^ Placed here it has a double meaning. It denotes the north, as Ave Avill see later on, and also shoAvs that the land is that of the king Avhose emblem it is.
The character
stands for ahau, the Avord for king, and Ave have already
^ The adjoining map (Plate IV.) was constructed by Professor J. W. Spen¬ cer according to his own original researches and geological studies in the island of Cuba and in Central America, aided by the deep-sea soundings made in 1878 by Commander Bartlett of the United States steamship Blahe. It can be therefore accepted as perfectly accurate. During a short stay in Belize, British Honduras, Commander Bartlett honored me with a visit. Speaking of his work of triangulation and deep-sea soundings in the Carib¬ bean Sea, he mentioned the existence of very profound valleys covered by its waters, revealed by the sound. I informed him that I had become cognizant of that fact, having found it mentioned by the author of that ancient Maya book known to-day as Troano MS. If my memory serves me right, I showed him the maps drawn by the writer of that ancient book, and made on a map in my copy of Bowditch’s Navigation an approximate tracing of the sub¬ merged valleys in the Caribbean Sea, in explanation of the Maya maps, showing why they symbolized said sea by the figure of an animal resem¬ bling a deer — which may have been the reason why they called the country U-liiumil ceh, the “land of the deer.”
xlvi
INTRODUCTION.
seen that this fcOd ? is the symbol for ‘4and near, in,
or surrounded by \yater,” as the Empire of Mayacli
(the peninsula of Yucatan and Central America are certainly surrounded by water), on the north by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Caribbean Sea, on the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. The symbol then reads Liiumil aliau, the ‘‘King’s country,” the “kingdom.”
But how do you make your rendering accord with the meaning given to the character by Bishop Landa ? I fancy I hear our learned Americanists asking ; and I answer. In a very simple manner, knowing as I do the genius of the Maya people and their language.
The ancient armorial escutcheon of the country still exists on the western facade of the “ sanctuary ” at Uxmal, and in the bas-reliefs carved on the memorial monu¬ ment of Prince Coll at Cliicfien. The emblem represented on said escutcheon scarcely needs explanation. It is easily read U-luumil kin, the “ Land of the Sun.”
The kings of Mayacli, like those of Egypt, Chaldea, India, China, Peru, etc., took upon themselves the title of “ Children of the Sun,” and, in a boasting spirit, that of “the Strong, the Vigorous Sun.” Kin is the Maya word for sun. But kin is also the title of the highpriest of the sun. As in Egj^pt and many other civilized countries, so in IVIaj' acli, the king w as, at the same time, chief of the state and of the religion, as in our times the Queen in England, the Czar in Eussia, the Sultan in Turkey, etc. The title Yax-kin may therefore have been applied, among the Mayas, to the king and to the kingdom;
INTRODUCTION.
xlvii
and my rendering of the symbol does not conflict with
that of Landa.
In the tableau the Maya Empire is portrayed by the bob — a tree with the trunk full of thorns. The trunk is the image of the chain of mountains that traverses the whole country from north to south. There dwelt the masters of the earth, the Volcanoes. They gave it life, power, and strength. This chain is, as it were, its backbone. It terminates at the Isthmus of Darien, to the Pin south. This is why the tree is planted in the character kaii, that Landa tells us was the name
for south anciently.^ At the north, the branch of the tree extends eastward, that is, to the right of the trunk. This branch, the peninsula of Yucatan, is represented by this symbol which, with but a slight difference in
the drawing, is the same as that cal legend, in an inverted trunk of the tree, by which the author has designated the whole country, calling it u Ma yacli, the land of the shoot,” the ^‘land of the from the name of the peninsula
that seems to have been the seat of the government of the Maya Empire.
The motive for the slight change in the drawing is easily explained. The peninsula jutting out into the sea from the mainland, as a shoot, a branch from the trunk of the tree, is in¬ dicated by the representation of a yacli, a the base of which rests on the sign of land nia ;
or also of a shoot, projecting beyond two symbols
of two basins of water— that is, of the VilV Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea— that are on each side of it. The whole hieroglyph, name of the peninsula, reads therefore 1 Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan^ chap, xxxiv., p. 206.
placed in the verti- position, against the
xlviii
INTRODUCTION.
u-Mayacli, the place of the ancestor’s verHrum, or of the shoot of the tree.
These two imix differ somewhat in shape. The imix is meant to designate the Caribbean Sea, the eastern part of which being opened to the waves of the ocean is indicated by the wavy line AAAA/V\, emblem of water. In this instance it may also denote the mountains in the islands, that close it, ^ ^ as it were, toward the rising sun. The
other imix stands for the Gulf of Mexico, a medi¬
terranean sea, completely land-locked, with a small entrance formed by the peninsula of Florida and that of Yucatan, and commanded by the island of Cuba. It is well to notice that, as has been already said, some of the signs in the hori¬ zontal legend are the same as those in the vertical legend, but placed in an inverse position with regard to one an¬ other. This is as it should naturally be. Of course, the particular names of the various localities in the country are somewhat different, and the signs indicating their position with reference to the cardinal points are not the same.
The symbol imix, for instance, of the Mexican Gulf
is placed in the vertical legend to the left, that is to the west, of the imix image of the Caribbean Sea, as it should
certainly be if we look at the map of Central America
from the south, when it is apparent that the Gulf of Mexico
lies to the westward of the Caribbean Sea On the
other hand, if we enter the country from the north, the Gulf of Mexico will be to the right, and the Caribbean Sea to the left, of the traveller, just as the Maya hierogrammatist placed them in the horizontal legend,
To return to the character in which the foot of the tree is planted. Kan not only means south,” as we have just
INTRODUCTION.
xlix
seen, but it has many other acceptations — all conveying the idea of might and power. It is a variation of can,
‘‘serpent.” The serpent, with inflated breast, suggested by the contour of the Maya Empire, was adopted as a symbol of the same. Its name became that of the dynasty of the Maya rulers, and their totem. We see it sculptured on the walls of the temples and palaces raised by them. In Mayacli, in Egypt, in China, in India, in Peru, and many other places the image of the serpent was the badge of royalty. It formed part of the headdress of the kings ; it was embroid¬ ered on their royal garments.^ Khan is still the title of the kings of Tartary, Burmah, etc., that of the governors of prov¬ inces in Afghanistan, Persia, and other countries in central Asia.
That the tree was also meant by the author of
the Troano MS. J L as symbol of the Maya Empire,
there can be H no doubt. He himself
takes pains to W inform us of the fact,
Beb uaacal (the beb has sprung up) between r^- ^ , iivic luumilob, the seven countries • • • • of Can.
The sign I ' \ is painted red in the original, to indicate the
arable land, kancab. . i was the symbol of land, coun¬
try, among the Mayas, as with the Egyptians; but the former used it also as numerical for five, to which, in this case, must be added the two units O O. So we have seven fertile lands.
The four black dots • • • • are the numerical four, and another ideographic sign for the name of the country — Can, “ serpent.” This is why it is placed at the foot of the
tree, like the sign | at the top to signify that it is the kingdom. They are juxtaposed to the character
* Wilkinson, Customs and Manners^ vol. i., p. 163 (illust.).
1
INTRODUCTION.
kan, also, to denote its geographical position. It will be noticed that this sign was omitted in the horizontal legend, as it should be, since kan is the word for south; ” but it has been replaced by ix /6S\ C' north,”) which sign has been in¬ corporated with the vQ/ sign, beb, thus show
that this is the northern part of the tree —
that is, of the country.
There remains to be explained what may be con¬ sidered, in the present instance, the most important
character of the tableau, since it is the original name
given, in the most remote ages, to that part of the Maya Empire known on our maps as the peninsula of Yucatan. It reads, Mayacli, the ‘4and just sprung,” the ‘‘primitive land,” the “hard land.” The symbol itself is an ideographic representation of the peninsula and its surroundings, as will be shown.
The reason that caused it to be adopted by the learned men of Mayacli as symbol for the name of their country is indeed most interesting. It clearly explains its etymology, and also gives us a knowledge of the scope of their scientific attain¬ ments — among these their perfect understanding of the forces that produced the submersion of many lands, and the upheaval of the peninsula and other places; a thorough acquaintance with the geography of the continent wherein they dwelt, and of the lands adjacent in the ocean ; that even of the ill-fated island mentioned by Plato, ^ its destruction by earthquakes, and the sad doom of its inhabitants that remained, an histor¬ ical fact, preserved in the annals treasured in the Egyptian temples as well as in those of the Mayas. May we not assume that the identity of traditions indicates that at some epoch, ^ Plato, Dialogues., “Timaeus,” ii., 517.
INTRODUCTION.
li
more or less remote, intimcate relations and communications must have existed between tlie inhabitants of the valley of the Nile and the peoples dwelling in the ‘‘ Lands of the West ” ?
We shall begin the interpretation ^ of the symbol with the analysis of the character ^ ^ that Landa tells us ^ stood, among the Maya writers, either for ma, me^ or mo. Some would-be critics among the Americanists, our contempo¬ raries,^ have accused the bishop of ignorance regarding the writing system of the Mayas, or of incompetency in transmit¬ ting to us the true value of this character, simply because he gave it a plurality, or what seems to be a plurality, of meanings.
What right, it may be asked, have we to dispute the fact asserted by Bishop Landa, ^ that in his time, among the Mayas, the character rur was equivalent to ma and perhaps to me and mo f Had he not better opportunity than any of us for knowing it? Did not the chiefs of the Franciscan Order in Yucatan consider it a prime duty to , become thoroughly versed, and have all their missionaries instructed, in the language of the natives to whom they had to preach the gospel, and, after, converting them to Chris¬ tianity, to administer the sacraments of their Church? Were they not scholars, men conversant with grammatical studies ? Who but they have reduced to grammatical rules the Maya
* Landa, Relacion de las Gosas de Yucatan., cb. xli., p. 322.
’ Heinrich Wiittke, Dei enstelmng der Schrift, S. 205, quoted and whose opinions are indorsed by Professor Charles Rau, chief of the archaeological division of the National Museum (Smithsonian Institution) at Washington. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, chap, v.. No. 331. “The Palenque Tablet in the United States National Museum.” Dr. Ed. Seler, Uber die Bedeutung des Zahheichens 20 in der Mayaschrift, in Verhandlungen der Ber¬ liner Qesellschaft far Anthropologie, etc., 1887, S. 237-241. J. J. Vallentini, “ The Landa Alphabet a Spanish Fabrication,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1880.
lii
INTRODUCTION.
language for the benefit of students? Are we not told that Bishop Landa acquired a great proficiency in it? Was he not for many years a teacher of it ? Has he not composed a grammar of that tongue for the use of his pupils? What right, then, have men in our age, innocent of all knowledge of Maya language, even as spoken to-day, however great may be their attainments in any other branch of learning, to pass judgment on, worse still, to condemn, a learned teacher of that language, charging him with ignorance and incompetency, simply because he assigns various meanings to a character ?
Perhaps Mr. Champollion le jeune will be branded in like manner, because he tells us that the Egyptians represented indifferently the vowels A, /, 0^ A by the character ‘^We see effectively,” says the learned discoverer of Egyptian alphabet, the leaf or feather as their homo¬ phones, to mean, according to the occasion, an A, an Z, an A, and even an t?, as the ^ (aleph) of the Hebrews. So do we find in the Egyptian tongue, written with Coptic letters, a dialect that uses indifferently a for o, where the other two write o only; and s where the other two write a. We have in the same dialect and o/Ss — Sitire ^ ana — ^^reed,”
‘ ‘ rush, ’ ’ Junous. ^
?^
the
^ Champollion le jeune^ Precis du Systeme hieroglyphique des Anciens Egyp- tiens., p. Ill, Paris, 1838.
Ak^ is likewise a word belonging to the Maya language. As in Egyptian, it means a “reed,” a “rush,” a “withe.” It was the name of an ancient city the ruins of which still exist near Tixkokob, in Yucatan, on the property of Dn, Alvaro Peon. It was also a family name, as can be seen (in Appendix, note ii.) from a baptismal certificate signed by Father Cogolludo, taken from an old baptismal register found in the convent of Cacalchen. The original is now in possession of the Right Rev. Dn. Crecencio Carillo y Ancona, present bishop of Yucatan, who lias kindly allowed me to make a photographic copy of Father Diego de Cogolludo’s autograph.
INTROD UCTION.
liii
Let us resume our explanation. We have found that in re- ^ mote times ma was the meaning of the char¬ acter Let us try to analyze its component parts in
its relation to the name Mayach, and its origin as an alphabetic character. It is easy to see that it is composed of the /^\ geometrical figure flanked on each side by the symbol iiiiix. Who can fail to see that this figure bears a strik¬ ing resemblance to the Egyptian sign \ that Dr. Young translates and Mr. Champollion asserts to be simply the letter 2f ? ^ By a strange coincidence, if coincidence there be, the meaning of the syllable ma is the same in Maya and Egyp¬ tian; that is, in both languages it signifies “ earth,” “ place.” ‘‘The word totto? — ‘place,’ ‘site,’” says Mr. Champollion, ‘ ‘ of the Greek text of the Rosetta inscription is expressed in the hieroglyphic part of the tablet by an owl for If, and the extended arm for A, which gives the Coptic word jua (ma), ‘ site,’ ‘ place.’ ” ^
We see that in the Troano MS. the author represented the earth by the figure of an old man,‘‘ “ the grandfather,” mam ; hence, by apocope, ma, “earth,” “site,” “country,” “place.”
Ma, in the Maya, is also a particle used, as in the Greek language, in affirmation or negation according to its position before or after the verb. Another curious coincidence worthy
lutely Bun¬ sen^ says that the latter called it nen. That word in Maya
of notice is that the sign of negation is abso- the same for the Mayas as for the Egyptians
^ Dr. Young, “Egypt,” Encyclopedia Britannica^ Edinburgh edition, vol. iv.
’ Champollion lejeune^ Precis du Systeme hieroglyphique, etc., p. 34.
^ Ibid., p. 125.
* Troano MS., vol. i., Maya text, part ii., plates xxv.-xxvii., et passim.. ® Bunsen, EgypVs Place in Universal History, Vocabulary word Nen.
liv
INTRODUCTION.
means ‘^mirror; ” and Nen-lia, the mirror of water,” was anciently one of the names of the Mexican Gulf. This also may be a coincidence.
'No one has ever told us why the learned hierogrammatists of Egypt gave to the sign \ the value of ma. N^o one can; because nobody knows the origin of the Egyptians, of their civilization, nor the country where it grew from infancy to maturity. They themselves, although they invariably pointed toward the setting sun when questioned concerning the father- land of their ancestors, were ignorant of who they were and whence they came. ITor did they know who was the inventor of their alphabet. The Egyptians, who, no doubt, had for¬ gotten, or had never known the name of the inventor of their phonetic signs, at the time of Plato honored with it one of their gods of the second order, Thoth, who likewise was held as the father of all sciences and arts.” ^
It is evident that we can learn nothing from the Egyptians of the motives that prompted the inventor of their alphabetical characters to select that peculiar figure / to represent the letter i¥, initial of their word Ma. The Mayas, we are in¬ formed, ^ made use of the identical sign, and ascribed to it the same signification. We may perhaps find out from them the reasons that induced their learned men to choose this strange geometrical figure as part of their symbol for Ma, radical of Mayacli, name of the peninsula of Yucatan. Who knows but that the same cause which prompted them to adopt it sug¬ gested it also to the mind of the Egyptian hierogrammatist ? Many wiU, no doubt, object that this may all be pure coinci¬ dence — the two peoples lived so far apart. Yery true. I do
’ Champollion, Precis du Systeme HieroglypMque.^ p. 355.
’Lauda, Relacion de las Gosas de Yucatan^ chap, xli., p. 332.
INTRODUCTION.
Iv
not pretend it is not accidental. I merely suggest a possi¬ bility, that, added to oiliQv facts, may later become a probabil¬ ity, if not a certainty. In the course of these pages we shall meet with so many concurrent facts, as having existed both in Mayacli and Egypt, that it will become difficult to reconcile the ]nind to the belief that they are, altogether, the identical working of the human intelligence groping its way out of bar¬ barism to civilization, as some have more than once hinted, as a last resort, in their inability to deny the striking concord¬ ance of these facts.
'VYe are told that in the origin of language names were given to places, objects, tribes, individuals, or animals, in ac¬ cordance with some peculiar inherent properties possessed by them, such as shape, voice, customs, etc., and to countries on account of their climate, geological formation, geographical configuration, or any other characteristic ; that is, by onomato¬ poeia. This assertion seems to find confirmation in the sym¬ bol P| of the Mayas ; and the name Mayacli forms no exception to the rule.
In fact, if we draw round the Yucatan peninsula a geometri¬ cal figure enclosing it, and composed of straight lines, by follow¬ ing the direction of its eastern, northern, and western coasts, it is easy to see that the drawing so made will unavoidably be the symbol [^.
That fact alone might not be deemed proof sufficient to affirm that the Mayas, in reality, did derive their sign for Ma from this cause, since to complete it, as transmitted by
Landa, the character villy imix ^ is wanting on each side.
It does not require a very great effort of the imagina¬ tion to understand what this sign is meant for. A single ^ Landa, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 204.
Ivi
INTRODUCTION.
glance will suffice to satisfy us that the drawing is intended to represent a woman’s breast, with its nipple and areola. Any one inclined to doubt that such is the case will soon be con¬ vinced by examining the female figures portrayed in the Tro- ano MS.^
Yes, imix is the breast, the bosom, called to-day simply iin, the word having suffered the apocope of its desinence ix, which is a copulative conjunction and the sign of the feminine gender.
But 1)080171 is also an enclosed place. ^ We say the bosom of the deep,” le sein de la terre^ el seno de los mares. ^ It was in that sense, indeed, that the Maya sages, who invented the characters and symbols with which to give their thoughts a material form, made use of it. This fact becomes apparent if
^ Troano MS., part 1, plate xxii. See Appendix, note iii.
The reader may perhaps desire to know the mean¬ ing of this picture. Alas! it teaches us that the powers that govern nature were as indifferent to the lot of man in remote ages as they are to-day ; that no creatures, whatever they be, have for them any importance beyond their acting of the role which they are called upon to play momentarily in the great drama of creation.
The figures are anthropomorphous representations — tlie kneeling, supplicating female, of the “Land of Mu;” the male, of the “Lord of the Seven Fires ” (volcanoes). Men kak uiic. Mu, in an im¬ ploring posture, comes to inform him that one of his volcanoes has caused the basin at the edge of her domains to rise, and has converted the coun¬ try into marshy ground. She speaks thus : “ Ak lia pe be be imik Kaan ” (that is, “The basin has risen rapidly, and the land has become marshy ”). Men Kak uuc, for all consolation, replies : “ Imix be Ak Mu ? ” (“So the basin in rising has caused the laud to become marshy, Mu?”) This is evidently the record of a geological event — the rising of the part of the bottom of the ocean near Mu.
’ Webster, English Dictionary.
’ Diccionario Espafiol por una sociedad literaria.
INTRODUCTION.
Ivii
we examine the drawing still more closely, and notice the four lines drawn in the lower part, as if to shade it. If we con¬ sider each line as equivalent to one unit, their sum represents the numerical/(9d^;‘— can— in the Maya language. We have already seen that can also means ^'serpent,” one of
the symbols for the sea, canali. Then the two \^iy iinix are placed, one on each side of the geometrical figure image of the peninsula, to typify the two gulfs whose waters bathe its shores — on the left that of Mexico, on the right the Caribbean Sea. That this was the idea of the invent¬ ors of the symbol is evident; for as the Gulf of Mexico is smaller than the Caribbean Sea, and the western coast line of Yucatan shorter than the eastern, so in the drawing the
iniix on the left of the figure
n
is smaller than the iniix on the right, and the line on the left shorter than that on the right.
This explanation being correct, it clearly proves, as much as a proposition of that nature can be demonstrated,
that the character ' — q owes its origin, among the Mayas,
to the configuration of the Yucatan peninsula, and its posi¬ tion between two gulfs, and that the inventors were acquainted with their extent and contour.
^lot a few, even among well-read people, often express a doubt as to the ancient 31 ay as having possessed accurate in¬ formation respecting the existence of the various continents and islands that form the habitable portions of the earth ; question¬ ing likewise if they were acquainted even with the geography and configuration of the lands in which they lived ; seeming to entertain the idea that the science of general geography belongs exclusively to modern times.
The name 3Iaya, found among all civilized nations of
Iviii
INTRODUCTION.
antiquity, in Asia, Africa, Europe, as well as in America, always with the same meaning, should be suflScient to prove that in very remote ages the Mayas had intimate relations with the inhabitants of the lands situated on those continents, were therefore great travellers, and must, perforce, have been acquainted with the general geography of the planet.
We must not lose sight of the fact that we know but very little indeed of the ancient American civilizations. The annals of the learned men of Mayacli having been either hidden or destroyed, it is impossible for us to judge of the scope of their scientific attainments. That they were expert architects, the monuments built by them, that have resisted for ages the disintegrating action of the elements and that of vegetation, bear ample testimony. The analysis of the gnomon discovered by the writer in the ruins of the ancient cit}^ of Mayapaii, in 1880, proves conclusively that they had made advance in the science of astronomy. They knew, as well as we do, how to calculate the latitudes and longitudes; the epochs of the sol¬ stices and of the equinoxes; the division of time into solar years of three hundred and sixty-five da3^s and six hours; that of the year into twelve months of thirty days, to which they added five supplementary days that were left without name and regarded as inauspicious. During these, as on the third day of the Epact among the Egyptians, all business was sus¬ pended; they did not even go out of their houses, lest some misfortune should befall them. All those calculations required, of course, a thorough knowledge of algebra, geometry, trigo¬ nometry, and the other branches of mathematics. That they were no mean draughtsmen and sculptors, the fresco paintings, the inscriptions and bas-reliefs carved on marble, that are still extant, bear unimpeachable testimony.
INTRODUCTION.
lix
The study of the Troano MS. will convince any one that the
learned author of that book, and no doubt many of his asso¬ ciates, had not only a thorough knowledge of the geographical configuration of the Western Continent and the adjacent islands, but also of their geological formation. The Lands of the West ” are represented by these symbols, which some have translated A tlan. ^ They leave no room for doubting that the Mayas were acquainted with the eastern coasts of said con¬ tinent, from the bay of Saint Lawrence in latitude north 48° to Cape St. Eoque, in Brazil, in latitude south 5° 28'. The two signs or Q| of the locality placed under the symbols repre¬ sent the two large regions of the Western Conti- nent, North and South America ; whilst the signs and seen within the curve figuring the northern basin
of the Atlantic, stand for the Land of Mu, that extensive island now submerged under the waves of the ocean.
The sign , as well as this that forms the upper
part of the symbol, is familiar to all students of Egyptology. These will tell you that the first meant, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, ^ ^ the sun setting on the horizon, ’ ’ and the second, “the mountainous countries in the west.”
As to the conventional posture given to all the statues of the rulers and other illustrious personages in Mayacli it con¬ firms the fact of their geographical attainments. If we com¬ pare, for instance, the outlines of the effigy of Prince Coll discovered by the author at Cliiclieii-Itza in 1875, with
* Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. i., and Comment, vol. v. Atlan is not a Maya but a Nahuatl word. It is composed of the two primitives Atl, “water,” and Tlan, “near,” “between.” The Maya name for the symbol is Alau.
lx
INTRODUCTION.
the contour of the eastern coasts of the American continent,
placing the head at New¬ foundland, the knees at Cape St. Koque, and the feet at Cape Horn, it is easy to 2)erceive that they are identical. The shal¬ low basin held on the belly of the statue, between the hands, would then be symbol¬ ical of the Gulf of Mexico and of the Caribbean Sea.^
Again, the outlines of the profile of the statue ma}^ also represent with great accuracy the eastern shores of the Maya Empire — the head being the peninsula of Yucatan, anciently the seat of the government; the knees would then correspond to Cape Gracias a Dios^ in Nicaragua; the feet to the Isthmus of Darien, the southern boundary of the empire; and the shal¬ low basin on the belly would in that case stand for the Bay of Honduras, part of the Caribbean Sea. The Antilles were known to the Mayas as the Land of the Scorpion,” Ziiiaan, and were represented by the Maya hierogrammatist by the figure of that arachnid, or in his cursive writing by this other 2 proof evident that he was as well acquainted
as we are with the general outlines of the archipelago.
^ Various other statues discovered by the writer at Cliiclleii-Itza liave the same position, and hold a basin on the belly, between their hands. Others, again, are to be seen in the “National Museum” of Mexico, all having the same conventional attitude, with the head turned to the right shoulder.
^ Troano MS., part 11, plates vi., vii.
In the tableau, plate v., which forms the middle section of plate xiii. in the second part of the Troano MS., the author describes the occurrence of a certain phenomenon of volcanic origin, whose focus of action was lo¬ cated in the volcanoes of the island of Trinidad, figured by the image of a
• • • • I
Page lx.
Plate V.
:j;‘>
I
t
«
#
* S
•r
i -a-
t
INTRODUCTION.
Ixi
The ancient Maya sages sometimes likened the eari to a caldron, ^ iii, because as nutriment is cooked in surh ut^^nsil, so also all that exists on the surface of the earth is first elab¬ orated in its bosom. Sometimes, likewise, on account of its rotundity, and because it contains the germs of all things, they compared the earth to. a calabash, kiim, full of seeds. These similes seem to have been favorite ones, since they made fre- cpient use of them in illustrating their explanations of the geological phenomena which have convulsed our planet. Per¬ haps also the second reason was what caused them to generally adopt a circular sha])e for the characters they invented to give material expression to the multitudinous conceptions of their mind (unless it be that they gave that form to these charac¬ ters from that of their skull, containing the brain, organ of thought). The fact is that their symbol for the name 3Iay- ac‘h, of the peninsula of Yucatan, affects the shape of a cala¬ bash, with its tendril just sprouted — a yacli or acli, as the natives call a young sprout.
AVhat can have induced the hierogrammatists to select a
hand at the end of the scorpion’s tail. The rope that connects said hand with the raised riglit forefoot of the deer indicates that not only the seis¬ mic action w^as felt throughout the length of the Caribbean Sea, from south to north, but that it produced the upheaval of some locality in the northern parts of said sea. Beginning, naturally, the reading of the legend by the column on the right, we find that he describes the phenomenon in the fol¬ lowing words: “ Oc ik ix canab ezali nab” (that is, “A handful (small quantity) of gases, escaped from the crater, caused canab to show the palm of his hand ”). According to its location this raised forefoot may be the upheaval of the large volcano that looms high in the air in the middle of the island of Roatan, the largest of the group called Guanacas in the Bay of Honduras, where the Mayas met tlie Spaniards for the first time in 1502. The second column reads : “ Cib canalcnnte lam a ti aliaii (“The lava having filled (raised) the submerged places, the master of the basin,” etc.) (The last sign being completely obliterated, we cannot know what the author had said.)
Ixii
INTRODUCTION.
germinating calabash as part of the name of their country, remains to be explained.
If we examine the map of the lands back of the peninsula, it will not be difficult to discover the idea uppermost in the mind of the draughtsman at the time of composing the sym¬ bol; and to see that he was as thoroughly acquainted with the geography of the interior and the western shores of those parts of the continent, as with the configuration of its eastern coasts; also that their geological formation was no mystery to him. cfla
By comparing this symbol with the shape of the
countries immediately south of the peninsula, notwith¬
standing the changes that are continually taking place in the contour of the coast lines, particularly at the mouth of rivers,^ by the action of currents, etc. , we cannot fail to recognize that
the hierogrammatist assumed it to be the sprout of a calabash, the body of which was represented by the lands comprised with¬ in the segment of a circle having for
radius the half of a line, parallel to the eastern and western shores of the peninsula, starting from Point Lagartos, on the northern coast of Yucatan, drawn across the country to the shore of the Pacific Ocean on the south. For if, from the middle of said line as centre, we describe a circumference, part of it will follow exactly the bent of the coast line of said ocean, opposite the northern shore of the peninsula ; another part will cross the ^ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. i., chap, hi., p. 252.
INTRODUCTION.
Ixiii
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the northern frontier of the Maya Empire, and, if carried overland on the south until it intersect the seaboard of the Bay of Honduras, the segment of the circle thus formed resembles the bottom of a calabash, and the peninsula the sprout.
Analyzing the character yet more closely, we see a line of dots on each side of the base of the sprout, the root of which is made to repose on the curled figure intended to represent the curling of the smoke as it ascends into the air from the crater of the volcanoes among the mountains, indicated, as on our maps, by the etchings on both sides of the body of the symbol. These tokens prove that the designer knew the geological formation of the country in which he lived ; and that the peninsula had been upheaved from the bot¬ tom of the sea by the action of volcanic forces, whose centre of activity was in his time, as it still is, in the mountains of Guatemala, far away in the interior of the continent. By placing the small end of the sprout deep into the figure on the focus of the volcanic action, on the curling line of the smoke, and by the dots, on both sides of the root of the sprout, he shows that he knew that the upheaval of the peninsula was effected by the expansive force of the gases, which produce earthquakes by their pressure on the uneven under surface of the superficial strata, too homogeneous to permit their escape.^
Thus it is that we come to learn from the pen of an ancient Maya philosopher that the name of his people, once upon a time so broadly scattered over the face of the earth, had its
^ Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap, xxxii., xxxiii. Augustus Le Plongeon, “The Causes of Earthquakes,” Van NostranTs Engineering Magazine, vol. 6, Nos. 41, 43.
Ixiv
INTRODUCTION.
origin in that of the countr}^ they inhabited, a place situated in the northern tropical parts of the Western Continent,
in that Land of Kui,” ^ that mysterious home of their
ancestors, where the Egyptians thought the souls of their departed friends went to dwell, which was known to its inhab¬ itants as Mayacli, a word that in their language meant the first land,” the ^^land just sprouted,” also the ^^hard land,” the ^Herra firma,” as we learn from the sign Q ^of aspiration, hardness, coagulation, placed each side of the body of the calabash, to indicate, perhaps, the rocky forma¬ tion of its soil, and that it had withstood the awful cata¬ clysms which swept from the face of the earth the
Land of Mvi and many other places with their popu¬
lations. The priests of Egypt, Chaldea, and India preserved the remembrance of their destruction in the archives of their temples, as did those of Mayacli on the other side of the ocean.
The latter did not content themselves with recording the relation in their treatises on geology and history, but in order to preserve its memory for future generations they caused it to be carved on a stone tablet which they fastened to the wall in one of the apartments of their college at Cliiclieii, where it is yet seen. The natives have perpetuated, from genera¬ tion to generation, for centuries, the name of that inscrip¬ tion. They still call it Akab-aib, the awful, the tenebrous writing.
* Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii., p. 70. “Kui Landf according to the Maya language the “land of the gods,” the birthplace of the Goddess Maya, “the mother of the gods” and of men, the feminine energy of Brahma by whose union with Brahma all things were produced,
“ Lauda, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan^ chap, xli., p. 322.
INTRODUCTION.
Ixv
The history of that terrible catastrophe, recounted in vari¬ ous ways in the sacred books of the different nations among which vestiges of the presence of the Mayas are to be found, continues to be the appalling tradition of a great portion of mankind.
/
i
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
TVe infer the spirit of the nation in great meamrefrom the language^ ichich is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contrib¬ uted a stone.
{Malph Waldo Emerson.^
Essays., XX., Nominalist and Realist. '')
In ages long lost in the abyss of time, when Aryan colonists had not yet established their first settlements on the banks of the river Saraswati in the Punjab, and the primitive Egyp¬ tian settlers in the valley of the Mle did not fancy, even in their most hopeful day-dreams, that their descendants would become the great people whose civilization was to be the cradle of that of Europe, there existed on the Western Conti¬ nent a nation — the Maya — that had attained to a high degree of culture in arts and sciences.
Yalmiki, in his beautiful epic the ‘^Kamayana,” which is said to have served as model to Homer’s ‘‘ Iliad,” tells us that the 3Iayas were mighty navigators, whose ships travelled from the western to the eastern ocean, from the southern to the northern seas, in ages so remote that ^^the sun had not yet risen above the horizon; ” ^ that, being likewise great war¬ riors, they conquered the southern parts of the Hindostanee * Valmiki, Ramayana, Hippolyte Faucli6’s translation, vol. i., p. 353.
2
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
peninsula, and established themselves there; that, being also learned architects, they built great cities and palacesd These Mayas became known in after times under the names of Da- navas,^ and are regarded by modern historians as aborigines of the country, or Ndgds as we shall see later on. Of these J. Talboys Wheeler in his History of India” says:^ ^‘The traditions of the Ndgds are obscure in the extreme ; they point, however, to the existence of an ancient Ndgd empire in the Dekkan, having its capital in the modern town of Hagpore, and it may be conjectured that, prior to the Aryan invasion, the Ndgd rajas exercised an imperial poAver over the greatest part of the Punjab and Ilindostan. . . . The Ndgds ^ or serpent
Avorshippers, Avho lived in croAvded cities and Avere famous for their beautiful Avomen and exhaustless treasures, Avere doubt-
^ Valmiki, Romayana, vol. ii., p, 26. “ In olden times there was a prince of the Danavas, a learned magician endowed with great power ; his name was Maya. It was he who, by magic art, constructed this golden grotto. He was the mgvakarma (“architect of the gods ”) of the principal Danavas, and this superb palace of solid gold is the work of his hands.”
Maya is mentioned in the Mahdbharata as one of the six individuals who were allowed to escape with their life at the burning of the forest of Khandava, whose inhabitants were all destroyed.
We read in John Campbell Oman’s work. The Great Indian Epics (p. 118): “ Now, Maya was the chief arcliitect of the Danavas, and in grati¬ tude for his preservation built a wonderful sabha, or hall, for the Pandavas, the most beautiful structure of its kind in the whole world.”
Danava = Taii-lia-ba : Tan, “ midst; ” ha, “water; ” ba, a com¬ positive particle used to form reflexive desinences ; “they who live in the midst of the water ” — navigators.
This Maya etymon accords perfectly with what Professor John Camp¬ bell Oman in his work The Great Indian Eyics^ “ Mahabharata ” (p. 133), says with regard to the dwelling-place of the Danavas :
“ Arjuna carried war against a tribe of the Danavas, the Nivata-Kava- chas, who were very powerful, numbering thirty millions, whose principal city was Hiranyapura. They dwelt in the womb of the ocean.” (The name Hiranyapura means in Maya “dragged in the middle of the water jar.”)
® J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India ^ vol. iii., pp. 56-57.
Page 3
Plate VI.
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
3
less a civilized people living under an organized gov^ernment. Indeed, if any inference can be drawn from the epic legends it would be that, prior to the Aryan conquest, the Ndgd rajas were ruling powers, who had cultivated the arts of luxury to an extraordinary degree, and yet succeeded in maintaining a protracted struggle against the Aryan invaders. ’ ’
Like the English of to-day, the Mayas sent colonists all over the earth. These carried with them the language, the traditions, the architecture, astronomy, ^ cosmogony, and other sciences — in a word, the civilization of their mother country. It is this civilization that furnishes us with the means of ascer¬ taining the role ])layed by them in the universal history of the world. We find vestiges of it, and of their language, in all historical nations of antiquity in Asia, Africa, and Europe. They are still frequent in the countries where they flourished.
It is eas}^ to follow their tracks across the Pacific to India, by the imprints of their hands dipped in a red liquid and pressed against the walls of temples, caves, and other places looked upon as sacred, to imjdore the benison of the gods — also by their name, Maya, given to the banana tree, symbol of their country,^ whose broad leaf is yet a token of hospitality
^ H. T. Colebrooke, “Memoirs on the Sacred Books of India,” Asiatic Researches, vol. ii., pp. 369-476, says: “Maya is considered as the author of the Saurya-Siddhanta, the most ancient treatise on astronomy in India. He is represented as receiving his science from a partial incarnation of the Sun.” This work, on which all the Indian astronomy is founded, was discovered at Benares by Sir Robert Chambers. Mr. Samuel Davis partly translated it, particularly those sections which relate to the calculation of eclipses. It is a work of very great antiquity, since it is attributed to a Maya author whose astronomical rules show that he was well acquainted with trigonometry {Asiatic Researches, vol. ii., pp. 245-249), proving that abstruse sciences were cultivated in those remote ages, before the invasion of India by the Aryans. (See Appendix, note vi.)
“ Codex Cortesianus, plates 7 and 8.
4 QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
among the natives of the islands ; ^ then along the shores of the Indian Ocean and those of the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Euphrates; up that river to Babylon, the renowned City of the Sun ; thence across the Syrian desert to the vaUey of the IS'ile, where they finally settled, and gave the name of their mother country to a district of l^ubia, calling it Maiu or Maioo.^ After becoming firmly established in Egypt they sent colonists to Syria. These reached as far north as Mount Taurus, founding on their way settlements along the coast of the Mediterranean, in Sidon, Tyre, the valley of the Orontes, and again on the banks of the Euphrates, to the north of Babylon, in Mesopotamia.
Mayacli (that is, ‘Hhe land that first arose from the bottom of the deep ”) was the name of the empire whose sov¬ ereigns bore the title of Can (serpent), spelt to-day Ichan in Asiatic countries.^ This title, given by the Mayas to their rulers, was derived from the contour of the empire, that of a serpent with inflated breast, which in their books and their sculptures they represented sometimes with, sometimes without wings, as the Egyptians did the urmus, symbol of their coun¬ try. JElian says: It was the custom of the Egyptian kings to wear asps of different colors in their crowns, this reptile
* Captain J. Cook, Voyage among the Islands of the Pacific.
^ Henry Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs., vol. i., p. 363; vol. ii., p. 78 (note) and p. 174. The name is comprised in the list of the lands conquered by Thotmes III., and in the list found in a sepulchral chamber in Nubia.
^ Khan is the title of the kings of Tartary, Burmah, Afghanistan, and other Asiatic countries. The flag of China is yellow, with a green dragon in the centre. That of the Angles also bore as symbol a dragon or serpent ; that of the Saxons, according to Urtti-scind, a lion, a dragon, and over them a flying eagle ; that of the Manchous, a golden dragon on a crimson field; that of the Huns, a dragon. Their chief was called Kakhan — short for Khan-Khan.
Plate YIL
Page 4.
•I
^7
I t
•t
1
4
1
Page 5
Bate VI 11.
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
5
being emblematic of the invincible power of royalty ^ but he does not inform us why it was selected as such an emblem, nor does Plutarch, although he also tells us that it was the s}unbol of royalty.^ Pausanias® affirms that the asp was held sacred throughout Egypt, and at Omphis particularly enjoyed the greatest honor. Phylarchus states the same thing. ^
Still the Egyptian sages must have had very strong motives for thus honoring this serpent and causing it to play so con¬ spicuous a part in the mysteries of their religion. AYas it per¬ chance in commemoration of the mother country of their ancestors, beyond the sea, toward the setting sun ? There the ancient rulers, after receiving the honors of apotheosis, were always represented in the monuments as serpents covered with feathers, the heads adorned with horns, and a flame instead of a crown; often, also, with simply a crown.
It is well to remember that in Egypt the cerastes^ or horned snakes, were the only serpents, with the asp, that were held as sacred. Herodotus^ tells us that ‘‘when they die they are buried in the temple of Jupiter, to whom they are reputed sacred.”
The Maya Empire comprised all the lands between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and that of Darien, known to-day as Central America. The history of the sovereigns that had governed it, and of the principal events that had taken place in the nation, was written in well-bound books of papy¬ rus or parchment, covered with highly ornamented wooden
^ ^lian, Nat, An.., lib. vi., 33.
® Plutarch, Be Mde et Osiride^ S. 74.
® Pausanias, Besot.., c. 21.
* ^lian, Nat. An., lib. xvii. 5.
‘ Herodotus, lib. ii., Ixxiv.
6
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
boards,^ while the most important occurrences were likewise carved in stone on the walls of their public edifices, to preserve their record in a lasting and indelible manner for the knowledge of future generations. It is from these sculptured and written memoirs graven on their palaces at Uxmal and Cliichen in the peninsula of Yucatan, the head of the imperial serpent and the seat of the government of the Maya Empire, that the author has learned the history of Queen Moo and her family.
At its southern extremity and on the top of the east wall of the tennis court at Cliiclien, there is a building that is of the greatest interest to the archaeologist, the historian, and the ethnologist ; while the architect may learn from it many useful lessons. John L. Stephens, who visited it in 1842, speaks of it as a casket containing the most precious jewels of ancient American art.^
It was a memorial hall erected by order of Queen Mdo, and dedicated to the memory of her brother-husband. Prince Coh, an eminent warrior. Those paintings so much admired by Stephens, rivalling the frescos in the tombs of Egypt and Etruria, or the imagery on the walls of the palaces of Babylon mentioned by Ezekiel, were a pictorial record of the life of Prince Coh from the time of his youth to that of his death, and of the events that followed it. They thus form a few
^ Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, pp. 44, 316. Cogolludo, Historia de Yu- cathan, etc., lib. iv., cap. v.
These books were exactly like the holy books now in use in Thibet. These also are written on parchment strips about eighteen inches long and four broad, bound with wooden boards, and wrapped up in curiously em¬ broidered silk.
C. F. Gordon Gumming, In the Himalayas and on the Indian Plains,
p. 438.
2 John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travels in Yucatan, vol. ii., p. 310, et passim.
Page 7.
Plate IX.
Tells of “City of Sacred Wells.
A meeting of the Washington Society of the Archaeological Institute of America was held last evening at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. John Hays Hammond, 1300 Rhode Island avenue. The principal feature was a lecture by Director Edgar I.. Hewett, of the Archaeological School in Sante Fe, N. Mex. ’'Dr. Hewett recently returned from Yucatan, where he visited the site of Chichentiza (the city of the sacred wells), which is rich in remains of temples and buildinsg erected by its pre-Columbian inhabitants. It was the holy city of the Mayas, and, therefore, ranks in American archaeology with Delphi and Olympia in ancient Greece. I The election of the following new mem- j bers was announced: Mr. and Mrs. John ! Hays Hammond, the Rev. Roland Cotton i Smith, Dr. George Williamson Smith, and 1 M'ri.' - Frederick Wesson. Dr. Mitchell iCarr , secretary, gave an account of the
1
I K I
J
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX. 7
pages of the ancient history of the Maya nation, and of the last days of the Can dynasty.
This interesting edifice is now in ruins. Enough, however, remains to have enabled the writer to make not only an accu¬ rate plan of it, but a restoration perfect in all its details.
After climbing to the top of the wall, that formed a ter¬ race six metres wide, levelled and paved with square marble slabs carefully adjusted, we find a broad stairway composed of five steps. Ascending these, we stand on a platform, and be¬ tween two marble columns each one metre in diameter. The base of these columns is formed of a single monolith one metre twenty centimetres high and two metres long, carved in
the shape of serpent heads with mouth open and tongue pro¬ truding. The shaft represents the body of the serpent, emblem of royalty in Mayacli, as it was in Egypt and as it is yet in many countries of Asia. It is covered with sculptured feathers, image of the mantle of feathers worn in court cere¬ monials by the kings and the highpriests as insignia of their rank.
Between these columns there was a grand altar supported by fifteen atlantes, three abreast and five deep, whose faces
8
QUEEN m60 and THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
were portraits of friends and relatives of the dead warrior. On this altar, placed at the door of the inner chamber, they were wont to make offerings to his manes, just as the Egyp¬ tians made oblations of fruits and flowers to the dead on altars erected at the entrance of the tombsd From Papyrus lY., at
the Bulaq Museum, we learn that the making of offerings to the dead was taught as a moral precept. Bring offerings to thy father and thy mother who rest in the valley of the tombs ; for he who gives these offerings is as acceptable to the gods as if they were brought to themselves. Often visit the dead, so that what thou dost for them, thy son may do for thee.”^
^ Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient EgyptianSy vol. iii., chap. xvi.
’ Papyrus IV., Bulaq Museum. Translation by Messrs. Brugsch and E. de Rougg. Published by Mariette.
Page S
Plate X
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
9
If we compare this with the precepts of the “ Manava-Dharma- Sastra — The ceremony in honor of the manes is superior, for the Brahmins, to the worship of the gods, and the offerings to the gods that take place before the offerings to the manes have been declared to increase their merits”^ — it will be easy to see that these teachings must have emanated from the same school.
This most ancient custom is likeAvise scrupulously followed by the Chinese, for whom the worship of the ancestors is as binding and sacred as that of God himself, whose representatives they have been for their children while on earth. Confucius in his book Khoung-Tseu ” dedicates a whole chapter to the description of the ceremony in honor of ancestors as practised twice a year, in spring and autumn,^ and in his book Lun-yu ” he instructs his disciples that ‘Gt is necessary to sacrifice to the ancestors as if they were present.” ® The worship of the ancestors is paramount in the mind of the Japanese. On the fifteenth day of the seventh Japanese month a festival is held in honor of the ancestors, when a repast of fruit and vegeta¬ bles is placed before the If ays, or wooden tablets of peculiar shape, on which are written inscriptions commemorative of the dead.
Great festivities were held by the Peruvians in honor of the dead in the month of Aya-marca, a word which means literally carrying the corpses in arms.” These festivities were estab¬ lished to commemorate deceased friends and relations. They were celebrated with tears, mournful songs, plaintive music, and by visiting the tombs of the dear departed, whose provi-
^ Manava-Dharma-Sastra, lib. iii., Sloka 203, also Slokas 127, 149, 207, etc., et passim.
^ Confucius, Khoung-Tseu, Tchoung- Young, chap. xix.
® Ihid., Lun-yu, chap, iii., Sloka 12.
10
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
sion of com and chicha they renewed through openings arranged on purpose from the exterior of the tomb to vessels placed near the body.^
Even to-day the aborigines of Yucatan, Peten, and other countries in Central America where the Maya language is spoken, as if in obedience to this affirmation of the Hindoo legislator — ^^The manes accept with pleasure that which is offered to them in the clearings of the forests, localities natu¬ rally pure ; on river banks and in secluded places ’ ’ ^ — are wont, at the beginning of November, to hang from the branches of certain trees in the clearings of the forests, at cross-roads, in isolated nooks, cakes made of the best corn and meat they can procure. These are for the souls of the departed to par¬ take of, as their name lianal pixaii the food of the souls ”) clearly indicates.^
Does not this custom of honoring the dead exist among us to-day? The feast of All Souls ” is celebrated by the Cath¬ olic Church on the second day of November, when, as at the feast of the Feralia, observed on the third of the ides (Febru¬ ary the eleventh) by the Komans, and so beautifully described by Ovid,^ people visit the cemeteries, carry presents, adorn
^ Christ oval de Molina, Fables and Rites of the Tncas. Translation by Clements R. Markliam, pp. 36-50.
^ Manava-Dharma-Sastra., lib. iii., Sloka 203.
® Cakes were likewise offered to the dead in Egypt, India, Peru, etc.
* Est honor et tumults ; animas placare paternas.^
Parvaque in extructas muneraferre pyras :
Parra petunt manes : pietas pro dirite grata est Munere ; non aridos Styx habet ima Deos ;
Tegula porrectis satis est velata coronis.,
Et sparsm fruges^ parvaque mica salis.
Ovid, Fast 1, V. 533, et passim.
Tombs also have their honor; our parents wish for Some small present to adorn their grave.
Pacfe 11
Plate XL
QUEEN 2100 AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
11
with flowers, wreaths, and garlands of evergreen the resting- place of those who have been dear to them — a very tender and impressive usage, speaking eloquently of the most affec¬ tionate human sentiments.
Mr. K. Gr. Haliburton, of Boston, Mass., in a very learned and most interesting paper ^ on the “ Festival of Ancestors,” or the feast of the dead, so prevalent among all nations of the earth, speaking of the singularity of its being observed every¬ where at precisely the same epoch of the year, says: ‘‘It is now, as it was formerly, observed at or near the beginning of November by the Peruvians, the Hindoos, the Pacific islanders, the people of the Tonga Islands, the Australians, the ancient Persians, the ancient Egyptians, and the northern nations of Europe, and continued for three days among the Japanese, the Hindoos, the Australians, the ancient Homans, and the ancient Egyptians. . . . This startling fact at once drew my atten¬ tion to the question. How was this uniformity in the time of observance preserved, not only in far distant quarters of the globe, but also through that vast lapse of time since the Peru¬ vian and the Indo-European first inherited this primeval festi¬ val from a common source ? ” What was that source ?
When contemplating the altar at the entrance of Prince Coil’s funeral chamber, we asked ourselves. Are we still in
That small present we owe to the ghosts ;
Those powers do not look at what we give them, but how;
No greedy desires prompt the Stygian shades.
They only ask a tile crowned with garlands,
And fruit and salt to scatter on the ground.
The Romans believed, as did the Hindoos and the Mayas, that salt scattered on the ground was a strong safeguard against evil spirits.
^ R. G. Haliburton, “Festival of Ancestors,” Ethnological Researches Bearing on the Year of the Pleiades.
12 QUEEN M6o AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
America, or has some ancient wizard, by magic art, suddenly transported us to the south of the Asiatic peninsula, in Cam¬ bodia, in the old city of Angor-Thom? There also we find similar altars, figures of serpents, and the bird-headed god.
This bird, symbol of the principal female divinity, is met with in every country where Maya civilization can be traced — in Polynesia,^ Japan, India, Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, as in Mayacli and the ancient city of Tiahuanuco on the high plateaus of the Peruvian Andes. In Egypt the vulture formed
.SCTTLPTirRE IN ANCIENT CITY OF ANGOR-THOM, CAMBODIA.
the headdress of the Goddess Isis, or 3fau, whose vestments were dyed with a variety of colors imitating feather work.^ Everywhere it is a myth. In Mayacli only we may perhaps
^ When Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook in his first voyage, vis¬ ited the great Morai at 0-Taheite, he saw on the summit of the pyramid a representation of a bird, carved in wood (the Creator). Jolm Watson, The Lost Solar System, vol. ii., p. 232.
“ Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii., p. 375.
Page 12.
Plate XII.
Pafje 13.
Plate XIIL
i
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
13
find the origin of this myth, since it was the totem of Queen M(5o, whose name means macaio ; and she is generally pict¬ ured, in the sculptures and inscriptions, by the figure of that beautiful bird, whose plumage is composed of brilliant feathers of various colors.
GODDESS ISIS AS A BIRdJ
^ Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, vol. iii., chap, xiii., p. 115.
On examining the adornments of the atlantes that sup¬ ported the altar, we could not help exclaiming, Why, this is Burmah!” And so it is. But it is also America. Yes, ancient America, brought back to light after slumbering many ages in the lap of Time, to show the people of the nineteenth century that, long, long ago, intimate communications existed between the inhabitants of the Western Continent and those of Asia, Africa, and Europe, just as they exist to-day; and that ancient American civilization, if not the mother of that of his¬ torical nations of antiquity, was at least an important factor in the framing of their cosmogonic notions and primitive traditions.
Of that fact no better proof can be obtained than by com¬ paring the symbols of the universe found among the Mayas, the Hindoos, the Chaldees, and the Egyptians.
The simplest is that of the Mayas. It seems to have served as model for the others, that evidently are amplifications of it. We find it many times repeated, adorning the central fillet of the upper cornice of the entablatures of the eastern and west-
Page 14-
Plate XIV.
Page 14
Plate XV.
^9
QUEEN m60 and THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
15
ern facades of King Can’s palace at XJxmal. This edifice was also the residence of the pontiff.
A knowledge of antique geometric symbology makes it easy to understand these cosmic diagrams. In the centre of the figure we see a circle inscribed within the hexagon formed by the sides of two interlaced equilateral triangles.
The Egyptians held the equilateral triangle as the symbol of nature, beautiful and fruitful. In their hieroglyphs it meant “worship.” For the Christians the equilateral triangle, con¬ taining the open eye of Siva, is the symbol of Deity. The Hindoos and the Chaldees regarded it as emblem of the spirit of the universe. Exoterically this central circle represents the sun, the light and life-giver of the physical world, evolved from fire and water. ^
It is well known that among the ancient occultists, of all nations, the triangle with the apex upward symbolized “ fire; ” that with the apex downward, “ water. ” The outer circle that circumscribes the triangles is the horizon, that apparent boun¬ dary of the material Avorld, within which, in his daily travels, the sun seems to be tied up. Hence the name Inti-huatana, “ sun’s halter,” given by the ancient Peruvians to the stone circles so profusely scattered over the high plateaus of the Andes, along the shores of Lake Titicaca,^ in India, Arabia, northern Africa, northern Europe, where they are known as druidical circles. Their use is still a matter of discussion for European antiquaries. They disdain to seek in America for the explanation of the motives that prompted their erection and that of many other constructions, as well as the origin of
' See Appendix, notes vii. and xx.
’ George E. Squier, Peru : Incidents of Travels and Explorations in the Land of the Incas., chap, xx., p. 384.
Augustus Le Plongeon, A Sketch of the Ancient Inhabitants of Peru., chap. i.
16
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
customs and traditions that continue to be among them the themes for useless controversies.
The twelve scallops which surround the outer circle are the twelve houses or resting-places of the sun ; that is, the twelve months of the solar year, or twelve signs of the zodiac. As to the four double rays, those nearest to the houses of the sun typify the primordial Four, direct emanations from the central sun — the four Heavenly Giants who helped in fashioning the material universe. The lower ones symbolize the four primor¬ dial substances known to modern scientists as nitrogen.^ oxygen., hydrogen, and carbon, \Vhose various combinations form the four primitive elements — fire, water, air, and earth — into which these can again be resolved.
In the Appendix the esoteric explanation of the diagram is presented as it was given by the Maya sages to their pupils in the secrecy of the mysterious recesses of their temples. It cor¬ responds precisely to the doctrine of the cosmic evolution con¬ tained in that ancient Sanscrit book of ^ ^ Dzyan, ’ ’ which forms the groundwork of Madame H. P. Blavatsky’s “ The Secret Doctrine.” ^
The Maya colonists who carried their conceptions of cosmic evolution to India, fearing lest the meaning of this diagram, purposely made so simple by the wise men in their mother country, should not be sutficiently intelligible to the new ini-
^ H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 27-35. “Is it a mere coincidence that the name Dzyan of the archaic Indian MS., whose trans¬ lation, with commentaries, Madame Blavatsky gave to the world, is a pure Maya word ? To write it according to the accepted manner of writing Maya, we must replace the double consonant dz by its equivalent d. We then have the word Qian, which means “to be swollen by fire.” In the book Dzyan, stanza iii., § 1, we read : “ The mother swells, extending from 'within without, like the lud of the lotus ; . . . and § 9: Light is cold flame, and flame is fire, and fire produces heat, which yields water ; the water of life in the great mother. . . .
Page 16
Plate XVI.
•.I'r
• }
» ♦*”
m
u
« fi
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX. 17
tiates to whom the}^ communicated it in the land of their adoption, amplified it, and composed the Sri-Santara,” mak¬ ing each part of easy comprehension.
This, at first sight, may appear like an assertion of private opinion. It is not, however. It is the stating of an histor¬ ical fact, that becomes evident when we study said Sri-San- tara,” and notice that the names of its different parts, from Aditi, the ‘‘boundless,” to Maya, the “earth,” are not San¬ scrit, but pure American Maya words.
Now, if the Hindoo priests, the Brahmins, did not receive their cosmogony from the Mayas, together with the diagram by which they symbolized it, how did it happen that they adopted precisely the same geometrical figures as the Mayas to typify their notions of the creation of the universe, which we are told they borrowed from “ the materialistic religion of the non-Yedic population; ” ^ and that, in giving names to the various parts of said figures, they made use of vocables not belonging to their own vernacular, but to a language spoken by the inhabitants of a country distant many thousand miles from their own, and separated from it by the wastes of the ocean, the traversing of which was by them, as it is by their descendants, regarded as a defilement ?
We must not lose sight of the fact that the Danmas and the Ndgds were peoples who did not belong to the Aryan stock, and that they suffered a fierce persecution at the hands of the Brahmins when these acquired power. ^
As to these, their origin is one of the most obscure points in the annals of ancient India; they are barely mentioned in the Yedic hymns. When, in remote times, the Aryans invaded
* J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India^ vol. iii., p. 56.
^ Ibid.
2
18
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
the Punjab, the Brahmins had no power or authority. They were merely messengers and sacrificers. ^^o food so pure as that cooked by a Brahmin.^ Others among them, having a devout turn of mind, were hermits doing penance, immersed in contemplation. At the time of Alexander’s conquest of northern India, many lived in convents, practising occultism. They were called gymnosophists by the Greeks, and were re¬ garded as very wise men.^ But it must be remembered that the period between the establishment of the Yedic settlements on the Saraswati and the conquest of Hindostan by the Aryans, when they had become the leading power, probably covers an interval of thousands of years. ^
The Aryans appear to have had no definite idea of a uni¬ verse of being or of the creation of a universe.” ^ From them, therefore, the Brahmins could not have borrowed their ac¬ count of the creation, which differs from that we might infer from the Yedic hymns.® Still Manu borrowed some of the ideas conveyed in his account of the creation of the universe by Brahma. ’ ’ ®
From whom did he borroAV them ?
The Brahmins rarely attempted to ignore or denounce the traditions of any new people with whom they came in contact ; but rather they converted such materials into vehicles for the promulgation of their peculiar tenets.” ^
The Ndgds^ we have seen, were a highly civilized people,
* J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India., vol. ii., p. 640.
“ Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, lib. ii., chap. 15, p. 242 ; lib. iii., chap. 11, p. 8. Translation of Charles Blount, London, 1680.
® J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India., vol. ii., p. 624.
^ Ibid., p. 452. Adolphe Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes., vol. iii., p. 410.
® J. T. Wheeler, History of India., vol. ii., p. 452.
® Ibid., p. 449. ’ lUd., p. 450.
QUEEN 3100 AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
19
whose rulers held sway over the whole of Hindostan when the Aryans established their first colonies on the banks of the Saras wati. Later on we shall see that these Ndgds were orig¬ inally Maya adepts, who in remote ages migrated from May- acli to Burmah, whence they spread their doctrines among the civilized nations of Asia and Africa. How else explain the use of the American Maya language by the Hindoos, calling Maya the material world? (Ma, ‘^country;” yacli, the 'verHriom of the ancestor, through which all living earthly things were produced.)
This query may be answered by another. Why do we find English customs, English traditions, English language, in America, India, Australia, Africa, and a thousand and one other places very distant from each other, among peoples that do not even know of each other’s existence ? Why, any one will say, because colonists from England have settled in those countries, and naturally carried there the customs, traditions, language, religion, sciences, and civilization of the mother country. Why, then, not admit that that which occurs in our day has taken place in past ages ? Is not man the same in all times ? Has not the stronger always imposed his ideas on the weaker ? If in the struggle toward eternal progress, the most civilized has not always been physically victorious, history teaches that intellectually he has obtained the victory over his conqueror in the long run ; proving, what has so many times been asserted, that mind is mightier than matter.
Civilization is indeed like the waves of the sea; one wave follows another. Their crests are not of equal height. Some are higher; some are lower. Between them there is always a trough more or less deep. The wave behind inevitably pushes that immediately before it, often overwhelms it.
20
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
If we compare the Sri-Santara ” with the cosmogonic dia¬ gram of the Mayas, it does not require a great effort of imagination to perceive that it is an amplification of the latter. This being so, let us see Avhat may be, in the Maya language, the meaning of the names of its different parts.
The use of the Maya throughout these pages, to explain the meaning of names of deities, nations, and localities whose etymon is not only unknown but a mystery to philologists, will show the necessity of acquiring this most ancient form of speech. It is not a dead language, being the vernacular of well- nigh two millions of our contemporaries. Its knowledge will help us to acquire a better understanding of the origin of the early history of Egyptian civilization, of that of the Chaldeans, and of the nations of Asia Minor. It will also illumine the darkness that surrounds the primitive traditions of mankind. By means of it, we will read the ancient Maya books and inscriptions, reclaim from oblivion part, at least, of the ancient history of America, and thus be enabled to give it its place in the universal history of the world. We shall also be able to comprehend the amount of knowledge, scientific and historical, possessed by the wise men who wrote on stone the most strik¬ ing events in the life of their nation, their religious and cos¬ mogonic conceptions. Perhaps when the few books written by them that have reached us, and the monumental inscrip¬ tions still extant, have been thoroughly deciphered, many among the learned will have to alter their pet opinions, and confess that our civilization may not be the highest ever reached by man. We must keep in mind the fact that we are only emerging from the deep and dark trough that had existed between the Greek and Poman civilizations and ours, and that we are as yet far from having arrived at the top of the wave.
QUEEN 3100 AND THE. EGYPTIAN SPHINX. 21
Before proceeding, I may remark that although the Mayas seem to have penetrated the interior of Asia as far as Meso¬ potamia, and to have dwelt a long time in that country as well as in Asia Minor ; that although, from remote ages, they had sojourned in the Dekkan and other localities in the south of India ; that although the Greek language was composed in great part of Maya, and the grammars of both these lan¬ guages were well-nigh identical ^ — they and the Aryans, so far as shown by philology, never had intercourse with each other. After a thorough study of Mr. Adolphe Pictet’s learned work, “ Les Origines Indo-Europeennes ou les Aryas Primitifs,” and a careful examination of their language and the Greek words derived from it, either directly, or indirectly through Sanscrit, then comparing these with the Maya, I am bound to confess that I have been unable to find the remotest analogy between them. JSTo — not one word! It might be supposed that the name of the most abundant and necessary fluid for living beings would be somewhat similar in languages concurring to form a third one. Not so, however. The erudite Mr. Pictet is at a loss as to the origin of the Greek word, thalassa, for sea. ” 2 Had he been acquainted with the Maya language, he would easily have found it in the word tliallac, that means a ‘Hhing unstable; ” hence the Greek verb tarasso — thrasso — to agitate.” The name for water in Maya is ha, in Egyp¬ tian and Chaldean a.
What are we to argue from this utter want of relation be¬ tween two peoples that have had such a stupendous influence on the civilization of Asiatic, African, and European popula-
^ Brasseur, Troano MS., vol. ii., edit. 1870. Introduction aux elements de la langue Maya, from p. xxiv. to p. xl.
^ Adolphe Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Euroj^eennes, vol. i., pp. 138-139.
22
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
tions? Shall we say that when the Mayas colonized the countries at the south of Asia, then the banks of the Eu¬ phrates, then the valley of the I^ile, and later Asia Minor, it w^as in ages so remote that the Aryans, regarded as a primitive people living at the dawn of history, had not yet multiplied to such numbers as to make it imperative for them to abandon their native country in search of new homes ? Shall we say that the Maya colonies much antedated the migrations of the Aryan tribes, that, abandoning their bactrian homes only about three thousand years before the Christian era,^ went south and invaded the north of India; whilst others, going west, crossed over to Europe and spread over that continent ? This would explain the use of Maya instead of Sanscrit words for the names of the various ])arts of the Sri-Santara; ” show the Maya to be more ancient than Sanscrit; and also account for the grammatical forms common to both the Maya and the Greek, that the ulterior admixture of Aryan words to the latter was unable to alter.
We must premise the explanation of the names of the parts of the Sri-Santara ” by stating that the letters F, fr, «/, and Y are not used in the Maya language.^
From remote ages the Brahmins taught that in the begin¬ ning existed the Infinite. This they called Aditi, ^'that which is above all things.” It is precisely the meaning of the Maya words A titicli— composed of Ah, masculine article, the strong,” the ‘‘powerful; ” and titicli, “that which is above all things. A-titicli or A-diti would then be the “powerful superior to all things,” the “ Infinite. ” In this
^ A. Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes, vol. iii., pp. 508-515.
Beltran de Santa Rosa, Arte del Idioma Maya. Gabriel de Santa Buenaventura, Elementos de la Lingua Maya,
® Pio Perez, Maya dictionary.
Page 22.
Plate XYIII.
Jl'
(l
i
'if . .
i »
4
i*"'
1*
Iw
■B ^
I
\t » •
i
■ j,
■V
' I
< . .* s
s *■
lb
%
f
^ ■ Am J. <.!
-/A
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX. 23
infinite dwelt Auiii, whose name must precede all prayers, all invocations. ^ Manu says that the monosyllable means ‘ ‘ earth, ’ ’ sky,” and “ heaven.” ^
J. Talboys Wheeler says:^ “As regards the three letters A, U, M, little can be gathered excepting that, when brought together in the word Au7n they are said by Manu to form a symbol of tlie Lord of created beings, Brahma.” Colebrooke says: “According, however, to the NiruMa^ which is an ancient glossary of the Yedas^ the syllable Aum refers to every deity. The Brahmins may reserve for their initiates an esoteric meaning more ample than that given by Manu.” But by means of the Maya language we learn its full significance. A-U-M :
A — for Ah, masculine article: the fecundating power; the father.
U — feminine pronoun: the basin; the generative power; the mother.
31 — 3Ielien ; the engendered; the son; or, Ma, yes and no; the androgynus.
Any way we combine the three letters of the sacred mono¬ syllable — in the 3Iaya language — they give us the names and attributes of each person of the TrimourtL For instance: Au-3I— thy maker.
A-XJ-M — thy mother’s son.
U-A-3I-I am the male creator.
3I-U-A— the maker of these waters.
We read in the first chapter of the ordinances of Manu,^ that the Supreme Being produced first the waters, and in them
^ Manava-DTiarma-Sastra, book ii., Sloka 74.
“ lUd., 76-77.
3 J. T. Wheeler, History of India, vol. ii., p. 481. Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i., Sloka 8.
24
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
deposited a germ, an egg, in which He himself was horn again under the shape of Brahma, the great ancestor of all beings. This egg, this golden uterus, is called Iliramyagarhha.^ This word is composed of the following four Maya vocables, liilaaii, yam, kalba, lia, expressing the idea of something floating in the water: liilaaii, ''to be dragged;” yam, "midst;” kalba, "enclosed;” lia, "water.”
In it was born Brahma, the Creator, the origin of all beings, "he who was submerged in the waters.” So reads his name, according to the Maya — Be-lam-lia ; Be, " the way;” lam, "submerged;” ha, "water.”
The waters Avere called War a, says Manu,^ because they were the production of Hara the divine spirit, "the mother of truth: ” Naa, "mother; ” La, "eternal truth,” that con¬ tained the hidden voice of the mantras. The verb Vach, Uacli (Maya), "a thing free from fetters,” the divine male; the first embodied spirit Viradj, Uilal (Maya), " that Avhich is necessary, ’ ’ Avhose union with Maya produced all things.
Again may ask. Is the use of Maya words in this instance without significance? Does the similarity of the ancient Indian architecture to that of the Mayas — which so puzzled the learned English architect, the late James Fergus- son — or the use of the Maya triangular arch, and no other, in all sacred buildings in India, prove nothing? And the practice of stamping the hand, dipped in red pigment, on the walls of temples and palaces, as a Avay of iuA^oking the benison of the gods, or of asserting OAvnership to the building, as Avith a seal, being common both in Mayacli and India ; or the cus¬ tom of carrying children astride on the hip, Avhich Avas never
* H. T. Colebrooke, Notice on the Vedas, lib. ii., § vi.
^ Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i., Sloka 10.
QUEEN 2100 AND THE EG}rPTIAN SPHINX.
25
done by the Mayiis without first performing a very interest¬ ing ceremony called Heoinek ; ^ or the prevalence of the tree and serpent worship, or tliat of the cross and the elephant, among the Mayas as among the Hindoos — is all this without meaning ?
In another work ^ I have shown how the worship of the tree originated in Mayach, and why it was always allied to that of the serpent and of the monarch. But no antiquary has ever been able to trace the origin of these • cults either to Egypt, Chaldea, or India, although it is well known they existed in those countries from remote ages.
The object of these pages is not to give here all the proofs that can be adduced of the presence of the Mayas in India, and of the influence of their civilization on its inhabitants ; but to follow their tracks along the shores of the Indian Ocean, into the interior of Asia, across Asia Minor where they established colonies, on to Africa, until finally they reached the valley of the Nile, and laid the foundation of the renowned Egyptian kingdom, some six thousand years before the reign of Menes, the first terrestrial Egyptian king.^
1 Alice D. Le Plongeon, Harper's 2Iagazine., vol. xx., p. 385.
® Augustus Le Plongeon, Sacred Mysteries^ p. 109, et passim.
® Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History., vol. iii., p. 15.
III.
Continuing the examination of the cosmogonic diagrams of ancient historic Asiatic nations, we find, next in importance, the ‘‘Ensoph” of the Chaldees. It can be seen at a glance that this also is an amplification of the Maya symbol of the universe, as yet existing at Uxmal, as well as of the Sri-San- tara ’ ’ of the Hindoos.
It may be asked. How came the Chaldees to adopt the same geometrical figures used by the Mayas to symbolize their cosmogonic conceptions ?
Berosus, the Chaldean historian, tells us that civilization was brought to Mesopotamia by Cannes and six other beings, half man, half fish, who came from the Persian Gulf; in other words, by men Avho dwelt in boats, Avhich is precisely the meaning of the vocable “ Cannes,” or Hoa-ana in the Maya language (lia, ‘Avater; ” a, ‘‘thy;” na, “house,” “resi¬ dence” — “he who has his residence on the water”). Sir Henry Kawlinson, speaking of the advent of the early Chal¬ deans in Mesopotamia, says d “ With this race originated the
^ Sir Henry Rawlinson, note to Herodotus, lib. i., 181, in George Rawl- inson’s Herodotus^ voL i., p. 319.
Page 26.
Plate XIX.
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
27
art of writing, the building of cities, the institution of a reli¬ gious system, the cultivation of all sciences and of astronomy in particular.”
If philology, like architecture, may serve as guide in fol¬ lowing the footsteps of a people in its migrations on the face of the earth, then we may safely affirm that the Mayas, at some epoch or other, travelling along the shores of the Indian Ocean, reached the mouth of the Indus, and colonized Beloo- chistan and the countries west of that river to Afghanistan; where, to this day, Maya tribes live on the north banks of the Kahili Iliver.^
The names of the majority of the cities and localities in that country are words having a natural meaning in the Maya language; they are, in fact, those of ancient cities and villages whose ruins cover the soil of Yucatan, and of several still inhabited.
I have made a careful collation of the names of these cities and places in Asia, with their meaning in the Maya language. In this work my esteemed friend the Et. Eev. Dr. Dn. Crecen- cio Carillo y Ancona, the present bishop of Yucatan, has kindly helped me, as in many other studies of Maya roots and words now obsolete; the objects to which they applied having ceased to exist or having fallen into disuse.^ Bishop Carillo is a liter¬ ary gentleman of well-known ability, the author of an ancient history of Yucatan, a scholar well versed in the language of his forefathers. He is of Maya descent.
Following the Mayas in their journeys westward, along the seacoasts, we next find traces of them at the head of the
^ London Times, weekly edition, March 4, 1879, p. 6, col. 4.
^ This list is given in full in iny large work, yet unpublished, The Monuments of Maynch and their Historical Teachings.
28 QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
Persian Gulf, where they formed settlements in the marshy country at the mouth of the Euphrates, known to history under the name of Akkad.
The meaning of that name, given to the plains and marshy lands situated to the south of Babylonia, has been, until of late, a puzzle to students of Assyriology; and it still is an enigma to them why a country utterly devoid of mountains should have been called Akkad. Have not the well-known scholars, the late George Smith of Chaldean Genesis fame, Eev. Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford in England, and Mr. Francois Lenormant in France, discovered, by translating one of the bilingual lexicographical tablets found in the royal library of the palace of King Asurbanipal in Kineveh, that in Akkadian language it meant mountain,” high country,” whilst the word for ‘How country,” “ plain,” was Suiner • and that, by a singular antithesis, the Sumerians inhabited the mountains to the eastward of Babylonia, and the Akkadians the plains watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates and the marshes at the mouth of this river ?
The way they try to explain such strange anomaly is by supposing that, in very remote times, the Akkadi dwelt in the mountains, and the Sumeri in the plains; and that at some unknown, unrecorded period, and for some unknown reason, these nations must have migrated en masse, exchanging their abodes, but still preserving the names by which they were known, regardless of the fact that said names were at variance with the character of the localities in which they now dwelt ; but they did it both from custom and tradition.^
Shall we say, “ Si non e vero e hen trovato,'’’’ although this may or may not be the case, there being no record that said ^ Fran9ois Lenormant, Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, p. 399.
QUEEN m60 and TEE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
29
permutation ever took place, and it therefore cannot be authenticated.
The Maya, of which we find so many vestiges in the Akkadian language, affords a most natural, thence rational, etymology of the name Akhad, and in perfect accordance Avith the character of the country thus named. Akal is a Maya word, the meaning of Avhich is pond,” ^ marshy ground; ” and akil is a marshy ground full of reeds and rushes, such as Avas and still is lower Mesopotamia and the localities near the mouth of the Euphrates.
As to the name Burner^ its etymology, although it is also very clear according to the Maya, seemed perplexing to the learned Mr. Lenormant, who neA^ertheless has interpreted it correctly, the Ioav country.” The Akkadian root sum evi¬ dently corresponds to the Greek bottom,” ^Glepres-
sion,” and to the Maya, kom, a A^alley. The Sumeri would then be the inhabitants of the valleys, while the Ahkari Avould be those of the marshes.
From this and from Avhat Avill directly appear let it not be supposed that the ancient Akkadian and ancient Maya are cognate languages. The great number of Maya Avords found in the Akkadian have been ingrafted on it by the Maya colo¬ nists, who in remote times established themselves in Akkad, and became prominent, after a long sojourn in the country, under the name of Kaldi.
Through the efforts of such eminent scholars as Dr. Hincks, Sir Henry KaAvlinson, Dr. Oppert, Monsieur Grwel, Professor Sayce, Mr. Francois Lenormant, and others, the old Akkadian tongue, or much of it, has been recovered, by translating the
* Sir Henry Layard {^NineveTi and Babylon^ p. 356) says that the ancient name of the Mediterranean was Akkari.
30
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
tablets that composed King Asnrbanipal’s library. Mr. Le- normant has published an elementary grammar and vocabulary of it. From this I cull the few following words that are pure Maya, with the same signification in both languages. Having but a limited space to devote here to so interesting a subject, in my selection I have confined myself to words so unequivo¬ cally similar that their identity cannot be questioned.
|
Akkadian. |
A |
Water. |
|
Maya. |
Ha, |
Water. A is also the Egyptian for water. |
|
Akkadian. |
Alha, |
Father. |
|
Maya. |
Ba, |
Father, par excellence ; ancestor. |
|
Akkadian. |
Bala., |
Companion ; also Pal. |
|
Maya. |
Pal, |
Companion. |
|
Akkadian. |
Pah, |
Before ; that which is in front ; gat, hand. |
|
Maya. |
Kab, |
Hand ; arm ; branch of a tree. |
|
Cab, |
A particle that,, in composition, indicates that the action of the verb takes place quickly. |
|
|
Akkadian. |
Ge, |
That which is below. |
|
Maya. |
Ke, |
Radical of Kernel, to descend softly; with¬ out noise. |
|
Akkadian. |
Kale, |
To complete ; to finish. |
|
Maya. |
Kaacuac, |
Abundant ; exceeding. |
|
Kak, |
Fire; to burn; hence to destroy, to finish, etc.. |
|
|
Akkadian. |
Kalama, |
The world ; the countries. |
|
Maya. |
Kalac, |
The world ; the universe. |
|
Akkadian. |
Kas, |
Two. |
|
Maya. |
Ca, |
Two. |
|
Akkadian. |
Ke-acu, |
Inside of the earth ; under. |
|
Maya. |
Kel^, |
Upside down; the inverse side. |
|
Akkadian. |
Ki, |
The inhabitable earth. |
|
Maya. |
Kilacabil, |
The nations; the ancestors. |
|
Akkadian. |
Kul, |
The seed of animals. |
|
Maya. |
Kill, |
The seat; the rump; also to worship, as in Assyrian. |
|
Akkadian. |
Kun, |
The tail. |
|
Maya. |
Kiiii, |
Mulieris pudenda. |
|
Akkadian. |
Kun, |
Daybreak. |
|
Maya. |
Kill, |
Day; sun. |
QUEEN MOO AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
31
|
Akkadian. |
Ku, |
Place. |
|
Maya. |
Kill), |
To place in safetv. |
|
Akkadian. |
Lai, |
Sign of possession ; to take. |
|
3Iaya. |
Lai, |
To take away; to empty. |
|
Akkadian. |
Ma, |
Expresses the idea of locality ; the earth. |
|
3Iaya. |
31a, |
The earth ; the country. 3Ia is likewise Egyptian for country ; place. |
|
Akkadian. |
Ta, |
Expresses the idea of an internal or external locative — into; from; from within; as tan ; Ma ta, country. |
|
3Iaya. |
Ta, |
Place; smooth and level ground. |
|
Tan, |
Toward; in the centre; before; near. |
|
|
Akkadian. |
Ha, |
To bear toward. |
|
3Iaya. |
La, |
Place; neighborhood; place where one stands. |
|
Akkadian. |
Me, |
Prefixed to verbs, nouns, or adjectives, is the sign of negation. |
|
3Iaya. |
3Ia, |
Prefixed to verbs, nouns, or adjectives, is the sign of negation. 3Ia iiolel liaiial (“I don’t wish to eat ”). So also it is in Greek. |
|
Akkadian. |
Men, |
To be. |
|
3Iaya. |
Ell, |
I am. |
|
Akkadian. |
Nana, |
Mother. |
|
3Iaya. |
Naa, |
Mother. |
|
Akkadian. |
Sar, |
White. |
|
3Iaya. |
Zac, |
White. |
|
Akkadian. |
San, Sana, |
Four. ^ |
|
3Iaya. |
Can, |
Four; also serpent. |
^ Mr. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic and Sorcery., p. 300, in a foot-note re¬ marks : “I do not give the name of number ‘four’ in this table, because in the Akkadian it seems quite distinct.” The Akkadian word San is (in ]Maya) can. See farther on for tlie various meanings and the power of that word, which among the Mayas was the title of the dynasty of their kings. It meant “serpent.” Mr. Lenormant (p. 232) says that “the serpent with seven heads was invoked by the Akkadians.” Was this seven-headed serpent the Ah-ac-cliapat, totem of the seven members of the family of King Canclii of Mayacli, that no doubt the worshipped at Angor-
Thom in Cambodia ? (See Le Plongeon, Sacred Mysteries, p. 145.) Sir George Rawlinson {The Fire Great Monarchies, vol. i., p. 122) says, “The Accadians made the serpent one of the principal attributes, and one of the forms of Hea.”
QUEEN m60 and THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
32
|
Akkadian. |
Sir, |
Light. |
|
Maya. |
Zazil, |
Light; brilliancy. |
|
Akkadian. |
Tab, |
To place; to add. |
|
Maya. |
Tab, |
To tie; to join; to unite. |
|
Akkadian. |
Xa or Xana, |
Fish. |
|
Maya. |
Cay, |
Fish. |
|
Akkadian. |
Xas, |
To cut. |
|
Maya. |
Cliac, |
To cut with an axe. |
|
Akkadian. |
Xir, |
Cry. |
|
Maya. |
Cili, |
Word. Ciliil, to speak. |
|
Akkadian. |
Idu, |
The moon. |
|
Maya. |
u. |
The moon. |
|
Akkadian. |
HurTci, |
The moon. |
|
Maya. |
Hul-kin, |
Sun struck ; lighted by the sun. |
Modern Assyriologists, after translating the tablets on Assyrian and Chaldean magic, written in the Akkadian lan¬ guage, agree with the prophetical books of Scripture in the opinion that the Chaldees descended from the primitive Akka¬ dians, and that those people spoke a language differing from the Semitic tongues. A writer in the British and Foreign Beview says:^ Babylonia was inhabited at an early period by a race of people entirely different from the Semitic popula¬ tion known in historic times. This people had an abundant literature, and they were the inventors of a system of writing which was at first hieroglyphic. ... Of the people who invented this system of writing very little is known with cer¬ tainty, and even the name is a matter of doubt.”
According to Berosus, who was a Chaldean priest, these first inhabitants of Babylonia, whose early abode was in Chal¬ dea, were foreigners of another race {aWosdvsU).'^ He care¬ fully establishes a distinction between them and the Assyrians.
^ British and Foreign Review., No. 102, January, 1870, vol. ii., p. 305.
^ Berosus, Fragments^ 5, 6, 11.
QUEEN 3100 AND THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
33
Those primitive Akkadians, those strangers in Mesopotamia, the aborigines would naturally have regarded as guests in the country. Taking a hint from this idea, they called their first settlement ula or ill, a Maya