"Charles O. Thompson."
There is a fact certainly worthy of notice, and this is that the names of the personages mentioned in the various accounts of the fratricide are precisely identical, or are words having the same signification. May not that be regarded as unimpeachable proof that they all refer to the same event?
No one who has any knowledge of philology will ever deny that A-bel—A-bal—Bal-i—Balam are identical words.
A, contraction of Ah, is the Maya masculine article, the. Bal is the radical of Balam. Balam is for the superstitious aborigines, even to-day, the Yumil Kaax—the "Lord of the fields" the "Leopard" which they also call Coh—the totem of the victim of Aac is the leopard—and it is so represented in the bas-reliefs and sculptures.
In Egypt, the spotted skin of the leopard, usually without the head, but sometimes with it, was always suspended near the images and statues of Osiris. The skin of a leopard was worn as a mantle over the ceremonial dress of his priests.
Besides, when represented as King of the Amenti—of the "West"—the symbol of Osiris was always a crouching leopard with an open eye over it.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the leopard's skin worn by Nimrod and Bacchus was a sacred appendage to the Mysteries. It was used in the Eleusinian as well as in the Egyptian mysteries instituted in honor of Osiris. It is mentioned in the earliest speculations by the Brahmins on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers the Aytareya Brahmana, and is used in the agnishtoma the initiation rites of the Soma mysteries. When the neophyte is to be born again he is covered with a "leopard skin," out of which he emerges as from his mother's womb. A leopard skin is worn by the African warriors, who are so fortunate as to possess one, as a charm to render them invulnerable to spears according to the French traveler Paul du Chaillu.
