; taking care to leave without it, at the upper part, a portion equal to two-fifths of its length. In the midst of the waters they represented the figure of an egg, that is a germ. Why an egg and not any other seed? Is it because their study of physiology had made them acquainted with the fact, that no being exists on Earth, but that is born from an egg? They represented the egg emitting rays. The rays of the light into which says Thoth, all things resolved themselves; that, says the Quiche, author of the Popol-Vuh, appeared on the water as an increasing brightness that bathed the Creator, the feathered serpent, the Kneph, as the Egyptians would name it, in green and azure. It is well to notice that the symbols of water terminate with the head of serpents; because they compared the waves of the ocean to the undulations of the serpent's body while in motion.
For this reason the Mayas named the sea Canah, the great, the powerful serpent: and in the Troano MS., the sea is always designated by a serpent's head. This explains why the Quiches, the Mayas, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, represented the world, and, by extension, the maker of it, as a serpent. Thus it is that they placed a serpent within the egg, behind the creator to indicate that this symbol is the totem of the ancestor of all beings. And here we have one of the origins of the serpent worship: that is, the adoration of the Creator.
| Fig. 1. | Fig. 2. |
In Egypt the goddess Uati, the genius of the lower country, is at times represented as a serpent with inflated breast, the body standing erect over a basket or sieve, the lower part resting against a figure resembling our numeral 8. At times again, as a winged serpent, with inflated breast, wearing on its head a cap or crown of peculiar shape, that it is said to be the crown of lower Egypt. Why the Egyptians selected such symbols to represent the lower country, we are not informed; and it is doubtful if the learned Egyptologists could explain the motive.
Now it is a most remarkable fact, that these are the very symbols used by the Maya hierogrammatists and artists to figure their own motherland, the Maya empire.
The author of the Troano MS., sometimes pictures Mayax as a serpent with an inflated breast (Plate. XVII., Part II.), at other times as a serpent with part of the body bent in the shape of the Yucatan peninsula,[[2]] and the artists who executed the paintings in the funereal chamber of Prince Coh, typified the country as a winged serpent, with the back painted green, the belly yellow, wearing a blue crown on the head, its tail ending with a peculiar dart resembling in general contour the southern continent of America.
This is not the place to give minute explanations of these symbols which I have considered in another work, I simply wish to consign here such facts as cannot be attributed altogether to hazard. So the peculiar twist against which rests the body of the serpent, emblem of the lower country, is exactly the same that forms the symbol