Vestiges of the Mayas / or, Facts Tending to Prove That Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in Very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa

by Augustus Le Plongeon

The learned priests of Egypt are said to have made considerable progress in astronomical sciences.

The gnomon, discovered by me in December, last year, in the ruined city of Mayapan, would tend to prove that the learned men of Mayab were not only close observers of the march of the celestial bodies and good mathematicians; but that their attainments in astronomy were not inferior to those of their brethren of Chaldea. Effectively the construction of the gnomon shows that they had found the means of calculating the latitude of places, that they knew the distance of the solsticeal points from the equator; they had found that the greatest angle of declination of the sun, 23° 27´, occurred when that luminary reached the tropics where, during nearly three days, said angle of declination does not vary, for which reason they said that the sun had arrived at his resting place.

The Egyptians, it is said, in very remote ages, divided the year by lunations, as the Mayas, who divided their civil year into eighteen months, of twenty days, that they called U—moon—to which they added five supplementary days, that they considered unlucky. From an epoch so ancient that it is referred to the fabulous time of their history, the Egyptians adopted the solar year, dividing it into twelve months, of thirty days, to which they added, at the end of the last month, called Mesoré, five days, named Epact.

By a most remarkable coincidence, the Egyptians, as the Mayas, considered these additive five days unlucky.

Besides this solar year they had a sideral or sothic year, composed of 365 days and 6 hours, which corresponds exactly to the Mayas sacred year, that Landa tells us was also composed of 365 days and 6 hours; which they represented in the gnomon of Mayapan by the line that joins the centers of the stela that forms it.

The Egyptians, in their computations, calculated by a system of fives and tens; the Mayas by a system of fives and twenties, to four hundred. Their sacred number appears to have been 13 from the remotest antiquity, but SEVEN seems to have been a mystic number among them as among the Hindoos, Aryans, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and other nations.

The Egyptians made use of a septenary system in the arrangement of the grand gallery in the center of the great pyramid. Each side of the wall is made of seven courses of finely polished stones, the one above overlapping that below, thus forming the triangular ceiling common to all the edifices in Yucatan. This gallery is said to be seven times the height of the other passages, and, as all the rooms in Uxmal, Chichen and other places in Mayab, it is seven-sided. Some authors pretend to assume that this well marked septenary system has reference to the Pleiades or Seven stars. Alcyone, the central star of the group, being, it is said, on the same meridian as the pyramid, when it was constructed, and Alpha of Draconis, the then pole star, at its lower culmination.

But if, as the Rev. Joseph A. Seiss and others pretend, the scientific attainments required for the construction of such enduring monument surpassed those of the learned men of Egypt, we must, of necessity, believe that the architect who conceived the plan and carried out its designs must have acquired his knowledge from an older people, possessing greater learning than the priests of Memphis; unless we try to persuade ourselves, as the reverend gentleman wishes us to, that the great pyramid was built under the direct inspiration of the Almighty.

Nearly all the monuments of Yucatan bear evidence that the Mayas had a predilection for number SEVEN. Since we find that their artificial mounds were composed of seven superposed platforms; that the city of Uxmal contained seven of these mounds; that the north side of the palace of King Can was adorned with seven turrets; that the entwined serpents, his totem, which adorn the east façade of the west wing of this building, have seven rattles; that the head-dress of kings and queens were adorned with seven blue feathers; in a word, that the number SEVEN prevails in all places and in everything where Maya influence has predominated.

It is a FACT, and one that may not be altogether devoid of significance, that this number SEVEN seems to have been the mystic number of many of the nations of antiquity. It has even reached our times as such, being used as symbol by several of the secret societies existing among us.