AZTEC CALENDAR STONE.

We have thought it proper and interesting to preface the description of the calendar stone by the preceding account of the Aztec festival of the New Fire, which illustrates the mingled elements of science and superstition that so largely characterized the empire of Montezuma. The stone itself has engaged the attention, for years, of numerous antiquarians in Mexico, Europe and America, but it has received from none so perfect a description, as from the late Albert Gallatin, who devoted a large portion of his declining years to the study of the ancient Mexican chronology and languages. In the first volume of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society he has contributed an admirable summary of his investigations of the semi-civilized nations of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America, and from this we shall condense the portion which relates to this remarkable monument.

Around the principal central figure, representing the sun, are delineated in a circular form the twenty days of the month; which are marked from 1 to 20, with figures in the plates, and, in this order, are the following:

The triangular figure I, above the circle enclosing the emblem of the sun, denotes the beginning of the year. Around the circumference which bounds the symbols of the days and months are found the places of fifty-two small squares, of which only forty are actually visible, the other twelve being covered by the four principal rays of the sun marked R. These doubtless denote the cycle of 52 years; and each of these squares contains five small oblongs, making in all 260 for the 52 squares. They are presumed to represent the 260 days or the period of the twenty first series of thirteen days. All the portion, included between the outer circumference of these 260 days and the external zone, has not been decyphered accurately. The external zone consists, except at the extremities, of a symbol twenty times repeated, and is alleged by Gama, a Mexican who first described and attempted to interpret the stone, to represent the milky way. The waving lines connected with it are supposed by this writer to represent clouds, while others imagine them to be the symbols of the mountains in which clouds and storms originated. These fanciful interpretations, however, are unavailable in all scientific descriptions, and Mr. Gallatin supposes the figures to be altogether ornamental.

The whole circle is divided into eight equal parts by the eight triangles R, which designate the rays of the sun. The intervals between these are each divided into two equal parts by the small circles indicated by the letter L. At the top of the vertical ray is found the hieroglyphic 13 Acatl, which shows that this stone applies to that year. It must be recollected that, although this Mexican calendar is in its arrangement the same for every year in the cycle, there was a variation at the rate of a day for every four years, between the several years of the cycle and the corresponding solar years. Gama presumes that this date of 13 Acatl was selected on account of its being the twenty-sixth year of the cycle and equally removed from its beginning and termination. Beneath this hieroglyphic, in correct drawings of the stone—but not in that of Gama which has been reproduced by Mr. Gallatin—will be found, between the letters Y and G, the distinct sign of 2, Acatl, and the ray above it points to the sign of the year 13 Acatl, which coincides with our 21st of December, and is undoubtedly the hitherto undetermined date of the winter solstice in the Mexican calendar. [17]

The smaller interior circle, we have already said, contains the image of the sun, as usually painted by the Indians; and to it are united the four parallelograms A, B, C, D, which are supposed by some writers to denote the four weeks into which the twenty days of the month were divided, but which contain the hieroglyphics, A, of 4 Ocelotl; B, of 4 Ehecatl; C, of 4 Quiahuitl; and D, of 4 Atl. The lateral figures E and F, according to Gama denote claws, which are symbolical of two great Indian astrologers who were man and wife, and were represented as eagles or owls.

The representations in these parallelograms, are believed to have originated in the Mexican fable of the suns, which will be hereafter noticed. The Aztecs believed that this luminary had died four times, and that the one which at present lights the earth, was the fifth, but which nevertheless was doomed to destruction like the preceding orbs. From the creation, the first age or sun, lasted 676 years, comprising 13 cycles, when the crops failed, men perished of famine and their bodies were consumed by the beasts of the field. This occurred in the year 1 Acatl, and on the day 4 Ocelotl, and the ruin lasted for thirteen years. The next age and sun endured 364 years or 7 cycles, and terminated in the year 1 Tecpatl on the day 4 Ehecatl, when hurricanes and rain desolated the globe and men were metamorphosed into monkeys. The third age continued for 312 years, or 6 cycles, when fire or earthquakes rent the earth and human beings were converted into owls in the year 1 Tecpatl, on the day 4 Quiahuitl;—while the fourth age or sun lasted but for a single cycle of 52 years, and the world was destroyed by a flood, which either drowned the people or changed them into fishes, in the year 1 Calli, on the day 4 Atl. The four epochs of destruction are precisely the days typified by the hieroglyphics in the four parallelograms A, B, C and D.