ELLIPTICAL TABLET IN PALACE, PALENQUE.
From the outer corridor there is but one door leading to the inner corridor, through which in turn thirty steps lead down to a rectangular courtyard 80 feet long by 70 feet broad. On each side of these steps are figures in bas-relief 9 feet odd high. On each side of this courtyard the palace is divided into apartments, the arrangement of which, intricate in the extreme, will be seen from the reproduction we make of Stephens's ground-plan. A second flight of stairs leads out westward through two corridors, and by more steps to a second courtyard 80 feet long and 30 wide. So far the arrangements of the palace are much those of other Mayan buildings, though on a grander scale. But the peculiar feature is a tower on the south side of the second court. At the base it is square, and has three storeys. Within it is a smaller tower, separate from the outer one and containing a staircase also of stone so narrow that only a small man could ascend. This staircase ends dead against a stone ceiling, from which the last step is only six or eight inches. Such a deliberate cul-de-sac stair is so incomprehensible as to defeat one's efforts to even suggest an explanation. The Chichen Caracol stairs, which we explored, scarcely in our view offer the same difficulty, for they did appear to have once opened on to the platform of an observatory turret. But Mayan buildings are indeed full of features which are whimsical in the extreme, and suggest that either the builders were often demented caciques or that buildings such as the Palenque palace represent the architectural efforts of several generations of chiefs, and that the later ones by their additions rendered nugatory, perhaps deliberately, the designs of the first builders.
East of the tower is another building with two corridors, one ornamented with pictures in stucco, the centre of its wall bearing a curious elliptical tablet here reproduced from Stephens's picture. The faces of the figures are notable for the pronounced profile which is found here, at Piedras Negras, and at Copan, but as far as we could see not at all at Chichen or at other of the ruins in Yucatan proper. This tablet is, Stephens says, the only stone carving in the palace except those already mentioned in the courtyard. Under it once stood a table. At the end of the corridor containing it an opening in the floor leads by steps to a series of subterranean apartments, with windows opening from them above the ground, thus forming a ground-floor below the level of the corridors. Here are several more stone tables.
At the extreme south-west corner of the palace, connected with it by a subterranean passage, is a pyramidal structure, which once had stairways on all its faces. The sides are very steep and measure about 100 feet on the slope. The building is 76 feet long and 25 deep. It has five doors separated by six piers. The front is richly ornamented with stucco designs and hieroglyphics at each end, ninety-six glyphs in each tablet. The centre four piers are carved with human figures, two on each side facing each other. These are very interesting, for they are, we believe, of a design elsewhere unknown in Central America—representing women with children in their arms. The front corridor is 7 feet wide and is divided from the inner corridor by a massive wall having in it three doors. At each side of the centre door is a tablet of hieroglyphics, each 13 feet wide and 8 high, and divided into 240 glyphs. Each tablet projects three or four inches from the wall. In the rear corridor to which these three doors give admission is another tablet 4 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 6 inches covered with hieroglyphics. Stephens says that the building was called by the local Indians a school; but the padre of Palenque suggested that it was the court-house, and that these hieroglyphic tablets were the tables of the law. Who shall say?
To the east of this Court of Justice, if such indeed it was, is another pyramid 134 feet high, measured on the slope, with a building on top. It has a frontage of 50 feet, is 31 deep, and has three doorways. The whole front is of stucco ornamentation with hieroglyphics on the piers. Divided into two corridors, this building is probably the most remarkable of all Mayan buildings, by reason of the altar tablet in the inner room. It was 10 feet 8 inches wide and 6 feet 4 inches high, and consisted of three separate stones. The middle one had been removed before Stephens's visit. He found it lying near the stream which runs through the group of ruins. The right-hand stone had been quite destroyed. Stephens conjectures, probably rightly, that it was covered with hieroglyphics like that on the left.
This is the famous "Table of the Cross," the most wonderful inscription so far discovered in the New World; and it is well to say at once that the title is misleading. The so-called Cross, it is suggested, is a cosmogonical symbol of the Mayans representing the tree of life growing out of a cube-shaped world, having as its base a fantastic head. This may be so, though we venture to think it may have quite another origin, as we suggest later.
Close to this building are two more which are also obviously temples. The three have been named Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Cross No. 2 (according to Mr. W. H. Holmes), or of the Foliated Cross (according to Mr. Maudslay), and the Temple of the Sun. In each is found the same alleged cosmic sign, the Tree of Life. Each was doubtless a temple. The second two buildings are almost identical in structure with No. 1. In the Temple of the Sun is an altar-slab quite as remarkable as that in the Temple of the Cross. It is 9 feet wide and 8 feet high, and it is composed of three separate stones.
BAS-RELIEF ON PIER OF TEMPLE, PALENQUE.