[251]. One appears to be a gigantic full face; another an animal like a frog, with extended legs; two others are geometrical designs, the outlines of which have evidently been recently freshened with a steel implement. Future observers should be on their guard that this procedure shall not have mutilated the early workmanship.
[252]. It is needless to expand this explanation of the Aztec Calendar; but it is worth while to warn the student of the subject that the problem is an intricate one and has never yet been satisfactorily solved, because the information presented is both incomplete and contradictory. I consider the most instructive discussion of the Calendar is that in Orozco y Berra, Historia Antigua de Mexico, Lib. iv., Cap. 1–6.
[253]. Father Sotomayor, in the newspaper account above referred to, states that tradition assigned the inscription to the time of Cortes’ march to the City of Mexico; a date which he quite properly ridicules as impossible. The vicinity of Orizaba was, moreover, not a part of the Mexican State until some time after the middle of the 15th century. See Bandelier, Archæological Tour in Mexico, pp. 22, sqq.
[254]. Tzontemoc, a compound of tzontli, hair, and temoa, to fall; mictlan, locative from mictli, to die; tecutli, lord, noble. For a description of this deity see Sahagun, Historia de la Nueva España, Lib. iii, Appendix, chap. I. I have elsewhere suggested that the falling hair had reference to the long slanting rays of the setting sun. See above, p. [146].
[255]. Both are reproduced in Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities. But I would warn against the explanations in Spanish of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. They are the work of some ignorant and careless clerk, who often applies the explanation of one plate and date to another, through sheer negligence.
[256]. I would refer to an explanation of this system published by me in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, for 1886.
[257]. The phonetic significance of this symbol is well established. See Aubin in the Introduction to Brasseur, Histoire des Nations Civilisées de la Mexique, Tome I, p. lxix.
[258]. Historia Antigua de Mexico, Tomo III, p. 426.
[259]. Ixtlilxochitl, Historia Chichimeca, cap. 70. He errs in assigning it to the year 1503, as all the other narratives of importance are against him.
[260]. Annales de Chimalpahin, p. 173 (Ed. Siméon, Paris, 1889). His words are “auh ça niman ihcuac oncan in hual motlatocalli in Moteuhcçomatzin,” which Siméon renders “Immédiatement apres,” etc.