There can be no question but that the Piedra de los Gigantes establishes a date of death; that it is a necrological tablet, a mortuary monument, and from its size and workmanship, that it was intended as a memorial of the decease of some very important personage in ancient Mexico.
Provided with these deductions from the stone itself, let us turn to the records of old Mexico and see if they corroborate the opinion stated. Fortunately we possess several of these venerable documents, chronicles of the empire before Cortes destroyed it, written in the hieroglyphs which the inventive genius of the natives had devised. Taking two of these chronicles, the one known as the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the other as the Codex Vaticanus,[[255]] and turning to the year numbered “ten” under the sign of the rabbit, I find that both present the same record, which I copy in the following figure.
Fig. 2. Extract from the Vatican Codex.
You will observe the sign of the year, the rabbit, shown merely by his head for brevity. The ten dots which give its number are beside it. Immediately beneath is a curious quadruped with what are intended as water-drops dripping from him. The animal is the hedge-hog and the figure is to be construed iconomatically, that is, it must be read as a rebus through the medium of the Nahuatl language. In that language water is atl, in composition a, and hedge-hog is uitzotl. Combine these and you get ahuitzotl, or, with the reverential termination, ahuitzotzin. This was the name of the ruler or emperor, if you allow the word, of ancient Mexico before the accession to the throne of that Montezuma whom the Spanish conquistador Cortes put to death. His hieroglyph, as I have described it, is well known in Mexican codices.[[256]]
Returning to the page from the chronicle, we observe that the hieroglyph of Ahuitzotzin is placed immediately over a corpse swathed in its mummy cloths, as was the custom of interment with the highest classes in Mexico. This signifies that the death of Ahuitzotzin took place in that year. Adjacent to it is the figure of his successor, his name iconomatically represented by the head-dress of the nobles; the tecuhtli, giving the middle syllables of “Mo-tecuh-zoma.”[[257]] Beneath is also the figure of the new ruler, with the outlines of a flower and a house, which would be translated by the iconomatic system xochicalli or xochicalco; but the significance of these does not concern us here.
This page of the Codices gives us therefore a record of a death in the year “10 tochtli”—1502—of the utmost importance. No previous ruler had brought ancient Mexico to such a height of glory and power. “In his reign,” says Orozco y Berra, “Mexico reached its utmost extension. Tributes were levied in all directions, and fabulous riches poured into the capital city.”[[258]] The death of the ruler was therefore an event of the profoundest national significance. We may well believe that it would be commemorated by some artistic work commensurate with its importance; and this I claim was the purpose of the Piedra de los Gigantes of Escamela.
But we may add further and convincing testimony to this interpretation. The day of the month ce cipactli, 1 Fish, is engraved to the right of the figure as connected with the event commemorated. Now, although I have not found in the records the exact day of Ahuitzotzin’s death, I do find that the native historian Ixtlilxochitl assigns this very day, ce cipactli, 1 Fish, as that of the accession of Montezuma;[[259]] and another native historian, Chimalpahin, states distinctly that this took place “immediately” after the death of his predecessor on the throne.[[260]] It may possibly have been on the very day of Ahuitzotzin’s decease, as still another native writer, Tezozomoc, informs us that this was not sudden, but the slow result of a wound on the head.[[261]]
It is indeed remarkable that we should find the precise dates, the year and the day of the year, depicted on this stone, and also recorded by various native writers, as connected with the demise of the emperor Ahuitzotzin. These coincidences are of such a nature that they leave no doubt that La Piedra de los Gigantes of Escamela is a necrologic tablet commemorating the death of the emperor Ahuitzotzin some time in February, 1502.