OTHER SIDE OF SAME ALTAR.
But we will yet take another idol, the better to show these analogies. The figure stands square instead of being carved in profile; the forehead, like that in the Temple of the Sun at Tikal, is less retreating, whilst the head-dress recalls both Tikal, Yucatan, and Lorillard. The ornaments are of the usual type, and the petticoat of the goddess has the diamond design which we saw at Palenque and in the Uplands. The sides of the idol are covered with a series of characters like those on the bas-reliefs at Lorillard, Tikal, and Palenque; the affiliation cannot be controverted.
Again, let us take Stephens’ interesting altar, 6 feet long by 4 feet high. The top is divided into thirty-six tablets of hieroglyphics; whilst the sides are sculptured with human figures in profile, seated cross-legged on a kind of cushion, having a turban or Guatemalec head-dress, with the cranial deformation much diminished, as in the idols. These new types, mixed with others familiar to us, are due to the immigrant Toltec tribes who met after two centuries of wandering, so that this monument shows both: the figures being Quiché-Toltec or Guatemalto-Toltec, whilst the symbolical characters are pure Toltec; the latter, be they near the figure, on his dress, or his seat, give the names and titles of the beings they serve to decorate.
Palacio recognised the Toltec civilisation at Copan, since in a letter to Philip II. (1576), “he found these monuments in ruins, but superior to any edifice of the same nature built by the inhabitants of these regions.” Their traditions make them attribute these edifices to emigrants from Yucatan, which he thinks probable, “because of the resemblance between these monuments and those he met in Yucatan and Tabasco.”[180] Consequently we see at Copan the end of an old art mixed with another equally old, the combination of which produces a new manifestation in the American civilisation. It is idle to speculate how it would have developed had it not been stopped in its inspiration and destroyed by the arrival of the Spaniards.
We follow Veytia in tracing the migratory movements of the Toltecs from the north-west as far as Tula: but from this point we mark their march towards the south after the breaking up of their empire. Torquemada mentions a sub-division, which fell back on Huaxteca, whilst the main body coasted the seaboard of the Mexican Gulf, building Blasillo, where palaces and temples are still standing, and Comalcalco (Centla). Here they divided; some following the Carmen lagoon entered Yucatan by Patonchan, of which the chief or reigning family were the Cocomes; Aké, Izamal, Mayapan, etc., were built by this branch.
ALTAR INSCRIPTION OF COPAN.
INSCRIPTION OF LORILLARD CITY.