PILLARS OF THE GREAT GALLERY OF AKÉ.
After the pyramid, we visited the ruin known as Akabna, “House of Darkness,” in which the rooms still standing are perfectly dark; for the only light they receive is from a door communicating with other apartments. Here we again find the boveda, the corbel roof, the pointed arch observed in previous buildings. The Aké vault is built with large rough blocks, which has caused these monuments to be called cyclopean, an appellation hardly deserved, for cyclopean structures were built with far larger blocks, irregular in shape, yet fitting so well that it would be impossible to introduce the slightest object between the joints, whilst the stones employed in the constructions at Aké are uniform, consisting of thick uncut slabs, with large gaps intervening. This I observed to Mr. Aymé: “You hold that Aké structures were built without mortar or cement, and that no sculpture or decoration of any kind have been found, but I lay down as a principle, that it is altogether impossible, without wishing to deny the very novel features of the phenomenon we are confronted with; and nothing except the most irrefragable proofs will bring me from my position of total denial, for I am convinced that the builders would not have left structures so important unfinished. If these stones fitted originally, the gaps which are noticeable would be the work of time, and this were to give them an impossible and incredible antiquity, since the slabs are rounded off or sharp at the edges as if quarried yesterday; further, both in the interior or facing the walls, they are exactly in the same condition, from which I conclude that all were originally laid in cement, and coated over in the usual manner.”
Soon after this conversation we visited the ruin called Knuc, “Owl’s Palace,” and on reaching the top of the great pyramid, the first thing I noticed was a very pretty bas-relief of cement, consisting of diamonds and flattened spheres, of the kind met at Palenque. This relief formed the right side of a frame, topped by figures, traces of which were still discernible; below the projecting cornice was a thick coating of plaster, filling the joints, well smoothed and polished on the surface, and also a coating of paint on the wall.
“Well,” I said to my companion, Mr. Aymé, “what do you say now?”
“That you were perfectly right.”
And, indeed, this discovery proved that the monuments could no longer be considered the work of a different race, a different civilisation, or a hoary antiquity. In effect, their cement decorations are similar to those of the older edifices in Tabasco and many in Yucatan. I shall therefore distinguish the Aké period under three heads: the cement epoch, the cement and cut stone, and the cut stone only, when the builders used only the latter in their decorations, examples of which are to be found in the later edifices at Uxmal and Kabah.
The Aké builders lived in a country where the calcareous layer was taken up in sheets varying from 10 inches to 1 foot 7 inches thick. They used them exactly as they came from the quarry, thus saving great expenditure in labour. When the shell of a structure was run up, it was thickly plastered over, painted, and ornamented with mouldings in relief. This explains at once why the stones on the pillars of the gallery and the blocks of the grand stairway are irregular. The discovery of the bas-relief and cornice filled me with joyful expectation, but although I was indefatigable in visiting the Succuna and other nameless pyramids, I brought to light nothing more of the kind; everything had crumbled away. Here are also found the typical superimposed layers of cement, which we mentioned in various places inhabited by the Toltecs.
To sum up, Aké seems to belong to the early times of the Toltec invasion in Yucatan; an epoch which may not improperly be termed Maya-Toltec, as the civilisation in Tabasco and Chiapas may be termed Tzendal-Toltec, and that of Guatemala, Guatemalto-Toltec.
