Stone Statue from Zachila.
1. A seated human figure with arms and legs crossed as shown in the cut. It is carved from a grayish yellow grindstone-like material, and is about a foot in height. It was found in a tomb together with some human bones. The rear view in the original shows the hair falling down the back and cut square across; while the belt about the waist is passed between the legs and is tied in a knot behind. 2. A seated human figure in granite, eighteen inches high. The arms, from elbow to wrist, are free from the body, and the hands rest on the knees. A string of beads or pearls is suspended from the neck, and a mask with fantastic figures in relief covers the face. In the top of the head is a hollow, and the image seems to have been designed, like many others in the same locality, for a vase or, perhaps, a torch-bearer. 3. A seated human figure, twenty-seven inches high, cut from white marble and painted red. The arms and body are concealed by a kind of semicircular cape. The hands appear below the cape, holding some indescribable object. A necklace of beads or pearls surrounds the neck, the face is apparently masked or at least the features are ideally fantastic, and an immense headdress, as large as all the rest of the figure, surmounts the whole in semicircular form. A serpent appears among the emblems of the head-dress.[VII-25] 4. A stone twenty-seven inches long, twelve inches high, and three inches thick, of very hard and heavy material. On one side, within a plain border, are four human figures in low relief, two on each side facing a kind of altar in the middle. All are squatting cross-legged, one has clearly a beard, and another has a bird—called by Dupaix an eagle, as is his custom respecting every bird-like sculpture—forming a part of his head-dress. The stone was badly broken, but seems to have been carried by the finder to Mexico.[VII-26] 5. A bird bearing considerable likeness to an eagle, holding a serpent in its beak and claws. This figure was sculptured in low relief on a block of hard sandstone three feet square, built into a modern wall. 6. A human face, much like what is in modern times drawn to represent the full moon, three feet in diameter, and also built into a wall. The material is a brilliant gray marble. 7. Three fragments with sculptured surfaces, one of which has among other figures several that seem to represent flowers. 8, 9. Two masked images, similar in some respects to No. 2, but of terra-cotta instead of stone. One of them is shown in the cut. They are about a foot and a half high, hollow, and present some indications, in the form of a socket at the back of the head, of having been intended to hold torches.[VII-27] 10. A terra-cotta figure, about nine inches high, apparently representing a female clad in a very peculiar dress, as shown in the cut.[VII-28] 11. An earthen cylinder, five inches in diameter and nine inches high, on the top of which is a head, possibly the caricature of a dog, from whose open jaws looks out a tolerably well-formed human face. 12-17. Six heads of animals or monsters in terra cotta. 18-23. Six earthen dishes of various forms, one of which, in the form of a platter, has within it a representation in clay of a human skull.
Terra-Cotta Image—Zachila.
Terra-Cotta Image—Zachila.
A tomb is said to have been opened at Zachila in which were several tiers of earthen platters, each containing a skull. Some of the vessels have hollow legs with small balls, which rattle when they are moved.[VII-29] At Cuilapa, some distance north-east of Zachila, the existence of tumuli is mentioned, but a German explorer, who visited the locality with a view to open some of them, is said to have been stoned and driven away by the infuriated natives, notwithstanding the fact that he was provided with authority from the local authorities.[VII-30]
MITLA—HOME OF THE DEAD.
The finest and most celebrated group of ruins in Oajaca, probably the finest in the whole Nahua territory, is that at Mitla, about thirty miles slightly south of east from the capital, and eight or nine miles north-east of Tlacolula. Here was a great religious centre often mentioned in the traditional annals of the Zapotecs. The original name seems to have been Liobaa, or Yobaa, 'the place of tombs,' called by the Aztecs Miquitlan, Mictlan, or Mitla, 'place of sadness,' 'dwelling of the dead,' often used in the sense of 'hell.'[VII-31] The buildings at Mitla were at least partially in ruins when the Spaniards came, but their dilapidation probably dated only from the fierce contests waged by the Zapotec kings against the Aztec powers in Anáhuac, during one or two centuries preceding the Conquest; and as we shall see later there is no reason whatever to doubt that the place was occupied by the Zapotec priesthood during the long period of that nation's supremacy in Oajaca and the southern Anáhuac.[VII-32]