Ground plan—Temple of the Three Tablets.
Section—Temple of the Three Tablets.
The arrangement of the interior is shown in the accompanying ground plan. The central wall is four or five feet thick, and is pierced by three doorways, which afford access to three apartments in the rear. The front corridor has a small window at each end; Stephens speaks of two slight openings about three inches wide in each of the lateral apartments of the rear; and the plan indicates two similar openings in the central room, although he speaks of them as dark and gloomy. Castañeda's drawing shows only one window at the end; it also represents the building as having a roof like the Palace, and as standing on a natural rocky hill in which some steps are cut, no bas-reliefs or other decorations appearing on the front. The interior walls are perfectly plain, and it is not even definitely stated that they are plastered. In the walls, however, at a, b, and c, of the ground plan, are fixed stone tablets one foot thick, each composed of several blocks, neatly joined and covered with sculptured hieroglyphics. Those in the central wall, at a and b, measure eight by thirteen feet, and contain each two hundred and forty squares of hieroglyphics in a very good state of preservation, while the one hundred and forty squares of the tablet in the rear apartment, three and a half by four feet, are much damaged by trickling water. Drawings of the hieroglyphics have been made by Waldeck and Catherwood only, although other visitors speak of them. I do not copy the drawings here, because, in the absence of any key to their meaning, the specimen which I shall present from another part of the ruins is as useful to the reader as the whole would be. The cut is a longitudinal section of this temple at the central wall, and shows the position of the tablets. Waldeck's drawing represents the two lateral doorways as having flat tops. Brasseur tells us that, according to the statements of the natives, the tablets were used originally for educational purposes. M. Charnay found them still undisturbed in 1859.[VI-33]
Ground plan—Temple of the Beau Relief.