The City of the Sacred Well

by T. A. Willard

The finished stones, one by one, are dragged up the long inclined roadway, to the floor-level of the temple, and put into their places under the direction of the master builder. Stone upon stone, the walls take shape and the column sections are set in place. Then come the workers in mortar. Every crevice is filled and the column sections firmed into place with small stone wedges and thick lime mortar. With a cement-like plaster of sifted lime and white earth mixed with water and the juices of the chi-chibe plant, the workmen fill each crack in the walls and columns and burnish it to stony hardness and exceeding smoothness.

Next come the sculptors—men of renown, artists famed for their skill, who spend months and years with knives of obsidian, nephrite and flint chisels, and tiny cutting-tools of copper and calcite. At last the stone-and-mortar surfaces are covered with deep-carved masks and portraits and battle scenes and hieroglyphs and friezes, until scarcely a square inch of plain surface remains. With pencils of red chac-ti wood and with soft-plumed brushes dipped in brilliant pigments the carvings are further adorned—various shades of brown, the blue-green of the sacred quetzal bird, the emerald of the forest, the azure of the cloudless sky, the ultramarine of the deep sea, the gold of the noonday sun, the velvet blackness of a cloudy night, twilight purples in the long shadows of trees reflected in the pool of the Sacred Well, the gray of aged stone that has battled for countless years with the elements; vermilion of the turkey-head blossom, the rusty hue of red-earth dust. From triple-vaulted roof to temple floor the colors are applied with consummate artistry.

Speaking of the tools used by the sculptors, the finds of Don Eduardo throw a new light upon this previously puzzling subject. Many cutting-edges and rejects of flint and calcite have been found. Some archæologists have stated that chisels of metal were not used, and probably these were but little employed, yet from the Sacred Well were raised several small hard copper chisels. There can be no doubt, to judge from the shape and the marks upon them, that they are chisels. One of Don Eduardo’s most precious finds is a nephrite chisel discovered at the base of the Great Pyramid. Concerning it he says:

“While working one day around the base of the Great Pyramid of El Castillo, taking measurements and digging below the surface accumulations to get at the base line of the structure, I came upon a curiously shaped fragment of worked stone—heavy, close-grained, and dark green in color. Closer inspection showed it to be the edged portion of a cutting-tool.

“The unbroken tool must have been of the typical celt type, about six inches long and three inches wide at the cutting-edge, tapering to a rounded head. The part found was rather less than a half of the whole, but nevertheless the more interesting and important part because it contained the polished cutting-edge. It was an unusual find, indeed. Stone points and cutting-edges of local material, like flint and calcite, are not uncommonly encountered in favored places after heavy rains that wash away the earth covering and expose them to view, but tools fashioned from costly, imported material like nephrite were rarely used and were not carelessly cast aside when broken, for even the fragments had their value and could be worked over into smaller implements or into ornaments.

“The location in which this broken nephrite chisel was found, no less than the chisel itself, has an antiquarian bearing. Here was not only an authentic museum piece, but testimony as to its use, for clearly the chisel was used in making the sculptures of El Castillo and was lost there in the course of the work.

“Nephrite, or kidney-stone, was used in prehistoric, ancient, mediæval, and later times as a remedy for kidney diseases. It was taken, of course, in pulverized form. In prehistoric times nephrite was as needful to the skilled artisan as tempered tool steel is to the modern craftsman. Nephrite was found in lands far distant from the Mayas; and pieces of unworked nephrite were bartered and sold, as was nephrite dust. This dust packed on a rawhide surface became an effective abrasive for shaping and polishing the nephrite tool. Nephrite carried by ancient ways of commerce, by barter and trade and conquest and plunder, reached the Mayas to a limited extent. I have no doubt its value to these ancients was greater than that of gold.”

Century after century has passed and the work of these amazing craftsmen still stands, even to the hair lines of the lintel carvings and the faint traces of pigment still clinging to the smooth walls. The epitaph is imperishable, even though the names of the artists, like their very bones, have vanished.

Those who directed the work of temple-building not only built well, but had an eye to efficiency, also. No stone was wasted; rejects, fragments too small for carving or fashioning into building blocks—all were utilized as filling or ballast for the terraces. The stone chips from the mason’s hammer and chisel were used as grouting. Even the stone-dust was collected and sifted and mixed, in the ratio of three to one, with powdered lime, plant juice, and water, to make mortar. When the temple was completed to the point where the sculptors and painters took up their task, the inclined roadway was removed.

Then when the massive temple, smooth-walled and roof-crowned, stood complete on its serrated pyramid of receding terraces; when the broad stairways were finished and the undulating stone serpents and the paneled terrace faces all were perfectly aligned and the whole majestic structure appeared as frosted silver against the velvet blue of the sky—then only did the master builder consider his work complete.