"A great deal has been written about this stone, and there has been a wonderful amount of speculation and theory concerning it. I haven't space or time to consider everybody's story, and will take that of Señor Chavero, who, as we are told, is one of the best authorities, if not the best of all. Señor Chavero says the stone was engraved in honor of the sun, and for this reason it is often called 'The Stone of the Sun.'
"According to this gentleman's account, the stone was made in the reign of King Axayacatl, about 1479 of our era, and was originally placed horizontally in the temple of Mexico. When the temple was destroyed by Cortez after the Conquest, the stone lay for a while in the great square. It was buried about the middle of the sixteenth century, and remained beneath the surface of the plaza until 1790, when it was unearthed and placed where it is now to be seen.
THE AZTEC CALENDAR-STONE.
"Here is what Señor Chavero says of the meaning of the sculpture on the stone:
"'The face in the centre is the god-star throwing his light on the earth, which is represented by the tongue protruding from his lips. He has the pupils of his eyes turned upward, and they are seen through the sacred mask that covers the upper part of his face. The hieroglyphics on the diadem encircling the head represent the division of time and the Mexican method of numbering the years. The civil year, like ours, was 365 days. Each four years had different emblems repeated successively, without reference to other chronological arrangements. The first year was called tochtl, or rabbit; the second, acatl, or reed; the third, tecpatl, or flint; the fourth, calli, or house. In addition to these periods, the years were arranged by the number of thirteen, four of such periods making fifty-two years, or a Mexican age, when the Festival of Fire occurred. This was a most serious event for the Mexicans, as the priests taught the people that the world might come to an end and terrible demons would descend from above and eat up mankind.
"'The two claws on the dial at the sides of the mask represent computations of numbers, for which the hand was used in a sort of deaf-and-dumb alphabet. The large V-shaped ornaments denote four equal divisions of the day, and the smaller ornaments of the same shape indicate the division of the day into eight parts. The ornaments lying between the V's represent eight divisions of the night. The twenty ornaments in panels in the circle inside the V's are symbols of twenty days, or one Mexican month. The rest of the stone is differently interpreted by different writers, but they generally agree that it represents the relations of the months to the year and the years to the Mexican cycle.'
