Amongst the thirteen sculptured slabs discovered at Santa Lucia, there are six entire slabs and the fragment of another which are of almost uniform size and may be ranked among the finest examples of aboriginal art which have as yet been found on the American Continent. They represent seven different renderings of the same theme. On each slab an individual wearing elaborate insignia is represented as standing with one arm raised and his head thrown back in the act of gazing upwards towards a celestial figure which seems to be descending towards him. The arms and heads of these nobly conceived figures are visible, but in each case the faces seem to issue from a highly ornate symbol, which is different in each one, just as the insignia of each individual also varies in detail. At the same time it is obvious that the seven slabs commemorate as it were an identical circumstance,—the apparition of the same divinity to seven different individuals, six of which are represented with the sign of speech coming forth from their mouths in precisely the same manner. The general resemblance, notwithstanding the distinct individuality of each bas-relief, suggests that they commemorate the visions seen under [pg 154] similar circumstances by seven distinct personages of the same rank and position. Involuntarily one thinks of the period of enforced fast and vigil which marks the attainment of manhood and is still obligatory amongst North American tribes, amongst whom it only ends when they have entered into communion with their totemic ancestor. I am inclined to view these commemorative tablets as commemorating an analogous rite and perpetuating the visions of successive members of one ruling family, or clan. The divinity, invariably associated with serpent symbols, seems to be Quetzalcoatl, the divine twin or serpent, exhibiting in some cases the emblem of the Sun, but evidently revealing itself to each personage under a slightly different form.
Figure 47.
The accompanying drawing (fig. [47]) of one of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs, reproduced from Dr. Habel's work, will suffice to establish its resemblance to Padre Oliva's description of the apparition seen by the youthful Inca Yupanqui. After a careful comparison of the text to the sculptured bas-relief, it must be admitted that a more graphic and impressive illustration of the episode can scarcely be imagined. Its lower portion displays a youthful figure, looking upwards and exhibiting a necklace, the circular ear-pieces and royal fringe or llautu of the Incas. From his shoulders hangs the skin of a puma or lion with its head downwards. Molina relates that lion-skins with the heads were specially prepared for the ceremonial when youths were admitted into the ranks of knighthood, the last rite of which was the piercing of their ears and the enlargement of the orifice made.[28]
The youth wears a singular head-dress, or diadem, consisting of what appears to be an eye with conventionally drawn upper lid, surmounted by three pointed rays, behind which some long wavy feathers are visible.[29]
The celestial apparition to which the youthful figure is looking up, likewise exhibits the same necklace, pieces, and royal fringe of the Incas. Indistinctly though some of the details are given, it seems as though intertwined serpents encircled its head and possibly its neck. The head of the vision is surmounted by an enlarged rendering of the conventionally drawn eyelid and three pointed rays which form the diadem of the youthful knight. The face of the vision occupies, however, the place of the eye on the diadem. In this connection it is interesting to note that in the Nahuatl language, which, as (op. et loc. cit.) proven by Buschmann, was spoken in Guatemala where the bas-relief was found, the word ixtli designates face, whilst ixtololotli signifies eye. Situated between the right elbow of the celestial figure and the diadem of the youth, there is a diminutive reproduction of the eye, eyelid and three rays, with the addition that what appear like two (or three?) drops of water or two eyes descend from it towards a square symbol which resembles the Mexican sign for tlalli=earth, whilst the eye symbol is closely analogous to a well-known Mexican sign which has been interpreted as a star, and has, but not as yet satisfactorily, been identified with the planet Venus. Without pausing to study this sign as it appears in ancient Mexico I point out that the position and mode of representation of the upper figure in the bas-relief sufficiently show that it is an image of a celestial being or vision in the act of receiving the supplication of a youth who is wearing divine insignia. There being a possibility that some of these accessories may be somewhat indistinct in the original bas-relief now preserved at the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Berlin, I do not venture to draw special attention to the possibility of further points of resemblance between the Peruvian tradition and this Guatemalan sculpture.
At the same time I shall not omit allusion to the wavy figure winding upwards from the waist of the supplicant, which recurs in four out of the seven slabs. It may yet prove to answer to the description of “a sort of serpent,” which is recorded as twining over the shoulders of the vision who was “dressed like the Inca.” The lion's head which appears in the drawing to cover the left hand of the supplicant and the fact that his left foot only, in some cases, wears a sandal, are important and interesting features to which I shall revert further on.
Without attempting to offer any explanation of the truly remarkable fact that a bas-relief exhumed in Guatemala should so strikingly agree with a description preserved in a Peruvian tradition, I shall merely point out a second similar though much less remarkable case of agreement.
Padre Oliva records two instances in which a “royal eagle” figures in connection with members of the Inca dynasty. One of these relates to the ancestors of Manco Capac, the reputed founder of Cuzco. His great-grandmother, being abandoned by her husband, attempted to sacrifice her young son to Pachacamac. A royal eagle descended, carried him away in his talons and set him down in an island off the Pacific coast, named Guayan, “because it was covered with willows.” Oliva explains this tradition as a fanciful way of recording the fact that the youth's life was probably endangered, and that he had fled and taken refuge on an island. At the age of twenty-one he made his way back to the continent on a raft, but was seized by hostile people. His life was, however, saved by the daughter of a chieftain who returned with him to the island. Her name is given as Ciguar, a word strangely like the Nahuatl Cihuatl=woman. She bore him a son who was named Atau (cf. Ahau and Ahua=Maya and Mexican words for lord or chief), who was, in time, the father of Manco Capac, the reputed founder of civilization in Peru. When the latter was a child “an eagle approached him and never left him.” In view of these traditions it is interesting to note that, on two of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs figured by Habel and reproduced by Mr. Hermann Strebel in pl. ii, fig. 13, of his extremely useful and comprehensive monograph on the bas-reliefs of Santa Lucia, an eagle is represented in connection with a figure wearing divine insignia.