Casts of these bas-reliefs are on exhibition in the Peabody Museum.
“The skins of lions, with the heads, had been prepared, with gold ear-pieces in the ears and golden teeth in place of the real teeth which had been pulled out. In the paws were certain rings of gold. Those who were dressed or invested with these skins put on the head and neck of the lion so as to cover their own and the skin of the body of the lion hung from the shoulders.” op. cit. p. 45.
The wearing of puma and ocelot skins by one of the two highest grades of warriors in Mexico is too well known to need further mention here.
Annals of the Cakchiquels. Library of Aboriginal Literature, vol. vi, D. G. Brinton, p. 71. It is a striking coincidence which further excavations may however destroy, that seven similar upright slabs were found at Santa Lucia, six complete ones of which exhibit individuals whose left hands bear special marks. What is more, these figures are accompanied by animals which agree with a native chronicle quoted by Dr. Otto Stoll (op. cit. p. 6). According to this some of the totems or marks of dignity worn by certain Quiché chieftains were representations of pumas, ocelots and vultures. It is, perhaps, permissible to advance the hypothesis that the personages on the slabs are representatives of the seven tribes and display their totemic devices.
I would add a couple of observations which seem to indicate that the language of the people who sculptured and set up the Santa Lucia slabs was Nahuatl. In the first case on the long slab, figured by M. Herman Strebel as No. 11, a chieftain in a recumbent position is conferring with a personage masked as a deer. The date is sculptured on this slab, recalling the Mexican method of figuring numerals and indicates that a historical event is being recorded.
The Nahuatl word for deer is mazatl and we know that the Mazahuas, or “deer-people” is the name of a native tribe which inhabits to this day the coast region of Guatemala. A town named Mazatenango=the capital or mother-city of the Mazahuas lies between the lake of Atitlan and the coast (tenan=mother of somebody; tenamitl=walled city). A small village named Mazahuat also lies farther south and inland on the Lempa river, in San Salvador. On one of the upright slabs two sculptured heads resembling dogs' heads are enclosed in circles. The Nahuatl name for dog is itzcuintl; and a town of the same name, corrupted to Escuintla, lies between the latitude of Amatitlan and the coast of Guatemala, at about the same distance inland as the town of Maza-tenango. As both places were within easy reach from Santa Lucia, it seems possible that the slabs may refer to some conquest or agreement made with the “deer and dog people.” At all events the agreement is worth noting as a hint for future research.
Leon y Gama advanced the opinion that the stone, supplemented by a gnomon, served as a solar clock or dial, to mark the hours of the days and the seasons, etc. He added that the stone may have served further purposes than those he enumerated and hints that it may have also recorded lunar periods. This distinguished scholar concludes by acknowledging that the ancient Mexicans possessed enlightened knowledge of the movements of the principal planets and methods of observing them, in order to divide time for the purposes of civil and religious government (Description de las dos Piedras. Mexico, 1852, p. 110).
The late Doctor Philip Valentini, in a learned discourse on the Calendar-stone, read at New York in 1878, expressed his view that it contained a complete and plastic representation of the division of time employed in ancient Mexico.
The distinguished Mexican scholar, Señor Alfredo Chavero, has published the most elaborate treatise which has been written on the subject and discusses the views of Gama and Valentini with much erudition. Referring the reader to his publications in the Annals of the National Museum of Mexico I shall but mention his views that the four symbols, contained in the quadruplicate central figure, record four epochs of the native cosmogony, that the central head is an image of the sun and that the monument itself is a votive tablet which was erected to the Sun in historical time, two conclusions to which I cannot subscribe. It is impossible to discuss fully the valuable publications of Señores Troncoso and Chavero in these cursive remarks, but I shall do so on another occasion. Meanwhile there is one point upon which both of these authorities agree, namely, in admitting the possible connection between the civilization of Mexico and Peru and in recognizing that various ancient people of America had the nahui-ollin in common. A passage in Señor Chavero's work claims moreover special mention, as it contains his supposition that the sign nahui-ollin may have symbolized not only the four movements of the sun, but also those of the moon, which the writer seems to regard as the nocturnal or dark sun. I am quite ready to agree with the above authorities on some of the points mentioned, conflicting as their views appear to be at first sight. Inasmuch as I regard the monument as the image of a plan or theoretical scheme which colored and influenced all native thought, I hail any recognition made by other students of its all-pervading presence in the Calendar and in the cosmogony of the ancient Mexicans. On the other hand I maintain a view which materially differs from those of previous writers, namely, that the entire plan was originally based on the primitive observation of Polaris and in the conception of a stable centre: the seat of a power extending over the Four Quarters and the Above and Below.
An analytical study of the Babylonian and Assyrian divinities enumerated in Professor Jastrow's hand-book enables us to detect some of the natural associations of ideas that influenced the formation of one artificial theological system after another, all springing from a single root.