NEW WORLD.

The ancient Mexican name for the fire-drill = mamalhuaztli, and that for

spinning-wheel=malacatl, are both derived from the verb malacachoa=to

whirl, turn or drill. At the time of the Spanish invasion (A.D. 1519) the

Mexican priesthood lit the sacred fire of the altar by an extremely

primitive method of employing the fire-drill: by holding it tightly

between the palms of both hands and rapidly rubbing them alternately

forward and backward.

The Codices contain numberless pictures representing a priest, in the act

of kindling fire by inserting the drill in a simple wooden beam, usually

exhibiting several small holes or sockets. On the other hand the Borgian

Codex, which has recently been placed within general reach by the

generosity of the Duc de Loubat, shows us two elaborate representations of

the great ceremony of kindling the holy fire in a large circular socket,

on the body of a woman which, in all cases is combined with the image of

an alligator (see p. 91). In another Codex the alligator alone supports

the socket. The smaller of these representations is reproduced in fig. 29,

and on pp. 93-97 this image is discussed as well as the remarkable stone

fire altars in human form, of which one has been unearthed near the city

of Mexico, while no less than six were found at Chichen-Itza. My informant

on this point is Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay, who added that they seem to have

been invariably placed at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the

temple, the façade of which is always supported by two great columns, each

sculptured in the form of a great serpent with open jaws, the symbol

which, in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza and on the Central American

stelæ, recurs on the head-dresses of the rulers termed “Divine serpents,”

or “divine four in One.”

Postponing comment upon the curious analogy between the stone fire altars

in human form, of the Mayas and Mexicans, with those of the Maghadas of

Northern India, who called themselves the Sons of Magha = the socket-block

whence fire was generated by the fire-drill, or the mother Maga, the

sacred alligator, let us examine the fire-drill god of ancient Mexico.

Reference to fig. 1 reveals that it is impossible to see these Mexican

representations, which I could supplement by others, and not be struck by

their agreement with the descriptions of the Hindu pole-star god Dhruva,

who stands on one foot, of the lame Hephaistos of Greek mythology, to

which I would add that Hewitt also mentions in his preface to vol. II the

Norse Völunde, the maimed, one-legged turner of the pole; the god called

in the Rig-Veda the Aja ekapad, or one-footed goat, who watched the

revolutions of the solar disk, and the one-legged bird of Russian

mythology, associated with a revolving house and fire-drill. In the

Mexican Codices the Mexican Tezcatlipoca, held by one foot to the centre

of the north, describes a circle around this. His foot evidently

constitutes the fire-drill, which, inserted in the socket, causes smoke,

also rain and a serpent to issue from it (see 5 and 6). One figure,

representing one leg only in the fire-socket, and a head, exhibiting a

small, smoking fire-socket, appears, in the light of comparative research,

as a cursive method of representing the fire-drill god, universally

associated with Ursa Major.

It is remarkable that, in one case water and in another smoke, indicating

fire, issues from the socket of Tezcatlipoca’s fire-drill, and that,

opposite to the picture in the Borgian Codex, representing the kindling of

fire on the fire-altar, we have the image of a pool of water from which

four figures spring toward the cardinal points (see fig. 29).

It is only after recognizing that, like the people of the Old World, the

Mexicans associated with the fire-drill and socket not only the

distribution of fire and heat, but also of water, that we also fully grasp

the symbolism of the symbol of the “Black or Night Sun,” from the “Life of

the Indians,” which is but one of many simple forms exhibiting main

features which recur on the highly elaborated Mexican stone of the Great

Plan (fig. 73_b_). When placed in juxtaposition the undoubted resemblance

between the Babylonian image of Shamash and the Mexican image, as well as

the deep-seated identity of these two quadruplicate symbols stands out

clearly: in the Babylonian, wavy lines emanating from the centre convey

the idea of some fluid essence. In the Mexican, instead of the wavy lines,

the conventional representation of a drop of water is depicted—the idea in

both cases being obviously identical and agreeing with the primeval

universal conception of heat or fire, and water emanating from a common

source, and flowing to the cardinal points. In both cases an axle or

socket is represented, and it is instructive to study the different ways

in which the symbol recurs in the Mexican Codices.

[Illustration.]

Figure 73.

Referring back to fig. 1, 1, reproduced from the Codex Borgia, we see the

axle with rays issuing from a circular band of water. A receptacle filled

with water occupies the centre and contains a tecpatl, the symbol of the

north, the same associated with the fire-drill god in the next figure. In

fig. 1, 4, the central fountain is surrounded, as in many instances, by

stars which connect it with the nocturnal heaven, and it contains a

rabbit=tochtli, the rebus figure employed to express the word octli, by

which the rain was designated as “earth wine” (see pp. 95 and 185).

As I write, I have before me a whole series of painted representations

from the Codices of what has heretofore been misinterpreted as images of

the diurnal sun. In some of these the open centre is painted blue or

green, in others it is filled by a heart from which flows, in some cases,

a stream of blood, the essence of life. In several instances a tree with

four main branches grows from the centre.(148) In one case the tree grows

from a pool and holds in its branches the image of the axle, in the centre

of which, as in the Humboldt Tablet preserved at the Berlin Museum, a

figure is seated. The centres of others exhibit the head of a divinity

painted red, a single eye, or the ollin. All examples establish the fact

that the Mexican “axle of the North” represented fire and water emanating

from a single source. In notable examples, where the axle is carved in

stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit

a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the

remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is

carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols

of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the

figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is

situated. An analogous but shallow depression occurs in the great circular

monument, the Conquest Stone of Mexico (see p. 259), around which

Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed fire-drill god, is represented sixteen times,

each time in the act of receiving the enforced homage of the chief or

chieftainess of a different locality.

The above monuments, as well as a rudely-carved representation of the

“sun” recently discovered and unearthed by Dr. Ed. Seler, lying on a

substructure of stones in the centre of an open space, presumably a market

place, definitely proves that the design was intended to be placed in a

horizontal position. This intention has already been noted in the case of

the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico (fig. 56), on which the rays and

intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the

central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of

the divine Twain.

A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient

Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as

far as is known, employed no means of extracting oil or juice or of

grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process,(149) come to employ as a

sacred symbol, the axle or “mill-stone” which, in India, had been adopted

as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the

fire-drill and the oil-press?

The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was associated in

Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the

native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular

stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards

described as a “stone wheel,” is termed in the Nahuatl text as a

“te-malacatl” _i. e._ a “stone whorl.” Further evidence of the close

association of such “stone whorls” with thread or cord, the product of

spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was

attached by one foot to the open centre of the “stone whorl” and

circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the

sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs

placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the

Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was

associated with the cosmical axle, or disk.

It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a

common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been

suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and

the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question

whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious

symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with

the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the

combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the Assyrian-Babylonian

image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of

beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did

not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot,

oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any

conclusions or conjectures on this point, however, a number of other

questions must be investigated. One fact, however, stands out quite

clearly: Whereas in figure 73, _b_, we have the rudimentary form of the

quadruplicate symbol, closely resembling that which was already ancient

and almost obsolete in Babylonia in the ninth century B.C. and pertained

to a cult of Shamash, the North and Heaven, which had flourished in that

country about 1850 B.C., the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico represents the

highly advanced development and elaboration of the identical cult, as

actually established there until the year 1519 of our era.

Pausing here and looking back upon the foregoing summary of the universal

spread of identical forms of social organization and of rituals suggested

by the use of the fire-drill, in association with a primitive pole-star

cult, there are a few distinct and unrelated points which claim special

attention: First of all, the identity in the form of the fire-altar and

the cult of the fire-socket, among the Maghas and Nahushas of India and

the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico. Secondly, the striking

resemblance of plan and numerical scheme which unquestionably existed

between the ideal “divine polities,” recorded by Plato, and the states

which actually existed, of ancient Peru and Mexico. It is impossible to

read Plato’s scheme of an all-pervading division into 12, and his plan for

the laying out of the capital and state and not to recognize the fact

that, in Peru, as set forth on pp. 133-149 of the present work, these

identical principles were actually carried out by the alien Incas who, in

comparatively modern times, collected the natives together and organized

them into a settled community. Thirdly, the undeniable fact that the

numerical scheme of the Maya and Mexican Calendar and state-organization

is identical with that adopted by Constantine, in establishing New Rome.

Postponing a closer examination of these points until further on, let us

now continue our comparative review.

The universal spread of the identical scheme of organization, vouched for

by documentary evidence, is further demonstrated by the results of

archaeological and historical research and a comparative study of ancient

symbolism. Thus it is impossible not to admit the striking and deep-seated

analogy between the Assyrian four-fold division of city and state, the

title “lord of the four regions” and the image of Shamash, the

“four-spoked wheel;” the Indian, Egyptian and Grecian philosophical

conceptions of four elements, culminating in Plato’s Cosmos and Theos (an

entity, spherical in shape, incorporating four elements) and, for

instance, the quadruplicate symbol carved in the centre of the Mexican

Cosmical Tablet, which exhibits the symbols of the same four elements

embodied in a single symbol, representing the supreme power, who is thus

proven to have been conceived by the Mexicans, as well as by the

Peruvians, as “the Air, Earth, Fire and Water in One,” or the source of

the four elements.(150)

When it is likewise considered that the Mexicans employed the divine

title, “four times lord,” that the Maya title “Kukulcan,” signifies the

“Divine Four,” that the ancient map of Mayapan proves that, like the

Kushite confederacy, and the kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt and Peru, it was a

“Four provinces in One” or a “four-fold state,” the identity of the

principles underlying the archaic civilizations of the Old and New World

becomes more and more apparent. It likewise becomes evident that in each

of these countries the significance and symbolism of the archaic

cross-symbol and swastika must have been identical, and that, like the

pyramid (the form of which, in the ancient Greek alphabet, is given to the

letter delta which expresses, numerically, four, a quatuor, or 4,000) and

the square stone altar or column, it figured the Four in One, the mystic

Five or the Four and all-embracing One. The following array of facts

demonstrates further the universal association of archaic cross-symbolism

with the conception of an all-embracing, stable, central power.

A striking demonstration of this is furnished by the diagonal cross,

employed as a Chinese character, to express the word wū=five, just as it

is used, in Egyptian hieratic script, to express the syllables uu, un or

ur (see fig. 60). Sometimes, in Chinese, a horizontal line is drawn above

the cross and another beneath it, and John Chalmers informs us that,

according to the Shoh Wan, this “full form means the five elements between

heaven and earth, the upper line being heaven and the lower earth.” The

sign thus obviously constituted an image of the Cosmos, the 5+2=heaven and

earth, thus furnishing the familiar seven directions in space, the chief

and synopsis of which is the sacred Centre.

The association, in ancient America, of the cross-shape with central

stable power, has already been discussed in the case of the Copan

swastika, p. 222. At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelæ

found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable

discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum

Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking

confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. 220, namely, that the

personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelæ, were high-priest

rulers, who bore the title “Divine Four,” and were “rulers of the four

regions.”

Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon’s report, published in vol. I, no. I,

of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that,

beneath several stelæ examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous

vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre

of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming

the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault

is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the

branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of

pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would

appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan

performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of

these artificially cosmical centres.

What seems quite clear is that the subterraneous vault constituted a

sacred cosmical chamber and that the stelæ were memorial stones, which

probably represented the image of a lord, and the record of his fixed term

of office which formed a period or era of the native calendar (see p.

221). The stela which formed the stable, visible centre of the hidden

substructure may also have been employed as a gnomon during some period of

time, and in the monument the initiated must undoubtedly have recognized

the underlying cosmical conceptions, and regarded it as a highly developed

form or variant of the archaic cross, the primitive record of a year. It

is remarkable how closely analogous are the Central American stelæ with

their hidden cruciform vaults, to the conception of the Egyptian “star of

Horus” explained by Hewitt as the meridian pole raised in the centre of a

cross denoting the four quarters.

The most striking evidence of a close affinity between the ancient Central

American ah-men, or master-masons, who built cruciform windows in the

walls of temples and designed the cruciform vaults under the stelæ at

Copan and Quirigua, and the amanteca or tolteca, the master-architects and

builders of Mitla, Mexico, is furnished by Mr. M. H. Saville’s recent

excavation of three remarkable subterraneous, cruciform chambers, the

largest of which is situated on the summit of a high hill near Mitla. The

interior of the latter is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs,

like those on the exterior of the Mitla palace. The extreme length from

east to west is 9m. 71cm., from north to south 8m. 18cm., and its roof was

composed of large flat stones. The entrance to this and the other

cruciform vaults is situated at the extremity of the western arm, which in

the case described was longer than the other arms.

The most remarkable example of such a cruciform crypt is, however, that

situated beneath the palace of Mitla, which has been figured by Dupaix in

Lord Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities, vol. IX. This vault is also built

of the shape of a so-called “Greek” cross, but in its centre stands a

large circular stone column reaching from floor to ceiling. It is

impossible not to recognize the symbolism of this pillar situated in the

centre of a structure, the form of which symbolizes the Four Quarters and

the fundamental identity of the column occupying the centre of the Mitla

chamber and the Copan stelæ standing above the centre of the hidden

cruciform vault. Details associated with the pillar which stood in the

Great Temple of Mexico (p. 53), and the “pedestal” erected on the hill of

justice at Guatemala (p. 79) definitely show that, in ancient America, the

column was also associated with star-cult, with the administration of

justice and central celestial and terrestrial government. Investigation

has shown that precisely the same ideas were associated with the circular,

square or octagonal columns of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Japan, where they

either constituted the images of the central supreme divinity, formed the

support for the statues of earthly “divine” rulers, or marked the centres

of the cosmos or state, bearing inscriptions of the sacred laws as in

Athens, or of the distances to all points of the empire, viz. the Roman

Milliarum Aureum.

It is remarkable to find that, whereas in ancient Byzantium the centre of

the city had been marked by a column surmounted by a colossal statue of

Apollo, a pillar or pole god, Constantine erected a “spacious edifice,

from the centre of which all roads of the empire were measured.”

Considering that, at the time when this edifice was built, the ancient

quadruplicate plan had been revised and the empire of New Rome had been

divided into four parts by Constantine, it seems reasonable to infer that

the form of the great edifice which marked the territorial centre of the

new empire bore the impress of the cruciform plan, and that the shape of

the cross should have been adopted throughout the empire, in edifices

marking central consecrated places. How much of the true spirit of the

Christian ideal of universal brotherhood entered into the constitution of

Constantine’s New Rome it is impossible to conjecture. Niebuhr denies that

Constantine was a Christian, records that he was only baptized shortly

before his death, and states that the religion of Constantine “must have

been a strange compound indeed, something like the amulet recently

discovered at Rome, which is an example of that curious mixture of

Judaism, Christianity and Paganism which we so frequently meet with from

about the beginning of the third century.”(151)

In an extremely interesting monograph “On the origin of the cruciform plan

of the mediæval Cathedral,” by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M.

Wheelwright, published in the “Transactions of the Boston Society of

Architects, 1891,” I find the significant fact that what is now the little

church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the

time of Constantine.

The same monograph teaches that “de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of

Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date

previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were

celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the

congregation assembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are

also found in the catacombs. In the fifth or sixth century cruciform

buildings became in the East, and _wherever Byzantine influence was

potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings

commemorative of holy places_. These types seem to have been given, by

Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their

construction and to have appeared to them _as monuments requiring a

symbolical expression of plan_, while they evidently _did not consider

such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general

congregations_, which, although of types without distinct association with

the Christian faith, were held, for several centuries, to be sufficiently

well adapted to purposes of Christian worship without material change from

their ancient form [that of the Roman Basilica].”

Referring the reader to Mr. Wheelwright’s monograph for interesting data

concerning the Byzantine influence discernible in the early types of

Christian churches of cruciform plan erected in northern Italy and Europe,

I merely note here that in St. Sophia, founded by Constantine, and

completed by Justinian, “the load of the dome is thrown on four great

piers disposed at either corner of a square. These great piers, with the

corresponding buttresses of the outer wall, suggest a possible symbolical

intent in the arrangement ... otherwise the cruciform plan here suggested

is expressed neither externally nor internally.” I venture to suggest that

in St. Sophia, “Holy Eternal Wisdom,” as in the case of the Pantheon, the

dominant idea may have been the all-embracing unity, but that, as the

number four was identified with “wisdom and justice” by the widespread

Pythagorean philosophy, that number must have seemed, to the initiated, to

pervade the entire structure. In the case of the Church of the Nativity at

Bethlehem, where it was Justinian’s intention to mark a sacred locality,

we find the cruciform plan clearly carried out. “The church of St. Simeon

Stylite at Kelat Seman Syria, built about A.D. 500, is a most interesting

example of a cruciform church, marking a sacred spot [and associated with

a sacred column].”

“The church of the seventh century built at Sichem, over the well of the

Samaritan, shows a distribution of plan similar to that of S. Simeon

Stylite, the holy object being at the crossing.... There are existing at

St. Wandrille and at Querqueville in Normandy, two (cruciform) triapsidal

churches of a date prior to the Norman conquest ... a well preserved

four-apsed tomb chapel exists at Montmajour near Arles, built in 1019; the

detail and plan of which point to a Syrian prototype and resembles two

buildings of an early date now existing in Dalmatia.” The use of the

cruciform type of church, anterior to the great revival of purely

Christian religious architecture in the thirteenth century, was confined

to Picardy and the Rhenish provinces, fine churches of this type being at

Cologne, Bonn, Marburg, etc.

It is interesting to recall that the building of sacred structures is

attributed to “secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative

masons which existed during the middle ages, and possessed grades of

officers and secret signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they

could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.” To this day, in

some parts of Germany and Bohemia, the swastika is the sign or mark of the

stone-mason’s guild which has survived from the mediæval times. In the

organized bands of masons whose mark was the swastika and who introduced

Eastern cosmical symbolism into Europe and gradually developed, upon this

basis, a purely Christian form of architecture, we may perhaps see the

descendants of those ancient builders who, filled with the conception of

the sacred Central power, the Four Quarters, the Above and Below, planned

the square, seven-stoned zikkurats of Babylonia-Assyria, the pyramids,

obelisks and sphinxes of Egypt, the columns and cruciform tombs and

sanctuaries of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, the cruciform temples and the

topes of India and the domes of the Pantheon and St. Sophia.(152)

It would appear that these ancient builders were also the designers and

founders of cities and states. It is, for instance, known that Hippodamus,

the son of Euryphon, a Milesian, and by profession an architect, gained

celebrity in his own art by constructing the Piræus at Athens and by

improving the method of distributing streets and planning cities ... and

also wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government.

A kinship of thought undoubtedly exists between the trained builders of

cosmical structures in the Old World and the ah-men, the amantecas and

toltecas of Central America and Mexico, who also reared pyramids,

cruciform vaults, circular temples, with openings to the four quarters

(see fig. 30, p. 97), altars and pillars, and in their temples wrought, in

stone, endless variations of the great human theme: the sacred central,

stable power, the four quarters and elements, and the heaven and earth

with the dualities of Nature, and likewise instituted an artificial scheme

of social organization, a calendar and religious rites based on these same

fundamental principles, which can be traced back to primitive pole-star

worship. It has been of utmost interest to me, as I was approaching the

end of the present investigation, to become acquainted with Hewitt’s work

and his view that it was the seafaring Turanians, originally a northern

race, the worshippers of Tur=the pole, who claimed descent from the seven

stars of Nāgash, the serpent=Ursa Major, and, from India, extended their

trade and carried their form of social organization and religious cult

first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where

they were known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians.

The subjoined detached passages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not

only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly

afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of

pole-star worshippers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who,

according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe

but also to America.(153) Hewitt bases the latter assertion upon the

identity be perceived “between Akkadian and American mythological

traditions.”

As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss

here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express

regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias,

related to the Zuñis), as “Mexican” (see vol. II, p. 243, etc.), a term

which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the

truly Mexican, “teo-cipactli” as a “fish-god” is unfortunate, as

numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that cipactli

signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced

by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an

identity of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only

authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of

pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any

desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake of gaining

information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate

some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt’s further

assertion that “the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants

of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators

known by the Greeks as the Phœnicians ... and who continued in their new

land, America, the worship of the rain god, to whom, as their fathers in

central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross” (Hewitt, p. 492).

“The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-worshippers

who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who

called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia,

as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the

mother-goddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the

fire-drill; who is also worshipped as the mother Maga under the form of

the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem.” In Essay VIII

Hewitt states that these “sons of the great witch-mother Maga” lived in

Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the “city

of the Magnetes” referred to by Plato as “the mother of laws.” The word

mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name

Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. II, p. 54).

The Maya and Mexican fire altars and sockets and their association

with the earth-mother and alligator in the native Codices has been

discussed. The Mexican day-sign cipactli figures an alligator and

is associated with a female deity. The alligator altar at Copan,

is described on p. 228. Were it not for limit of space additional

testimony could be cited here, proving that in Mexico the

alligator was associated with the mother of the race, the

fire-socket, and was a tribal totem.

“As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the

building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of

towns.... They adored the god of the twirling or churning fire-drill....

They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and

thunder god and star-god who guides the stars in their courses and rules

the beginning of the year” (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian “Ukko

is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this

is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly

mountain” (vol. II, p. 155).

Compare Ku in Maya list, appendix III, also Tezcatli-poca or

puca=Mexican fire-drill god, Ursa Major.

“They worshipped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation

of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of

Naga=the Nahushas. They worshipped the Pleiades=the mother stars....”

The Nahuas traced ancestry to seven stars of Ursa Major and began

their religious year at the culmination of the Pleiades at

midnight.

“The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phœnicians ... the red men,

who worshipped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North,

Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and

Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the

Akkadians, Egyptians and Kushites.... They reverenced the sacred ‘shu’

stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as

the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain

stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the

central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to

have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to

have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the

world ... as the sacred Shu stone.”

It should be added here that the Hittite sign for Ishtar was a triangle

enclosing a stone: “the mountain enclosing the stone of life.”

About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(_cf._ Kukul) under a great chief or

lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. 206). In Mexico the

name for turquoise is xiuitl and the god of fire is named

Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is

associated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-goddess. The

spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol

of generation.

“Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uræus serpent as a sign of

royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so

widely distant from one another as India and Egypt....”

We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200),

that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief

survived in Phœnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found

amongst the Semites. “Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an

animal, plant or heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the

serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and

Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the

Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of

Nahash, ‘or the serpent,’ the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after

the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest

and decimation of the latter.”

The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates

the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open

serpent’s jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured

on the Central American stelæ and bas-reliefs. The existence of

totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the

arbitrary method by which it was established by the Incas of Peru,

when they founded the new colony, has been described.

“... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in

Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake

Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the

Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the

Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the

encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it

was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the

heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called

the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling

air-god who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the

Abyss, the Assyrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake

did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the

magical rain-pole, called the god Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in

front of every house ...” (p. 194). “They are the Canaanites, or dwellers

in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the

race of Achæans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent,

the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which

surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the gods”

(Hewitt, p. 175).

Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the

Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. 56), whose bodies may be seen to

consist of a repetition of the conventional sign for tlalli=land,

consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses

a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These

girdling serpents, whose heads unite, being directly associated

with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a

curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as

springing from the sign Acatl (see p. 257).

On the other hand, the heavenly “feathered serpent” of Mexico and

Yucatan is distinctly associated with the air and the circle; its

conception curiously coinciding with that of the “girdling

air-god” mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls

enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered

with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in

Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured

serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign

Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet,

but also on the allegorical figure of the “Divine Serpent,” which

may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake

tribe, associated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their

name. The undeniable association, in Mexico, of the serpent with

Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the “sons of Achis, the

serpent”=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.

In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man,

the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned “... his people had

replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple,

the home and symbol of the creating god, who had been the pillar of the

house.... But in their eyes the father-god was not the central pillar but

the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the

gates of god.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The

doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas

were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts—the

pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of

religious festivals.”

Twin pillars, sculptured in the form of great serpents, whose

names signify twinship, support the entrances to the ancient

temples of Yucatan, Central America, and have been found on the

site of the Great Temple of Mexico. The Mexican and Maya accounts

of the culture hero Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan state that he and his

followers were “great necromancers” and magicians and that they

taught handicrafts, metallurgy, and instituted calendar, social

organization and ritual. A personal, close examination of a large

number of old Peruvian and Mexican as well as Coptic textile

fabrics, has convinced me moreover of their identity of technique.

“The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human

sacrifices in order to obtain rain” (Hewitt).

“The Phœnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and

breasts to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices were made, to Moloch or

Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a

sacrifice and the victim’s cries were drowned by the noise of drums and

flutes” (Sayce).

The human sacrifices of Mexico are familiar to all. The native dog

and various kinds of birds were sacrificed. The Mexican priests,

named papas, wore long hair, practised asceticism, gashed their

breasts, arms and legs and pierced their ears and tongues. On the

Palenque bas-reliefs, priests with long hair are sculptured. The

human sacrifices of Mexico and those of Egypt, Phœnicia and

Assyria, described by Sayce and Hewitt (pp. 275 and 348), are

closely alike. See also Hewitt’s account of the blood brotherhood

made between the sacrificer and the land on which the blood is

poured (p. 196), and the Chichimec blood sacrifice described in

the present work, p. 66.

The foregoing are a few noteworthy analogies which have impressed

themselves upon me during the present course of investigation, in addition

to the many undeniable and unsuspected evidences I have found, of an

identity of star-cult, ritual and social organization in Old and New World

civilizations.

It will be seen that the outcome of my researches corroborates the

opinions differently expressed by a long line of eminent investigators,

who have been constantly discovering and pointing out undeniable

similarities and identities between the civilizations of both hemispheres.

It seems to me that an accumulation of evidence now forces us to face and

thoroughly investigate the possibility that, from remote antiquity, our

continent and its inhabitants were known to the seafarers of the Old

World, to whose agency the spread of similar forms of cult and

civilization in the New World is to be assigned.

While those who uphold the autochthony of the native civilization may

regard such identities as accidental, those who are willing to admit the

possibility that the Phœnicians, the red men of antiquity, whose land was

Syria, navigating by the pole-star, may have reached America, will

doubtlessly dwell upon the unquestionable fact that the most ancient

traces of organized and settled communities actually exist along the coast

swept by the equatorial currents. A glance at an ordinary chart exhibiting

the ocean currents and trade winds shows that vessels sailing southward

from the Canary Islands and caught in the north African current, might, at

a certain point, enter the north equatorial current flowing towards the

coast of America. Further southward still, off the coast of Guinea, the

current bearing this name meets the main equatorial current which sweeps

along the coast of Honduras and Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico.

What is more, ancient well-known tradition asserts that the culture-hero

Kukulcan-Quetzalcoatl, with his followers, came to Mexico from the East

(_via_ Yucatan) and told the natives of their distant home, named

Tlapallan and Huehue tlapallan which, translated, mean “the red land” and

“the great ancient red land.” Native American tradition unquestionably and

unanimously ascribes to single individuals of aged and venerable aspect,

or leaders of small bands of men and women of an alien race, the peaceable

introduction of a definite plan of civilization, identical in its elements

with that known to have existed in India, Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria from

time immemorial, and said to have been spread to these countries by the

Phœnicians.

Native tradition, therefore, is seen unanimously to controvert the

independent development of the cosmical schemes of government and most

advanced forms of civilization which prevailed in America at the Columbian

period. This, of course, in no wise excludes the existence of purely

native people, with a certain degree of civilization, more rudimentary in

form, founded on impressive natural phenomena, which the natives had

always been in a position to observe for themselves.

In order to obtain an insight into conditions which might have determined

and affected maritime intercourse with distant America, let us now make a

rapid survey of the history of the ancient civilizations of the Old World.

This reveals, in the first case, the undeniable fact (one of deepest

significance in the light of the present investigation) that the period of

a general stirring of men’s minds, in countries where pole-star worship

had prevailed from time immemorial, exactly coincides with the period to

which I alluded on p. 43, during which there ceased to be a brilliantly

conspicuous and perfectly immovable pole-star in the northern heavens.

From Mr. Hinckley Allen’s work (p. 454), I have since learned that

astronomers have closely determined this period, and that Miss Clerke

writes of this: “The entire millennium before the Christian era may count

for an interregnum as regards pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to

exercise that office; and Alruccabah had not yet assumed it.” Prof. A. H.

Sayce tells us that the Phœnician pilots steered by the pole-star in

remotest antiquity, and it is a matter of history that “Pytheas of

Massilia, the bold navigator (died about 285 B.C.), showed the Greeks that

the pole-star was not at the pole itself.” Previous to that date, however,

the astronomer-priests must have noted the change in the heavens. On

descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers, whose entire religion and

civilization were based on the idea of fixity and rotation, the

unaccountable change in the order of the universe must indeed have

produced a deep impression. Under such conditions it seems but natural

that a great awakening of doubt and speculation should take place, that

worship should be transferred from stars known to be subject to change, to

the unseen, incomprehensible but ever-present eternal power which ruled

the universe.

Let us examine some of the records of the great intellectual movement that

swept at one time, like a wave, over the ancient centres of civilization.

The eighth, seventh and sixth centuries before our era are marked by the

growth of the Ionian philosophy which, as Huxley tells us, “was but one of

many results of the stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the

Aryan-Semitic population of Western Asia. The conditions of the general

awakening were doubtless manifold, but there is one which modern research

has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of extremely

ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the Euphrates and

the Nile.... The Ionian intellectual movement is only one of the several

sporadic indications of some powerful mental ferment over the whole of the

area comprised between the Ægean and Northern Hindustan....”(154)

Professor Schroeder’s statement that, “in the seventh century B.C., the

idea of four, _i. e._ five elements, spread in India,” is particularly

interesting in connection with the date assigned to the birth of the

Ionian intellectual movement. Of Pythagoras it is related that, like

Solon, “he had visited Egypt, also Phœnicia and Babylon, then Chaldean and

independent, and founded a brotherhood originally brought together by a

religious influence, with observances approaching to monastic peculiarity,

and working in a direction at once religious, political and scientific.”

According to the learned translator of Cicero’s first Tusculan

disputation(155) “it is generally accepted that Pherecydes of Syros (one

of the Cyclades islands in the Ægean sea) was the teacher of Pythagoras.

Pherecydes, who flourished about B.C. 544 is said to have derived his

knowledge from the secret books of the Phœnicians and from travels of

inquiry in Egypt.” Through Philolaus (see Grote IV, p. 395, note 2),

Pythagorean science was made known to Plato, whose views are quoted on p.

449. Grote states that, about 300 B.C., the Pythagorean philosophy nearly

died out. It is a curious fact that this date coincides, approximately,

with the destruction of Tyre (Tsar, in Phœnician,=the rock), the last

stronghold of the Phœnicians, “which had defied Assyrian, Babylonian and

Persian but at last fell,” according to Prof. A. H. Sayce, “in July, B.C.

332, before the Greek conqueror Alexander. Thirty thousand of its citizens

were sold in slavery, thousands of others massacred and crucified and the

wealth of the richest and most luxurious city of the world became the prey

of an exasperated army. Its trade was inherited by its neighbor Sidon”

(_op. cit._ p. 194). It is obvious that, at this period, bands of

fugitives may well have taken refuge in traders’ ships and sought safety

in flight to distant regions, where they might establish themselves and

found colonies on the pattern of Tyre or of Carthage which, in ancient

times had also been founded by fugitives and been named “the new city,”

Karthakhadasha (Sayce). While the great historical events which marked the

fourth century B.C. seem to have arrested the spread of Pythagorean

philosophy, we find that, according to Grote, “in the time of Cicero, two

centuries later, the orientalizing tendency, beginning to spread over the

Grecian and Roman world, caused it to be again revived, with little or

none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive

religious and imaginative fanaticism.... It was taken up anew by the pagan

world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism,

passing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted other more positive and

masculine systems of pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and revival of

Christianity” (_op. cit._ IV, 398). Neo-Platonism reached its height under

its chief Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) who sought to reconcile the Platonic and

Aristotelian systems with Oriental theosophy. His pantheistic and eclectic

school was the last product of the Greek philosophy.(156)

It is, at all events, remarkable, that the date tradition assigns to the

presence of Kukulcan in Yucatan and the foundation of the quadruplicate

state of Mayapan coincides with the dying out, in Europe, of pagan

philosophy, one of the features of which had been the elaboration of ideal

forms of government based on a numerical and cosmical scheme, the elements

of which had apparently been spread by the Phœnicians. In Copan and

Quirigua we find remnants of long-established, peaceable communities

revealing no trace of war-like weapons, and the memorial stelæ of whose

rulers stand above hidden cruciform vaults, while carved personages are

represented as seated in the centre of ornate crosses. In Yucatan, through

which land the foreign civilization seems to have reached the plateau of

Mexico, there are significant traces of an ancient city, named Zilan,

situated on the Atlantic coast; proofs that buildings of cosmical forms

were erected; that the state of Mayapan was laid out on the familiar

cosmical plan; that repeated migrations took place, and that, from time

immemorial, a calendar, on the same numerical basis as that of Mexico, had

been in use. The great state of Mayapan, where a remarkable stone cross

was found at Cozumel by the Spaniards, is shown to have been figured as a

circle within a circle, the whole divided into four parts by cross-lines.

Here, as in Chiapas and Mexico, all divisions of government, population

and time are organized on a numerical scheme representing the combination

of 4×5=20 _i. e_. an entire finger and toe count, “a whole man,” with the

13 directions in space. The multiplication of 13 and 20 results in a unit

of 260 which, as a cycle of time, represents the complete set of all

harmonious combinations of man the miniature image of the living state,

with the thirteen directions of space in the all-embracing Cosmos,

composed of four primary elements. In consonance with this we find the

existence of 20 (or 4×5) lords, whose names correspond to those of the 4

chief and 16 minor day-signs of the calendar, and of a lord by election,

whose name signifies the thirteen divisions or parts, and who constituted

a microcosmos, a Four in One. In regular rotation the 20 lords, consisting

of 4 chief and 4×4=16=minor rulers fulfilled duties towards the supreme

representative who resided in the capital, while they respectively lived

in four provinces, the population of which was subdivided into four tribes

each of the 20 divisions of the state being again divided into 13 parts.

In a cosmical state like this in which each individual not only felt

himself to be a unit and a microcosmos, but also an indispensable part of

a living organism, under the form of which the state was symbolized, its

inhabitants, leading lives regulated by a calendar based on the phenomenon

of circumpolar rotation, under a chief ruler entitled the “Four in One,”

assisted by four sub-rulers, must indeed have felt that they “lived, moved

and had their being” in the Teotl or Theos, imagined as the embodiment of

the four elements. In this connection it is interesting to learn that “the

animal” itself, of Plato, is considered by eminent authorities to have

been the tetrad.

In Zuñi, where, at the present day, each individual feels himself

identified with some part of the body of a quadruped, his clan totem, the

conception of the state as “a living animal,” is an actual reality. Their

pueblo moreover represents a 6+1=7, or a “seven in one,” the miniature

counterpart of the far distant Ooraon village of Chota Nagpore and of the

ancient archaic kingdoms of India, Persia, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome,

etc. Anciently the Zuñis called themselves the Ashiwi, a name remarkably

like that of the Ashvins, derived from the Akkadian ash=six.

I revert again here to the following landmarks, which may perhaps furnish

a useful “working hypothesis” for future investigation. In Mexico the

pyramids of Cholula and of Teotihuacan seem to render testimony of the,

possibly consecutive, establishment of ideal states amongst tribes

“capable of subjection” by Toltecas, or “Master-Builders,” who, according

to their method, used the building of a great structure, requiring time

and united labor, as a means of organizing a new community or colony. It

may be that the period of their completion coincided with the

establishment of the Calendar system, beginning with the number one.

In my Preliminary Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System (Stockholm

1894), I demonstrated how, by reconstructing the Calendar cycles, it was

possible to determine exactly when the native system was adopted.

According to my demonstration, which has now stood unchallenged for six

years, a fresh year cycle began in 1507 A.D., with the year sign II Acatl

and the day 2 cipactli. For a cycle to be associated with the number two

it is obvious that it must have been preceded by a cycle ruled by number

one, therefore it may be safely inferred that the cycle II Acatl that

commenced in 1507 followed a cyclical period of 4×13=52×20=1840 years (p.

32). Accordingly the date when the Mexican system was instituted in the

form which existed at the time of the Conquest, may be fixed as

corresponding to the year 467 of our era.

Considering that the Calendar system was, however, but one part of the

machinery of government, was inseparable from the organization of tribes,

classes and individuals, and that its institution signified the foundation

of a state, it is remarkable to ascertain that, but 137 years previously,

Constantine, in A.D. 330, had instituted the empire of New Rome, on

precisely the same numerical basis as that of the Mexican Calendar, and

divided it into 4 parts or prefectures, each subdivided into 13, yielding

a total of 52 prefectures. Moreover, as far back as the institution of the

Kleisthenean democracy, the Greeks had been familiar with an extremely

intricate and close union of calendar and government system, such as

existed in Babylonia-Assyria and, as I have shown, in ancient Mexico.

It is certainly suggestive that the period of 137 years, which elapsed

between the establishment of New Rome on a partly revived and partly

amended or remodelled plan, and the foundation of the great democracy of

ancient Mexico at the date inferred, is unparalleled in the history of

mankind for religious persecutions, carried on in Egypt, Greece and Rome,

following upon three centuries marked by the growth and spread of

Christianity and the persecution of its followers, the destruction of

Jerusalem and the persecution of the Jews. It was in A.D. 379 that

Theodosius, the Greek, proclaimed Christianity the religion of his empire

and instituted a relentless persecution of the Arians and followers of the

ancient Egyptian religion.

Under Arcadius, Emperor of the East (A.D. 395), the Anthromorphites, who

affirmed that God was of human form, destroyed the greater number of their

opponents. Under Marcianus (A.D. 451), Silco invaded Egypt with his Nubian

followers and the Council of Chalcedon condemned the Monophysite doctrine

of Eutyches. Later, under Justinian (A.D. 527), the Monophysites separated

from the Melchites and chose their own patriarch, being afterwards called

Copts.

It is impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact that, during this period

of persecution and massacre, imminent peril of death must have forced many

a band of the priests and followers of the ancient Egyptian and other

religions to seek safety in flight. The events which took place in Egypt

between A.D. 379 and 451, culminating in Silco’s invasion, must

unquestionably have been deeply felt by the descendants of the ancient

Phœnician, Carthaginian and Grecian exiles, fugitives and mercenaries who,

during countless centuries, had founded colonies along the Libyan coast,

and pushed migration further westward along the coast line. Migrations

from these regions would doubtless have resulted in the remarkable

combination of archaic star, fire-drill and socket worship found in

Yucatan and Mexico, existing alongside of a highly developed and perfected

philosophical scheme of social organization identical, in principle, with

that which, in the Old World, constituted an ideal which was the result of

centuries of experience and active intellectual life.

The present investigation, in which I have collected more material than it

has been possible to present in this publication, brings out facts tending

to show that, originally, both hemispheres were peopled from the North,

and that, in antiquity, at intervals, an extremely limited intercourse was

kept up between the Old and New Worlds. The obvious fact that navigation

must have been seriously impeded by the interregnum of Polaris, lasting

for many centuries, would explain a prolonged isolation of America

anterior to the Christian era. Whereas the equatorial currents facilitated

the voyage to America, the same favorable conditions did not accompany

navigation in the same latitudes in a reverse direction, and this suggests

the probability that few who set out for “the hidden land,” ever returned

to the port whence they sailed. Investigation seems to reveal that

influences, emanating from the most ancient centres of Old World

civilization, reached sundered regions of America at different times, and

that they could have been carried there by a seafaring and building race

such as the Minyans, the Magas, the Phœnicians or their descendants.

If such were the case it would be reasonable to expect that, in America,

traces of words associated with the archaic set of ideas would be found,

and the same method of writing. Let us now refer with prudent reservations

as to the possibility of their being accidental, to the striking

resemblances which undoubtedly exist between certain names for God,

Heaven, North, Middle, etc., in the languages of the most ancient

civilizations of the Old World and the Maya and Nahuatl. For convenient

reference and without detailed comment, these words are presented as

Appendix III.

Too much importance must not, of course, be given to these linguistic

analogies; at the same time we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these

broken fragments of language, traceable to India, Babylonia-Assyria, Egypt

and Greece, are found, in America, clinging tenaciously to a set of

cosmical ideas and a scheme of organization identical in both hemispheres.

It has been surprising to me, for instance, to learn, by carefully

collecting facts, that whereas Professor Sayce tells us that the supreme

god of the Phœnicians was named Yeud or Ekhad, the supreme god of the

Mexican Chichimecs (literally, Red race) was named Youalli-Ehecatl, which

signifies, literally, night-air or wind. I likewise ascertained that,

whereas the word yau or yu signifies the source or origin in Chinese, is

linked to a character forming a cross and is homogeneous with Yaou Sing, a

star in Ursa Major, described as “revolving,” the Mexican name for the

pole-star god was Yaual or Yohual Tecuhtli, the lord of the circle or of

the night.

Again there is a remarkable similarity between the Mexican yaualli=circle

and the verb yoli or yuli=to resuscitate or vivify; the Chinese ui=to turn

around, and the Scandinavian yul, yeul or yol = wheel, also the festival

of the winter solstice, when nature seemed to resuscitate. Whereas the

significance of the above Mexican, Chinese and Scandinavian names, is

clear, no meaning has, to my knowledge, been attached to the Semitic name

for the supreme god, which, as Professor Sayce informs us, was pronounced

Yahu or Yaho or Yahve (see Appendix, list I).

Other striking resemblances are found between the names for handicraftsman

and master-builder in widely distant countries. Thus, in Phrygia, we have

the Daktuloi, the builders who erected monuments decorated with

cross-symbols arranged so as to form a geometrical design, such as

represented in fig. 72, 2. In Oaxaca the Toltecatl=builders and

handicraftsmen, erected the walled temple and cruciform structures at

Mitla, and decorated them with geometrical designs.

Reliable authorities teach us that “the Hittites were the northern minyan

or menyan=measurers, a building race” (Hewitt); that Aha-Mena, the first

historical ruler of Egypt, was a builder; that the name of Amun, the god

of the Ammonites, signified “the builder.” Dictionaries reveal that, in

America, Maya-speaking people designated a master builder or

handicraftsman as ah-men, or menyah which, in Nahuatl, became amanteca. In

Yucatan the name for North was Aman or Xaman; the building race of

civilizers seems to have been associated with that region, which the

Arabians named Shamaliyy. In the Babylonian-Assyrian Shamash, the Sanscrit

Brahman and the Egyptian Amen-ra, we seem to have but different forms of

the same word, which recurs in the Akkadian-Sumerian Sama, or an=the

revolving heaven (see Appendix, list).

It is to philologists that I refer the question whether the resemblances,

in sound and meaning, of certain words I have found associated, in widely

sundered countries, with the universal cosmical set of ideas, are merely

accidental or whether they furnish indication of a remote common origin or

of contact at a later period. It will interest me particularly to learn

their opinion as to the oldest forms of the words; and whether there is

really no clue to the meaning of the Hebrew Yahu and the Phœnician

Yeud-Ekhad. One is tempted to inquire whether the Chichimecan

Youalli-Ehecatl was not the same and whether this and other analogies do

not constitute evidence tending to establish that Mexico was a Phœnician

colony in which during centuries of isolation the archaic forms and

meanings of Phœnician words were preserved.

It is my hope that these lists will be carefully examined and explained by

competent authorities, to whose judgment they are respectfully submitted.

Whether they will be accounted for in one way or another, these lists will

be found to establish the existence of striking resemblances which, by

themselves, might not carry weight, but which unquestionably gain in

significance when found in conjunction with cosmical conceptions, social

organization, forms of architecture and cross-symbolism, which appear

universal.

A few words here concerning the undoubted general resemblances that exist

between the Chinese and Japanese, and Central American methods of

organization—resemblances which even extend to certain words directly

traceable to Western Asiatic influence in the case of the Eastern Asiatic

civilizations. The existence of marked differences between the Chinese and

Maya-Mexican numerical systems and determination of elements, appears to

exclude the possibility that dominating Asiatic influences could have

reached America _via_ China and Japan after the still existing,

crystallized forms of government and calendar had been established in the

latter countries. As far as I can judge, the great antiquity attributed,

by Chinese historians, to the establishment of the governmental and

cyclical schemes, still in use, appears extremely doubtful. Referring the

question to Sinologists, I venture to ask whether it does not seem

probable that the present Chinese scheme dates from the lifetime of

Lao-tze, in the sixth century B.C., a period marked, as I have pointed

out, by the growth of Ionian philosophy, one feature of which was the

invention of numerical schemes applied to “divine polities” and ideal

forms of government. Future investigation may, perhaps, prove that “the

powerful mental ferment” alluded to by Huxley, as spreading between the

eighth and ninth centuries B.C., over the whole of the area comprised

between the Ægean and North Hindustan, was caused by the growth and

diffusion of plans of ideal states, which would naturally suggest and lead

to the formation of bands of enthusiasts, who would set out in search of

districts where they could carry out their principles and ideals.

Personally, I am strongly inclined to assign the origin of the Chinese and

the Mexican schemes, which are identical in principle, to the same source,

and to believe that they were carried in opposite directions, at different

periods, by seafarers and colonists, animated by the same purpose.

Favorably established in distant regions, both grew and flourished during

centuries, constituting analogous examples of an immense, submissive,

native population living under a highly perfected, artificial, numerical,

scheme of religious government, preserved intact and enforced by a ruling

caste, who possessed superior knowledge and claimed divine descent.

It is, of course, to Chinese and Japanese scholars and to archaeologists,

some of whom constitute the able staff of the Jesup Expedition, who are

investigating the question of Asiatic contact, that I look for further

information and enlightenment as to prehistoric contact between China and

America.(157)

The foregoing investigation seems to have shown that in all countries

alike, at one period or other, the cross-symbol or swastika expressed

absolutely the same meaning. Primarily the record of a year, which

suggested the division of the heaven into four parts, it had come to

signify the establishment of communal life on a basis of fixed law, order

and harmony. Like the number four itself which, in Pythagorean philosophy,

is identified with wisdom and justice “because it is the first square

number, the product of equals,” the cruciform symbols have been the

emblems of justice, equality and brotherhood.

From the dawn of human history, the cross, therefore, appears to have

expressed a plan as simple as it was noble and great, which consisted in

peaceably uniting men, on principles of good-will, peace, equity, equality

and mutual help, of instituting and organizing communal life, and of

regulating its activity in accord with the immutable laws which govern the

movements of celestial bodies, causing the circumpolar constellations to

assume opposite positions, forming the sign of the cross, and marking

seasons, days and years, all testifying to the existence of a single,

all-ruling, all-pervading, stable and eternal central power, who thus

controlled not only the heavens but, by a human representative, the

earthly kingdom, laid out on the celestial plan.

Considering that no less an authority than St. Augustine has asserted

“that which is now called the Christian religion existed among the

ancients, and in fact was with the human race from the beginning,” it is

permissible to ask whether the above scheme does not strikingly

substantiate his dictum, afford a deep view under the surface of

accumulated dogma and a perception of the mighty principle that has been

at work from the beginning of all things and was understood by many at

that time when “the people that sat in darkness saw great light, and to

them which sat in the region and shadow of death light sprang up.”...

“From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent: for the kingdom of

heaven is at hand’ ” (Matthew IV, 16, 17). Adopting the cross as the

emblem of his earthly mission he said: “If any man will come after me, let

him take up his cross and follow me.” By the words: “I bear in my body the

mark of the Lord Jesus,” St. Paul designates the recognized “mark” to have

been the quadruplicate cross of the Saviour, who charged his apostles to

preach, saying: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and promised them that

“ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall

sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones,

judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew XIX, 28). The mother of

Zebedee’s children came unto him asking that her sons might sit “the one

on thy right hand and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom” (Matthew XX,

20). Repeatedly, the Teacher, referring to children, said “of such is the

kingdom of heaven,” or “Except ye be converted and become as little

children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” St. Paul and his

followers were designated as “those that have turned the world upside down

... doing contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another

king, one Jesus” (Acts XVII, 6 and 7).

It is well known that the early Christian church was persecuted because,

from the first, it preached a total regeneration of human society and its

reëstablishment of a basis of peace and good-will, social equality,

absolute justice, mutual aid, respect and sympathy, unselfish,

disinterested subservience of the individual to the interest of the

community.

It was for the sublime principle of a religious democracy and the

regeneration of human society that, in an age of tyranny, oppression and

bloodshed, the early Christian martyrs laid down their lives. The

foundations of religious orders were as many attempts to realize the

Christian ideal, and to this day the Roman Catholic Church, whose clergy

and religious orders unquestionably afford a splendid living example of

devotion to a common cause, self-abnegation, obedience and humility,

clings to the ideal of a state in which temporal power is wielded by a

hierarchy raised to rulership from all ranks, merely by virtue of

personal, moral and intellectual qualities. Throughout the Christian

church the ideal of religious democracy prevails. Each day it is prayed

for in the words “Thy kingdom come,” by those taught to look forward to

the promise of the time when “former things are passed away and a holy

Jerusalem shall descend out of heaven from God, lying four-square, with

twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels and names written thereon

which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel ... and

the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them the names of the

twelve apostles of the Lamb,.... And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord

God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple in it ... but the throne of God

and of the Lamb shall be in it.... And he showed me a pure river of water

of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the

Lamb. In the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river was

there a tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits and yielded her

fruit every month ...” (Revelation, chaps. XXI and XXII).

It appears significant, in the light of the present investigation, that

the birth of Christianity, as well as the revival of pagan systems of

philosophy, embodying principles for the organization of religious

brotherhoods and ideal democracies, should coincide with the spread of the

great tidings that a star had been seen by the Magi, or “wise men of the

East, who came _from the east_ to Jerusalem.” Occurring, as it did, after

“the interregnum as regards pole-stars,” during which nomadic tribes and

seafarers had vainly sought the fixed star which had guided their

forefathers, the appearance of a brilliant pole-star must have seemed

doubly significant and revived, among pagan philosophers, the ideal of an

earthly kingdom ruled by Heaven. The advent, at this time, of the Messiah

who, with his twelve disciples, announced that the kingdom of heaven was

nigh and taught that God was to be worshipped in the Spirit only, must

indeed have appeared particularly impressive and well-timed.

Faithfully clinging to the ideal of a regenerated religious democracy, the

early Christian church maintained itself through centuries of persecution

and is slowly advancing, amidst almost overwhelming and innumerable

difficulties, towards its realization.

Returning to Mexico we find that its civilization at the time of the

Conquest was precisely what might be expected if a small body of men of

superior wisdom and experience, such as was possessed by a remnant of

Græco-Egyptian philosophers, had embarked in ships manned by the

descendants of Phœnician seafarers, and found refuge in the “land of the

West,” amongst simple, docile people, existing in large numbers, who,

treated “as little children and instructed with love and gentleness,

willingly submitted themselves to the guidance of their teachers.” A

single, short-lived generation of these would have amply sufficed for the

establishment of the governmental system and calendar, the firm

institution of a “celestial kingdom,” and the spread of knowledge of the

technique of various arts and industries deemed most useful to the

natives. On the other hand, the foreign element, whose aims were chiefly

ideal, could have left little or no impression upon the evolution of the

native race, its art and industry, which doubtlessly followed its original

independent line of development.

It is remarkable how the echo of great events in Old World history seem to

have reached the Western hemisphere. In the Old World the eleventh and

twelfth centuries were marked by a revival of religious enthusiasm, by the

Crusades, the persecution of infidels by the Christian world and by a

general stirring amongst oriental people, the descendants of the ancient

pole-star worshippers.

Historical records and traditions accord in stating that in about the

eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, the civilizations of Mexico,

Yucatan and Central America underwent a great period of warfare,

pestilence and famine, leading to the disintegration of the great ancient

centres, to numberless migrations, and to an assumption of dominion in

Mexico by a fierce warrior-race who increased the number of human

sacrifices. It seems significant that it is to this troublous period in

the history of ancient America that the advent of the Incas in Peru is

assigned by native tradition, which also records the existence of more

ancient centres of civilization situated around the Titicaca lake. The

foundation of the Inca empire is assigned to as late as about 1200 A.D.

(see p. 148, note 1), and all who compare Plato’s scheme for the

reëstablishment of the holy polity of the Magnetes, and the description of

the Peruvian “Four in One” state, must admit that the latter constitutes

the most perfect example known, of a community based on those numerical

principles which were considered most perfect by Plato. At a first glance

one might be tempted to conclude that the foreign civilizers of Peru, the

Incas, were acquainted with Plato’s twelve-fold scheme and deliberately

established or reëstablished a “divine polity” accordingly, naming it the

“Four in One” and instituting the worship of a supreme divinity designated

as “Earth, Air, Fire and Water in One,” in consonance with the cosmical

theory said to have been first formulated by Empedocles about B.C. 444,

and adopted by Plato. Reflection shows, however, that no such conclusion

is justifiable until competent authorities have thoroughly investigated

and satisfactorily established how far the ideas of Empedocles and Plato

were original and how far they incorporated older philosophical ideas,

such as were preserved by the Egyptian priesthood or had been disseminated

by the Phœnicians.(158) Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that the

Inca colony constitutes a most valuable object-lesson of a “cosmical

state” founded on precisely the numerical scheme and principles of

organization advocated by Plato. Reflection shows, moreover, that such a

polity could only have been established and maintained itself during

centuries, in a land free from enemies and amongst docile people “apt for

subjection.”

A significant result of a critical comparison of the celestial kingdoms of

Peru and Mexico is the perception that, in the former, as in Egypt, a

hereditary sovereignty was exercised by male and female sacerdotal rulers

of a “divine line of descent.” On the other hand we find, in Mexico, a

state of affairs in exact accordance with Montezuma’s account of the

behavior of his predecessors towards the lord who had led them and

presided over the foundation of the Mexican empire. During his absence

they, his vassals, established democratical principles and when he

returned, having intermarried with women of the country and founded new

cities, they refused to recognize his authority and let him depart. From

Montezuma himself we learn that, although they thus emancipated themselves

from their former lord, they continued to regard themselves as dependent

and owing allegiance to the mother-city whence they had come. Until the

time of the Conquest, however, they were governed by rulers whom they

elected, and who had risen in rank merely by virtue of their moral and

intellectual distinction.

It is indeed deeply suggestive and impressive to realize that, in

antiquity as in modern times, the American Continent seems to have been

sought, as a place of refuge, by men whose ideals have been state

institutions founded on democratic principles. The ancient polities of

Mexico and Peru and, what is more, the archaic Pueblos of to-day, alike

furnish examples of conditions, such as undoubtedly existed in

Mediterranean countries in ancient times and inspired Greek statesmen and

philosophers to plan ideal polities, and must have preceded the creation

of the Jewish and early Christian spiritualized ideal of a New Jerusalem,

pervaded throughout by the Divine Spirit. In conclusion, there are a few

points which I recommend to the consideration of students. Different

writers have, as Prescott summarizes, with certainty discerned in the

highest American civilizations, a Semitic or an Egyptian or an Asiatic

origin.

This remarkable combination of features, distinctively characteristic of

the said civilizations, actually existed amongst the Phœnicians who, as

Professor Sayce relates, were allied to the Semitic race, were affected by

contact with their cousins the Arameans or Syrians, penetrated to the

coast of India, derived their art from Babylonia, Egypt, and later from

Assyria, and “knew how to combine together the elements it had received

and to return them, modified and improved, to the countries from which

they had been borrowed.” In the case of India and China it is an

established and accepted truth that an active communication existed

between these countries and Asia Minor, which was carried on by a race of

seafarers and colonists. When it is realized that, through them, distant

regions became known and accessible, and that at one time in the history

of Greek philosophy, for instance, statesmen, philosophers and

mathematicians alike rivalled each other in planning ideal states, based

on the identical principle: the harmonizing of human life with Nature’s

laws; it seems but rational to infer that, at different times, bands of

enthusiasts, adopting one numerical scheme in preference to another, and

led perhaps by its inventor or disciples, set out in search of distant

countries where they could undisturbedly establish “celestial kingdoms”

according to their ideal plan. To such an enterprise as this I venture to

assign the establishment of the celestial kingdom of China, drawing

attention to Biot’s statement, cited on p. 298, that year cycles (_i. e._

the sociological and chronological system since in use) were introduced

there from India, after the Christian era. This being the case, contrary

to the claims of a much greater antiquity by Chinese scholars, the present

form of the “celestial kingdom” appears to date from the arrival in China,

from Persia, of Semitic emigrants, during the first century of our era

(see p. 303), and to have undergone a certain re-modelling in the first

half of the sixth century, after the arrival of a band of Syrian

Christians (p. 304).

Pointing out that these dates would make it appear as though the cyclical

systems of India and Eastern Asia had been formulated under the direct or

indirect influence of Greek philosophy, I observe that the date of their

introduction and establishment assigns them to approximately the same

period which produced the numerical scheme adopted by Constantine, Maya

and Mexican calendrical and chronological scheme. At the period when

Constantine established New Rome and instituted four divisions of the

empire, each divided into thirteen yielding a total of fifty-two

prefectures, there lived in Byzantium a philosopher and rhetorician

(315-390 A.D.) whose name was Themistius and who filled the office of

prefect of Constantinople. It is well known that the attempt thus to

organize the empire proved fruitless and that the proclamation of

Christianity as the religion of his empire by Theodosius I (379 A.D.)

inaugurated a prolonged persecution of pagan religion and philosophy (see

p. 530).

Is it inadmissible to consider at least the possibility that, disappointed

and driven from their land, some of those who clung to the ancient ideal,

and were acquainted with the perfected scheme of state organization

instituted by Constantine during the lifetime of Themistius, carried it at

a later period, to the “hidden land” of the West and established it there,

where it was preserved intact until the time of the Spanish Conquest? Is

it by accident only that one of the names of the capital of ancient

Mexico, as preserved in the writings of Cortés and Bernal Diaz is

Temistitan, literally “land of Temis,” the Nahuatl language not furnishing

any meaning to the latter word? Can it be that, just as the word Teotl,

resembling Theos, is found on Mexican soil, employed with the same meaning

as in Greek, the name Temistitan means “the land of established law, order

and justice” dedicated to the Greek Themis, just as New Rome was dedicated

to Sofia=Wisdom? Or did some sort of connection exist between the name of

the Mexican capital, the system on which it was established and the

philosopher Themistius?

Is it by chance merely that the state calendar of Temistitan was based on

4×13=52 divisions, and that Themistius of Byzantium, a member of that

school of philosophy which had evolved numberless plans and numerical

schemes for ideal states, should have held one of the 4×13=52 prefectures

during Constantine’s reign? In order to make the most rapid advance

towards a solution of the great problem of the origin of American

civilizations, I venture to suggest that Orientalists and Americanists

should combine and freshly study it from opposite points of view. One side

might be taken by those who incline to admit the possibility that a few

Phœnician traders discovered the American continent in ancient times and

that, subsequently, those to whom they imparted their discovery and their

successors, the daring Greek navigators, conveyed thither, at intervals,

bands of refugees or enthusiasts who braved danger and death, in the hope

of reaching the blessed land where, free from persecution, they could

found ideal democracies or divine polities.

Besides studying and adding to the numberless similarities which have been

cited by so many different authorities and to which I have added a modest

contribution, let them produce evidence showing the improbability that the

identical forms of cult, religion, social organization, calendar cycles

and numerical schemes should have been independently evolved two or more

times by distinct races. On the other hand, let those who hold the view

that American civilization was purely autochthonous, advance grounds for

the supposition that it developed a school of philosophical speculation

and that America produced its Empedocles and its Plato. Let them also

formulate the psychical law which caused the American race to formulate

the four elements, recognized as such by the philosophers of India and

Greece, and not the five of Chinese philosophy; and to evolve numerical

schemes applied to social organization, identical with those current in

India, Western Asia and the Mediterranean countries, but different from

that employed in China and Japan. It will also be incumbent upon them not

only to disprove American traditions, which record the introduction of a

higher civilization and plans of social organization by strangers, but

also to demonstrate that, although in ancient times, Phœnician traders

carried on an active traffic with Britain, daring the perils of the Bay of

Biscay, they could not possibly have ventured across the southern

Atlantic, even in the most favorable seasons. It has remained a source of

sincere regret to me that circumstances prevented my attending the

Orientalist Congress which met at Rome, in October, 1899, under the

presidency of the illustrious Count Angelo de Gubernatis, to whom credit

is due for having first suggested and planned that a section of the

Congress should devote itself to the discussion of prehistoric contact or

connection between the Old and New Worlds.

With an apology for my non-attendance and consequent failure to aid in

organizing the section and carrying out a plan which met with my

enthusiastic approval, I venture to submit the present investigation to

the President and officers of the Orientalist Congress with the earnest

hope that it may contain material and suggestions for fruitful discussions

during the next Congress held, and that these may be carried on in a

section devoted to the consideration of facts relating to prehistoric

America and its relation to the Old World.