had fallen the ancient metropolis _Uxmal_, "the three times rebuilt." His
headless and legless statue is still to be seen over the main entrance on
the façade of the palace known as the "House of the Governor," at that
place. The flayed bodies of his two brothers and his eldest sister are at
his feet; their heads hang from the belt round his waist: and the ruins of
his private residence, ornamented with turtles,--his totem--yet exist at
the northwest corner of the second of the three terraces on which the
palace is built. The law of the land and her own predilection for Coh were
insurmountable barriers that prevented Aac from marrying Moo. He was not a
warrior but a courtier. He spent his life in idleness amidst pleasures and
frivolities. Still he was envious of the fame won by his younger brother;
jealous of him because of the love of the people, and still more of that of
his sister and wife. He allowed his evil passions to gain the mastery over
his better feelings. He incited a conspiration against the friends of his
childhood, with the object of killing his own brother, to obtain forcible
possession of the sister he so much coveted, seize the reins of the
government, and become the supreme lord of the whole empire.
In the carvings on the wooden lintels over the entrance of Coh's funereal
chamber, in the paintings that adorn its walls, and in which that part of
the life of the personages concerned in these events is portrayed, Aac is
represented full of wrath, holding three spears in his hand, engaged in a
terrible altercation with Coh. From the sculptures that adorned his
mausoleum we learn that he was murdered treacherously by being stabbed with
a spear three times in the back; and the author of the Troano MS. in giving
an account of that murder and its consequences, has recorded this fact and
illustrated it in the first section of plate xiv., in the second part of
his work. [When I disinterred his statue, I found in an urn his heart,
partially cremated, and the flint head of the spear with which he was
slain.] In one of the tableaux of the mural paintings the body of Coh,
surrounded by his wife, his sister _Nicté_, his children and his mother, is
being prepared for cremation; the heart and other viscera having been
extracted to be preserved in urns. A similar custom prevailed among the
Egyptians of high rank whose bodies were embalmed according to the most
expensive process. The internal parts of the body having been removed, were
cleansed, embalmed in spices and various substances, then deposited in four
vases that were placed in the tomb with the coffin.
[Illustration]
At the death of Coh the whole country became involved in a civil war. The
conspirators, partisans of Aac, striving to seize the reins of the
government, the friends of Prince Coh fighting to avenge his death and in
defense of their queen. The goddess of war favored at times one party, then
the other. Aac, in order to obtain the preponderance, had recourse to
diplomacy. He renewed his suit for the hand of his sister. He sent
messengers to her, with a present of fruits, begging her to accept his love
now that she was free. The scene is vividly pictured in the mural
paintings.
Queen Moo is represented seated in her house situated in the middle of a
garden. At her feet, but outside of the house to indicate that she does not
accept it, is a basket full of oranges. Her extended left hand shows that
she declines to listen to the messenger who stands before her in an
entreating posture, and that she scorns the love of Aac who is seen on a
lower plane, making an obeisance. Over his head is a serpent, typical of
his name, _Can_, looking as lovingly as a serpent can be made to look, at a
_Macaw_ perched on the top of a tree and above the figure of the queen
whose totem it is. The tree is guarded by a monkey in a threatening
attitude. This monkey here, as in Egypt the cynocephalus, is the emblem of
the preceptor of _Moo_, symbol therefor of wisdom.
This tableau is most interesting and significant, since in it we have a
natural explanation of the myth of the temptation of the woman by the
serpent. Here we have the garden, the woman, the temptor, and the fruit.
The story of this family incident passing from mouth to mouth, from
generation to generation, from country to country, has become disfigured
probably by peoples that did not hold woman in as high esteem, or did not
honor her as much as the Mayas did. Perhaps, also, an old misanthropical
bachelor, hater of the fair sex, wrote a distorted account of the tradition
out of spite at having been jilted by his lady-love, and his version was
accepted by the author of Genesis, if he himself did not make the
alteration. The fact is that the author of the Troano MS.--(Plate xvii.,
part second) as the artist who painted the scene just described--asserts
that she refused to listen to _Aac's_ entreaties, in consequence of which
the civil war continued. At last _Moo_ and her followers succumbed. She
fell into the hands of Aac who, after ill-treating her, put her to death
together with _Cay_ the high pontiff, his elder brother, who had sided with
the queen of Chichen, with right and justice. In token of his victory,
_Aac_ caused his statue--the feet resting on the flayed bodies of his kin,
their heads being suspended from his belt--to be placed over the main
entrance of the royal palace at Uxmal, where, as I have said, its remains
may be seen to-day.
I may add here in explanation of the tableau of the scene in the garden,
that the present of a basket of oranges was the offer of marriage made by
_Aac_ to _Moo_. It is usual with the aborigines of Yucatan, that yet retain
many of the customs of their forefathers, when a young man wishes to
propose marriage to a girl to send by a friend as a present, a fruit, or
flower, or sweetmeat. The acceptance of the present is the sign that the
proposal of the suitor is admitted, and from that moment they are
betrothed; whilst the refusal of the present means that he is rejected. A
similar custom exists in Japan. When a young lady expects a proposal of
marriage a convenient flower-pot is placed in a handy position on the
window-sill. The lover plants a flower in it. If next morning the flower is
watered he can present himself to his lady-love knowing that he is welcome.
If on the contrary, the flower has been uprooted and thrown on the
side-walk, he well understands he is not wanted.
The family name of the kings of Mayax was _Can_ (serpent) as _Khan_ is
still the title of the Kings of Tartary and Burmah, and of the governor of
provinces in Persia, Afghanistan and other countries in Central Asia. _Can_
was therefore the family name of Aac. The meaning of the writer of Genesis
when he says that the serpent spoke to the woman and seduced her with a
fruit is now easily understood.
The account of the fratricide in Genesis, in the Ramayana, or in the papyri
of Egypt, is nothing more or less, with a slight variance, than the story
of the feuds of king Can's children. This story, treasured by the priests
of Egypt and India, consigned in their sacred books and poems, has been
handed down to us among the primitive traditions of mankind.
Nowhere, except in Mayax, do we find it as forming part of the history of
the nation. Nowhere, except in Mayax, do we find the portraits of the
actors in the tragedy. There, we not only see their portraits carved in
bas-reliefs, on stone or wood, or their marble statues in the round, or
represented in the mural paintings that adorn the walls of the funereal
chamber built to the memory of the victim, but we discover the ornaments
they wore, the weapons they used, nay, more, their mortal remains.
The following is the certificate of Charles O. Thompson, Principal and
Professor of Chemistry at the Worcester Free Institute, who made the
chemical analysis of part of the cremated remains found in the stone urn
that was near the chest of the statue that occupied the centre of the
mausoleum raised to the memory of the famous warrior Coh, twenty feet below
the upper plane of the monument.
WORCESTER, Mass., Sept. 25, 1880.
"Stephen Salisbury, Jr., Esq., submits an unknown solid for qualitative
examination.
[Illustration]
"Under microscope it presents a certain compactness and horny aspect
characteristic of animal matter which has been charred in a close vessel,
it loses 9 per cent. when dried at 100° and 9 per cent. more by
combustion. After calcination, a dross and residue remains which contains
3 per cent. fenic oxide, a little alumina and much silica. Warm water
exposed to action of residue shows traces of potash and soda.
"These results are consistent with the theory that the mass was once part
of a human body which has been burned with some fuel."
"CHARLES O. THOMPSON."
There is a fact certainly worthy of notice, and this is that the names of
the personages mentioned in the various accounts of the fratricide are
precisely identical, or are words having the same signification. May not
that be regarded as unimpeachable proof that they all refer to the same
event?
No one who has any knowledge of philology will ever deny that
A-bel--A-bal--Bal-_i_--_Balam_ are identical words.
A, contraction of _Ah_, is the Maya masculine article, _the_. _Bal_ is the
radical of Bal_am_. Balam is for the superstitious aborigines, even to-day,
the _Yumil Kaax_--the "Lord of the fields" the "_Leopard_" which they also
call _Coh_--the totem of the victim of Aac is the leopard--and it is so
represented in the bas-reliefs and sculptures.
In Egypt, the spotted skin of the leopard, usually without the head, but
sometimes with it, was always suspended near the images and statues of
Osiris. The skin of a leopard was worn as a mantle over the ceremonial
dress of his priests.
[Illustration]
Besides, when represented as King of the Amenti--of the "West"--the symbol
of Osiris was always a crouching leopard with an open eye over it.
[Illustration]
We must not lose sight of the fact that the leopard's skin worn by Nimrod
and Bacchus was a sacred appendage to the Mysteries. It was used in the
Eleusinian as well as in the Egyptian mysteries instituted in honor of
Osiris. It is mentioned in the earliest speculations by the Brahmins on the
meaning of their sacrificial prayers the _Aytareya Brahmana_, and is used
in the _agnishtoma_ the initiation rites of the _Soma_ mysteries. When the
neophyte is to be born again he is covered with a "leopard skin," out of
which he emerges as from his mother's womb. A leopard skin is worn by the
African warriors, who are so fortunate as to possess one, as a charm to
render them invulnerable to spears according to the French traveler Paul du
Chaillu.
[Illustration]
It would seem as if the manner in which _Coh_ met his death, by being
stabbed with a spear, had been known to their ancestors, and that they
imagined that wearing his totem would save them from being wounded with the
same kind of weapon used in killing him. That the inhabitants of Africa had
communications with those of the Western Continent there can be no doubt,
since populations of black people existed on the isthmus of Panama and
other localities at the time of the first arrival of the Spaniards; besides
their pictures can be seen in the mural paintings at Chichen.
As to the name _Osir_, or be it _Ozil_, it would seem to be a nickname
given to _Coh_ on account of the great love his sisters, and the people in
general, professed for him. _Ozil_ is a Maya verb that means to desire
vehemently. He, therefore, who was very much desired--dearly beloved.
_Osiris_ in Egypt, _Abel_ in Chaldea, _Bali_ in India, are myths. _Coh_, in
Mayax, is a reality--a warrior whose mausoleum I have opened; whose weapons
and jade ornaments are in my possession; whose heart I have found, and a
piece of which was analyzed by Professor Thompson; whose statue, with his
name inscribed on the tablets occupying the place of the ears, I have
unearthed, and which is now in the National Museum in the City of Mexico,
one of the most precious relics in that institution, having been robbed
from me, by force of arms, by the Mexican authorities.
_Isis_ was the wife and sister of Osiris. The word _Isis_ may simply be a
dialectical mode of pronouncing the Maya word _i[c]in_ (idzin) _the younger
sister_. Her headgear, as a goddess, was a vulture. That bird was her totem
and the peculiar type of maternity.
[Illustration]
Isis was often called the great mother-goddess _Mau_; a word certainly as
suggestive of the name _Moo_, sister and wife of Coh and queen of Chichen,
as the _vulture_ is of the _Macaw_. It must not be forgotten that one of
the titles of Isis was the _royal wife and sister_.
[Illustration]
Authors, who of course know nothing of the facts in the ancient history of
Mayax, revealed to me by the sculptures and the mural paintings of the
temples and palaces of the Mayas, and contained in the pages of the Troano
MS., do not believe that Osiris and his sister Isis were deified persons
who had lived on earth, but fabulous beings, whose history was founded on
metaphysical speculations, and adapted to certain phenomena of nature. But
the primitive rulers of the Mayas, whose history is an exact counterpart of
that of the children of _Seb_ and _Nut_, were deified after their death and
worshiped as gods of the elements. My object is not here to enter into long
explanations on these historical disclosures. I refer the reader who wishes
to know more of the subject to my work, "The Monuments of Mayax and their
Historical Teachings."
As to the names _Cain_, _Set_, _Sougriva_, _Aac_, they all convey the idea
of something belonging to or having affinity with water.
_Cain_, by apocope, gives _Cay_, the Maya word for "fish."
_Set_ is a cognate word of the Maya _Ze_, to ill-treat with blows. Can a
name be more appropriate to designate one who has killed his brother with
three thrusts of his spear; and his sister by kicking her to death, as
_Aac_ is represented doing by the author of the Troano MS.?
_Set_, after being treated with the same honor as the other members of the
family of Seb, came to be regarded as the Evil principle and was called
_Nubti_, that is, according to the Maya language, the _adversary_, from
_nup_ adversary and _ti_ for. He also was the Sun God, the enemy of the
serpent. Here again we have a most singular resemblance, to say the least.
_Aac_, in the sculptures of Mayax, is always pictured surrounded by the sun
as his protecting genius; while the serpent, emblem of the country, always
shields _Coh_ and his sister-wife within its folds. The escutcheon of the
city of Uxmal shows that the title of that metropolis was the "Land of the
Sun." In the bas-reliefs of the queen's chamber at Chichen, the followers
of _Aac_ are seen to render homage to the _Sun_; the friends of _Moo_ to
the serpent. So in Mayax as in Egypt, the _Sun_ and the _Serpent_ were
inimical. In Egypt this enmity was a myth; in Mayax a dire reality.
The hippopotamus and the crocodile were emblems of Set. Plutarch says "that
at Hermopolis there was a statue of Set, which was a hippopotamus with a
hawk upon its back fighting with a serpent." Both the hippopotamus and the
crocodile are amphibious animals, having consequently much affinity with
water.
Aac, in Maya, is the name for the turtle, also an amphibious animal.
The name Sougriva, of the brother of Bâli, is a word composed of three Maya
primitives, _zuc_, _lib_, _ha_, _zuc_, quiet, tranquil; _lib_, to ascend,
and _ha_, water--"He who tranquilly rises on the water" as the turtle does.
The universal deluge is another tradition of the early days that was
credited by certain civilized nations of antiquity.
The Egyptian priests who, from times immemorial, had kept in the archives
of the temples a faithful account of all events worthy of being remembered,
derided the Greek philosophers when they spoke of the deluge of Deucalion
and the destruction of the human race. Their answer was that as they had
been preserved from it the inundation could not have been universal; they
even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance
to that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes
resembling it. They told Solon that the greatest cataclysm on record in
their books was that during which Atlantis disappeared under the waves of
the ocean, in one day and night, in consequence of violent earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions; that from that time all communications between their
people and the inhabitants of the "Lands of the West" had become
interrupted; the occurrence having taken place 9,000 years before his visit
to Egypt.
An account of that fearful event was also preserved by the learned men of
Mayax who give of it a description identical with that given by the
Egyptians. Nearly all the nations living on the western continent have kept
the tradition of it, but they do not pretend that all mankind was
destroyed.
In Mayax the learned priests caused a relation of it to be carved in
intaglio on the stone that forms the lintel over the interior doorway in
the rooms on the south side of their college. The building is known to this
day by the name of _Akab-[c]ib_, the dark, or terrible writing.
The author of the Troano MS., a work, I have already said, on geology,
dedicates several pages at the beginning of the second part to the recital
of that fearful cataclysm, and the phenomena which then took place. This
leaves no longer room for doubting that a large continent existed in the
middle of the Atlantic ocean, and which was destroyed within the memory of
man; and that the narrative by Plato of the submersion of Atlantis is, in
the main, correct. The Maya author represents the lost land by the figure
of a black man with red lips, which would imply that it was mostly
inhabited by a race of black men. In this case, the presence of
black-skinned populations on the Western continent, anterior to the advent
of the Spaniards, would be easily accounted for. The Mayas like the
Egyptians, represented the world as an old man. Plutarch says they called
East the face, North the right side, South the left side; this conception
has reached our days, only we reckon the East as the right hand, West the
left, North the face.
[Illustration]
When the author of the Troano MS., speaks of the "Master of the land" par
excellence, that is king Can deified, he pictures him sometimes with a
human body, painted blue, and the head of a mastodon. On the façade of the
building at Chichen Itza called by the natives _Kuna_, the house of God, to
which Stephens, in his work on Yucatan, gives the name of _Iglesia_, is a
tableau representing the worship of that great pachyderm, whose head, with
its trunk, forms the principal ornament of the temples and palaces built by
the members of king Can's family.
This tableau is composed of a face intended for that of the mastodon. Over
the trunk and between the eyes formerly existed a human head, which has
been destroyed by malignant hands. It wore a royal crown. This is still in
place. On the front of it is a small portrait cut in the round of some very
ancient personage. On each side of the head are square niches containing
each two now headless statues, a male and a female; they are seated, not
Indian fashion, squatting, but with the legs crossed and doubled under
them, in a worshiping attitude. Each carries a symbol on their back; totem
of the nation or tribe by which the mastodon was held sacred. Under these
figures, are two triangles [Symbol: triangles pointing upwards] emblems of
offerings and worship in Mayax as in Egypt. So also was the other symbol
[Symbol: honeycomb] image of a honey-comb, an oblation most grateful to the
gods, since with the bark of the Balche tree, honey formed the principal
ingredient of _Balche_, that beverage so pleasing to their palate: the same
that under the name of nectar, _Hebe_ served to the inhabitants of Olympus.
It is the _Amrita_, still enjoyed, on the day of the full moon, by the
gods, the manes and the saints, according to the Hindoos; although it was
the cause of the war between the gods and the Titans, and is the origin of
many sanguinary quarrels among the tribes of equatorial Africa even in our
days.
These symbols leave no doubt as to the fact that the personages represented
by the statues are in the act of worshiping the mastodon.
The corona of the upper cornice, that above the mastodon's head, is formed
of a peculiar wavy adornment often met with in the ornamentation of the
monuments erected by the Cans. Emblematic of the serpent, it is composed of
two letters N juxtaposed, monogram of Can [Symbol: wavy lines]. The corona
of the lower cornice is made of two characters [Symbol: spiral and steps]
that read in Maya _Ah [c]am_, He of the throne--the monarch.
In Japan the seven members of the Can family, deified and figured by the
same symbols as in Mayax, are worshiped to-day in the shrine of the palace
at Tokio, dedicated to the goddess symbolized by a bird. This goddess calls
to mind the goddess _Moo_ of the Mayas, or Isis of the Egyptians. In the
upper part of the shrine, over and above all the other attendants who have
wings and beaked noses, is seen an elephant couchant, the god of fire
standing on his back. In the midst of the flames that surround him is the
head of a bird. So in Chichen we see the followers of queen Moo, who, we
are informed by the author of the Troano MS. became the goddess of fire,
carrying her totem, a bird, in their head-gears.
The Japanese claim to be offspring of the gods, and produce two different
genealogical tables in support of their assertion. These gods amounting to
_seven_, are said to have reigned an almost incalculable number of years in
the country; although they assert that these primitive gods were spiritual
substances, incorporeal. They were succeeded by _five_ terrestrial spirits,
or deified heroes, after whom appeared the Japanese themselves.
Here again we have a reminiscence, as it were, of the _twelve_ gods, that
the Egyptians told Herodotus, had governed their country, an incalculable
number of years, before the reign of Menes their first terrestrial king.
These gods were converted by the Greeks into the _twelve_ deities, dwellers
of the Olympus. The _twelve_ serpent heads, brought to light by me in
December, 1883, from the center of the mausoleum of the high-pontiff Cay,
at Chichen-Itza, are emblematic of the _twelve_ rulers, who had reigned in
Mayax in times anterior to the great cataclysm when Atlantis was submerged;
whose portraits, with the sign _cimi_, dead, adorn the east façade of the
palace with the tableau of creation, showing that they existed in very
early times. Of these rulers we again find a dim tradition in China in the
_Tchi_, also called _che-cull-tse_--the _twelve_ children of the emperor of
Heaven, _Tien-Hoang_, who had the _body of a serpent_. Each of these _Tchi_
are said to have lived eighteen thousand years, and to have reigned in
times anterior to _Ti-hoang_, sovereign of the _country in the middle of
the land_.
From this short digression let us return to the worship of the mastodon
which we find very prevalent in India in that of the elephant _Ganesha_,
the god of prudence, of wisdom, of letters, represented as a _red colored_
man with the head of an elephant. He is invoked by the Hindoos of all sects
at the outset of any business. No one would dream of writing a letter or a
book without previously saluting Ganesha. His image is seen at the crossing
of the roads, oftentimes decorated with a garland of flowers, the offering
of some pious devotee. Architects place it in the foundation of every
edifice. It is sculptured or painted at the door of every house as a
protection against evil; at one of the entrances of every Hindoo city, that
is called _Ganesha-pol_, as well as in some conspicuous door of the palace.
We have already seen that in the most ancient edifices of Mayax the
mastodon's head with its trunk is the principal and most common ornament.
Are these mere coincidences? The name _Ganesha-pol_ would be according to
the Maya language, the _head of Ganesha_; _pol_, in Maya, being the head.
If I wished to go further I might say that in _Ganesha_ we have a
dialectical pronounciation of _Can-ex_, "the serpents." No deity in the
Hindoo pantheon is so often addressed; and his titles are so numerous that
like Osiris it might be named _Myrionymus_ "with ten thousand names."
So many are the legends accounting for the elephant head, it may be safely
assumed that its origin is unknown. May not its worship have been
introduced in India, with many other customs, that for instance of carrying
the children astride on the hip; of printing an impression of the human
hand, dipped in red liquid, on the walls of the temples and other sacred
buildings by devotees etc.; by colonists from Mayax where these customs
prevailed, and the worship of the mastodon was widely spread if not
general? This surmise assumes the semblance of probability when we consider
that the body of Ganesha is painted red, the color characteristic of the
American race, and the symbol of nobility of race among the Egyptians.