In my work "The Monuments of Mayax," I have shown how the legends accompanying the images of several of the Egyptian deities, when interpreted by means of the Maya language, point directly to Mayax as the birthplace of the Egyptian civilization. How the ancient Maya hieratic alphabet, discovered by me, is as near alike to the ancient hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians as two alphabets can possibly be, forcing upon us the conclusion that the Mayas and the Egyptians either learned the art of writing from the same masters, or that the Egyptians learned it from the Mayas. There is every reason to believe that the cosmogonical conceptions, so widely spread, originated with the Mayas, and were communicated by them to all the other nations among which we find their name. An analysis of the tableau of creation, carved on the façade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, cannot fail, therefore, to prove interesting. In it we shall find a proof of the scientific attainments of its designers; and also the reason why the serpent came to be worshiped all over the Earth. The philosophers of Mayax must have known that the waters cover the greatest part of the globe (about three fifths); and that water being a combination of gases (oxygen and hydrogen), the most subtile of fluids, must have been the first form of matter produced. This is why on each side and on the top of the tableau they placed the symbol of water [Symbol: three wavy lines]; taking care to leave without it, at the upper part, a portion equal to two-fifths of its length. In the midst of the waters they represented the figure of an egg, that is a germ. Why an egg and not any other seed? Is it because their study of physiology had made them acquainted with the fact, that no being exists on Earth, but that is born from an egg? They represented the egg emitting rays. The rays of the light into which says Thoth, all things resolved themselves; that, says the Quiche, author of the Popol-Vuh, appeared on the water as an increasing brightness that bathed the Creator, the _feathered serpent_, the _Kneph_, as the Egyptians would name it, in green and azure. It is well to notice that the symbols of water terminate with the head of serpents; because they compared the waves of the ocean to the undulations of the serpent's body while in motion. [Illustration] For this reason the Mayas named the sea _Canah_, the great, the powerful serpent: and in the Troano MS., the sea is always designated by a serpent's head. This explains why the Quiches, the Mayas, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, represented the world, and, by extension, the maker of it, as a serpent. Thus it is that they placed a serpent within the egg, behind the creator to indicate that this symbol is the totem of the ancestor of all beings. And here we have one of the origins of the serpent worship: that is, the adoration of the Creator. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] [Illustration: FIG. 2.]