In Egypt the goddess _Uati_, the genius of the lower country, is at times represented as a serpent with inflated breast, the body standing erect over a basket or sieve, the lower part resting against a figure resembling our numeral 8. At times again, as a winged serpent, with inflated breast, wearing on its head a cap or crown of peculiar shape, that it is said to be the crown of lower Egypt. Why the Egyptians selected such symbols to represent the lower country, we are not informed; and it is doubtful if the learned Egyptologists could explain the motive. Now it is a most remarkable fact, that these are the very symbols used by the Maya hierogrammatists and artists to figure their own motherland, the Maya empire. [Illustration] The author of the Troano MS., sometimes pictures Mayax as a serpent with an inflated breast (Plate. XVII., Part II.), at other times as a serpent with part of the body bent in the shape of the Yucatan peninsula,[2] and the artists who executed the paintings in the funereal chamber of Prince _Coh_, typified the country as a winged serpent, with the back painted green, the belly yellow, wearing a blue crown on the head, its tail ending with a peculiar dart resembling in general contour the southern continent of America. This is not the place to give minute explanations of these symbols which I have considered in another work, I simply wish to consign here such facts as cannot be attributed altogether to hazard. So the peculiar twist against which rests the body of the serpent, emblem of the lower country, is exactly the same that forms the symbol [Symbol: glyph] used in the Troano MS., to represent the gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea, whose waters bathe the peninsula of Yucatan, that seems as if standing erect between them as the serpent in the Egyptian sign. [Illustration] As to the sieve, it is called, by the natives of that country, MAYAB. Mayab was, in past ages, one of the names of the peninsula. The crown of Lower Egypt [Symbol: Egyption crown], is precisely that worn by certain chieftains, whose portraits we see in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza. There the peak was worn in front; in Egypt at the back: may be as a mark of respect on the part of the Egyptians toward their mother country, to signify that as the child, Egypt must stand behind its parent, as it is customary for children to do among the aborigines of Yucatan. Since the Egyptians and the Mayas used identical signs as symbols of the country in which they lived, may it not be inferred that the same cause prompted their selection? We must not lose sight of the fact that the winged serpents introduced into the paintings of Egypt, are merely emblematic representations connected with the mysterious rites of the dead, and the mode of being in Amenti; that is, in the "Lands of the West" where the souls of the departed were supposed to return and exist, after being liberated from their mortal body. [Illustration]