The City of the Sacred WellWillard, T. A. (Theodore Arthur)
History
The City of the Sacred Well
Willard, T. A. (Theodore Arthur)
Chichén Itzá Site (Mexico); Mayas; Thompson, Edward Herbert, 1860-1935; Yucatán (Mexico : State) -- Description and travel
A hundred feet from the northern extremity of this extraordinary court
and facing it is a building consisting of a single chamber. Its front
wall is lacking, but arising from the rubbish are two ornamented round
columns which were evidently the supports for the wall. The whole
interior of the building, from floor to peak, is covered with worn and
faded bas-reliefs. In the center of the rear wall is the perfect figure
of a man, bearded and with decidedly Hebraic features.
At the opposite end of the court and a hundred feet back from it is a
building extending nearly the entire width of the court. The roof of
this structure has fallen, but the remains of sculptured square columns
are visible.
And on the two side walls of the court, on the precise middle line,
were mounted two great carved stone rings, like millstones, twenty feet
above the floor. Each ring is beautifully carved with the entwined
bodies of serpents. The rings are four feet in diameter and a foot
thick, and the hole in each is one foot seven inches in diameter. One
of these rings is still mounted in the masonry of the wall, while its
counterpart once on the adjacent wall has fallen, but, happily, is
unbroken.
A very similar court and similar rings have been found at Uxmal,
another ancient Maya city of Yucatan.
Obviously this court was intended for some public game and it has
therefore been given the name of the Tennis-court or Gymnasium. In
an account of the diversions of Montezuma, given by Herrera, who
accompanied Cortes, is the following illuminating description:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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