In the native Maya chronicles the reflection of a star upon the trembling and moving surface of the water, is given as the image of the Creator and Former, the Heart of Heaven, and it was believed that the divine essence of life was thus conveyed to earth by light shining on and into the waters. It is well known that it was customary for the priests of the Great Temple of Mexico to bathe at midnight after fasting, in a sacred pool so deep that the water appeared to be black. This artificially-produced peculiarity would have rendered its surface particularly useful for the observation and registration of the movements of stars by their reflections. Thomas Gage quaintly tells us, moreover, that at the consecration of a certain idol “made of all kinds of seeds that grow in the country ... a certain vessell of water was blessed with many words and ceremonies, and that water was preserved very religiously at the foot of the Altar for to consecrate the King when he was crowned and also to blesse any Captain Generall, when he should be elected for the Warres, with only giving him a draught of that water” (_op. cit._, p. 53). It is well known that infants also underwent a form of baptism. The preceding and other evidence, which is scarcely required, enables us to realize the full significance which the symbol of a bowl surmounted by the glyph ik=life, breath, soul, was intended to express and convey. The collection of rain-water in vessels, exposed so as to receive the reflection of the one immovable star-god, was doubtlessly employed as a test of the stability of the Middle of the Earth by many generations of priest-astronomers. The sanctity attached to this water, as having absorbed the divine essence of light and the attribution of life-giving properties to it, was but the natural sequence of such star-observation. As the title “the lord of the vase or bowl”=Cum-ahau, indicates, the supreme priest of Heaven alone seems to have attended to all rites concerning the sacred bowl and the distribution of its celestial life-giving contents. The symbolical decoration of many native bowls will be found to corroborate this view of their employment and of the virtue attributed to their contents. By this time I trust that my readers will realize with me that, at Copan, the native set of ideas had long taken deep root and flourished. We have seen that the identical numerical divisions of time and tribes and the same symbolism prevailed as have been traced in Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Yucatan, Zuñi, etc. The following monuments will still further establish this kinship of thought. Copan contains two stone slabs which answer to the description of an amay-tun, inasmuch as they are square and appear to be memorial stones. Let us see whether some clue to their purpose can be obtained from the carvings upon them.