The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical SystemsNuttall, Zelia
Religion
The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical Systems
Postponing for the present further discussion of this, the most precious
and remarkable monument which has ever been unearthed on the American
Continent, let us briefly bestow attention upon the two other monoliths
which may be said to be its companions and obviously belong to the same
period and civilization. In 1886, in the preliminary note cited above, I
advanced the view that the first of these, generally known as the
“Sacrificial stone,” was a “law-stone of a similar nature [to the
Calendar-stone] which recorded, however, the periodical collection of
certain tributes paid by subjugated tribes and others whose obligation it
was to contribute to the commonwealth of Mexico.” I pointed out that the
“frieze around the stone consists of groups, placed at intervals, of the
flint-knives (tecpatl) with conventionally carved teeth (tlantli) giving
in combination the word ‘tecpatlantli.’ This occurs in Sahagun’s Historia,
as the name given to the ‘lands of the tecpan or palace,’ and in one of
the native works I find designated the four channels into which the
produce of these lands was diverted.” I likewise noted that “the periods
indicated on it differ from those on the Calendar-stone,” which might more
appropriately be designated as the ancient Mexican wheel of the law or of
the Great Universal Plan.
Thirteen years of painstaking research have only served to strengthen me
in my interpretation of the “Sacrificial-stone.” The frieze around it
exhibits sixteen groups, each consisting of the repeated representation of
a warrior characterized by having one foot only. In each case he is
figured as seizing by the hair a different individual, who bows his head
and offers the weapon he holds in his right hand to his victor. Amongst
the sixteen subjugated personages are two women and above each are
hieroglyphs expressing the names of well-known localities, some of which
are mentioned in native chronicles as having been conquered in historical
times by Mexican rulers.
In my account of the Plan of the Ancient City of Mexico, I shall
illustrate these hieroglyphs, locate the places to which they refer and
further discuss this monument. Meanwhile I shall but state that it
undoubtedly belongs to the same category of monuments as the tablets in
the “Temple of the Sun” at Palenque; the bas-relief at Ixkun and that in
the house of the “Tennis-court” at Chichen-Itza where warriors in a
procession render homage to a seated personage, by presenting their
spear-throwers to him in precisely the same manner as shown on the Mexican
Tribute-Stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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