The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization consideredShort, John T. (John Thomas)
History
The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered
Short, John T. (John Thomas)
Indians -- Origin; Indians of Mexico -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
On either side of the doorway opening to the inner sanctuary of the
Cross, were originally two male figures sculptured in low-relief on
stone; one of them, which appears to represent an aged royal person,
is beautifully clad in a leopard’s skin, while the opposite figure,
designed probably to represent youthful manhood, is arrayed in what
may be an elaborate military dress and plumed crest of magnificent
character. He wears what appears to be a cuirass about his shoulders
and chest. These tablets were removed to the village of Santo Domingo
years ago and set up in a modern house, where they were offered to
M. Waldeck on the sole condition that he should marry one of the
proprietresses, though he at the time was more than sixty-four years of
age. Stephens could have obtained them by purchasing the house in which
they had been placed, but did not.[562] On the slope of the pyramid of
the Cross, M. Waldeck found two statues just alike, one of which was
unfortunately broken; the other, subsequently sketched by Catherwood,
is shown in the cut, a photographic reduction from Waldeck. These
statues were ten and a half feet high, though two and a half feet of
their length, not shown in the cut, formed a tenon by which they were
embedded in the floor of the pyramidal surface, where Waldeck supposes
they stood supporting a platform about twenty feet square, in front of
the central doorway. These are the only statues ever found at Palenque;
but it is doubted whether they can be technically called statues, since
the back is of rough stone, and unsculptured. They probably rested
against a wall and served as supports for an upper roof or floor, as
indicated by Waldeck. The head-dress has been pronounced Egyptian by
all who have seen it.[563]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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