Pausing before what appeared to be a pile of rush matting he handed the lamp to Yermah and began removing the outer layers. As soon as the rough-textured exterior was taken off, Yermah saw by the cloth wrappings that it was a figure of some kind. It proved to be a colossal head of diorite, a very hard variety of serpentine, or greenstone. “This,” said Akaza, “is the head of Atlantis. It was contained in the ark which we have carried with us so long in our journeyings.” “But the eyes are closed, the nostrils plugged, the mouth covered with a gag, and the ears padlocked. This is death!” cried Yermah, unable to control his emotion, shocked and awed by the spectacle. “She can neither tell her piteous story nor hear the supplications addressed to her.” He examined the head closely, and saw that the countenance before him was that of a dead person. There was the relaxation of the upper eyelids which most forcefully expressed this idea. The head was covered with a skull-cap of shells and lines representing water. On the crown of the head was a rosette-like cap, with a button in the center. There were four rows of these scallops. The skull-cap terminated at the sides in ear padlocks, finished with triangular appendages like that over the mouth. In each ear there was a massive bar of rounded metal inclosed within a broad, strong clasp.[6] “Look closely at the three plates on the cheeks. They are precisely alike in form and lie over one another in the same way; so it is only necessary to examine one side.” “On the first disk,” said Yermah, “is a cross, with four dots within the arms. The second one is blank, and the third has a peculiar vertical slit, which looks as if it had some connection with the arrow-head appendage—as if being slipped on to one of these, it could turn, and thus open the padlock.” Yermah tried to do what he said, but the cold, immovable stone soon disabused his mind. “Our prophet, now at Memphis, has the key to this mystery. But I know its interpretation. Come and be comforted by warmth and light, and I shall tell thee,” said Akaza, noting the shiver that involuntarily followed Yermah’s ineffectual effort, and who was still much shaken when he resumed his seat beside the table containing the zodiac and horoscope. “The earth’s photosphere is really the seven cosmic serpents which enfold the planet in seven bands of race conditions. They have seven eyes, or windows, of occult perception. One of these windows closes every time there is a new race developed. Thou knowest that death in any form is but a new birth. Therefore, when a new race is born its predecessor dies, and the section of our globe inhabited by the dying race is purified by water and fire.”