Part 12 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF THE MEXICAN G.o.dDESS OF WAR (OR OF DEATH), TEOYAOMIQUI. _(After Nebel). Height of the original, about Nine Feet_.]
It was like getting home again to reach Mexico, we had so many friends there, though our stay had been so short. We were fully occupied, for weeks of hard sight-seeing are hardly enough to investigate the objects of interest to be found in the city. We saw these things under the best auspices, for Mr. Christy had letters to the Minister of Public Instruction and other people in authority, who were exceedingly civil, and did all they could to put us in the way of seeing everything we wished. Among the places we visited, the Museum must have some notice.
It is in part of the building of the University; but we were rather surprised, when we reached the gate leading into the court-yard, to be stopped by a sentry who demanded what we wanted. The lower storey had been turned into a barrack by the Government, there being a want of quarters for the soldiers. As the ground-floor under the cloisters is used for the heavier pieces of sculpture, the scene was somewhat curious. The soldiers had laid several of the smaller idols down on their faces, and were sitting on the comfortable seat on the small of their backs, busy playing at cards. An enterprising soldier had built up a hutch with idols and sculptured stones against the statue of the great war-G.o.ddess Teoyaomiqui herself, and kept rabbits there. The state which the whole place was in when thus left to the tender mercies of a Mexican regiment may be imagined by any one who knows what a dirty and destructive animal a Mexican soldier is.
The guardians of the Museum have treated it even worse. People who know how often the curators of the Museums of southern Europe are ready to sell anything not very likely to be missed will not be astonished to hear of the same thing being done to a great extent some six or eight years before our visit.
The stone known as the statue of the war-G.o.ddess is a huge block of basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think that the figures on it stand for different personages, and that it is three G.o.ds,--Huitzilopochtli the G.o.d of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and Mictlanteuctli the G.o.d of h.e.l.l. It has necklaces of alternate hearts and dead man's hands, with death's heads for a central ornament. At the bottom of the block is a strange sprawling figure, which one cannot see now, for it is the base which rests on the ground; but there are two shoulders projecting from the idol, which show plainly that it did not stand on the ground, but was supported aloft on the tops of two pillars. The figure carved upon the bottom represents a monster holding a skull in each hand, while others hang from his knees and elbows. His mouth is a mere oval ring, a common feature of Mexican idols, and four tusks project just above it. The new moon laid down like a bridge forms his forehead, and a star is placed on each side of it. This is thought to have been the conventional representation of Mictlanteuctli (Lord of the Land of the Dead), the G.o.d of h.e.l.l, which was a place of utter and eternal darkness. Probably each victim as he was led to the altar could look up between the two pillars and see the hideous G.o.d of h.e.l.l staring down upon him from above.
There is little doubt that this is the famous war-idol which stood on the great teocalli of Mexico, and before which so many thousands of human victims were sacrificed. It lay undisturbed underground in the great square, close to the very site of the teocalli, until sixty years ago. For many years after that it was kept buried, lest the sight of one of their old deities might be too exciting for the Indians, who, as I have mentioned before, had certainly not forgotten it, and secretly ornamented it with garlands of flowers while it remained above ground.
The ”sacrificial stone,” so called, which also stands in the court-yard of the Museum, was not one of the ordinary altars on which victims were sacrificed. These altars seem to have been raised slabs of hard stone with a protuberant part near one end, so that the breast of the victim was raised into an arch, which made it more easy for the priest to cut across it with his obsidian knife. The Breton altars, where the slab was hollowed into the outline of a human figure, have some a.n.a.logy to this; but, though there were very many of these altars in different cities of Mexico, none are now known to exist. The stone we are now observing is quite a different thing, a cylindrical block of basalt nine feet across and three feet high: and Humboldt considers it to be the stone described by early Spanish writers, and called _temalacatl_ (spindle-stone) from its circular shape, something like a distaff-head.
Upon this the captive chiefs stood in the gladiatorial fights which took place within the s.p.a.ce surrounding the great teocalli. Slightly armed, they stood upon this raised platform in the midst of the crowd of spectators; and six champions in succession, armed with better weapons, came up to fight with them. If the captive worsted his a.s.sailants in this unequal contest, he was set free with presents; but this success was the lot of but few, and the fate of most was to be overpowered and dragged off ignominiously to be sacrificed like ordinary prisoners. On the top of the stone is sculptured an outline of the sun with its eight rays, and a hollow in the centre, whence a groove runs to the edge of the stone, probably to let the blood run down. All round it is an appropriate bas-relief repeated several times.
A vanquished warrior is giving up his stone-sword and his spears to his conqueror, who is tearing the plumed crest from his head.
The above explanation by Humboldt is a plausible one. But in Central America altars not unlike this, and with grooves upon the top, stand in front of the great stone idols; and this curious monument may have been nothing after all but an ordinary altar to sacrifice birds and small animals upon.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE VIEWS OF A SACRIFICIAL COLLAR. _Carved out of hard mottled greenstone. (In Mr. Christy's Collection.) This is 17 inches long, and varies from 11 to 16 inches in width. The arms are 4 inches wide and 3 inches deep; and are 8 inches apart at about half their length._]
Senor Leon Ramirez, the curator, had come to the Museum to meet us, and we went over the collection of smaller objects, which are kept up stairs in gla.s.s-cases,--at any rate out of the way of the soldiers.
Here are the stone clamps shaped like the letter U, which were put over the wrists and ankles of the victims, to hold them down on the sacrificial stone. They are of hard stone, very heavy and covered with carvings. It is remarkable that, though the altars for human sacrifices are no longer to be found, these accessory stone clamps, or yoke-like collars, are not uncommon. A fine one from Mr. Christy's collection is figured. _(See opposite page.)_
The obsidian knives and arrow-heads are very good, but these I have spoken of already, as well as of the stone hammers. The axes and chisels of stone are so exactly like those found in Europe that it is quite impossible to distinguish them. The bronze hatchet-blades are thin and flat, slightly thickened at the sides to give them strength, and mostly of a very peculiar shape, something like a T, but still more resembling the section of a mushroom cut vertically through the middle of the stalk.
The obsidian mask is an extraordinary piece of work, considering the difficulty of cutting such a material. It was chipped into a rude outline, and finished into its exact shape by polis.h.i.+ng down with jeweller's sand. The polish is perfect, and there is hardly a scratch upon it. At least one of the old Spanish writers on Mexico gives the details of the process of cutting precious stones and polis.h.i.+ng them with _teoxalli_ or ”G.o.d's sand.” Masks in stone, wood, and terra-cotta are to be seen in considerable number in museums of Mexican antiquities. Their use is explained by pa.s.sages in the old Mexican writers, who mention that it was customary to mask the idols on the occasion of the king being sick, or of any other public calamity; and that men and women wore masks in some of the religious ceremonies. A fine mask of brown lava (from Mr. Christy's collection), which has been coloured, is here figured. _(See ill.u.s.tration.)_ The mirrors of obsidian have the same beautifully polished surface as the obsidian mask shows; and those made of nodules of pyrites, cut and polished, are worth notice.
The Mexicans were very skilful in making pottery; and of course there is a good collection here of terra-cotta vases, little altars and incense-dishes, rattles, flageolets, and whistles, tobacco-pipes and masks. Some of the large vases, which were formerly filled with skulls and bones, are admirable in their designs and decorations; and many specimens are to be seen of the red and black ware of Cholula, which was famous at the time of the Conquest, and was sent to all parts of the country. The art of glazing pottery seems only to have been introduced by the Spaniards, and to this day the Indians hardly care to use it. The terra-cotta rattles are very characteristic. They have little b.a.l.l.s in them which shake about, and they puzzled us much as the apple-dumpling did good King George, for we could not make out very easily how the b.a.l.l.s got inside. They were probably attached very slightly to the inside, and so baked and then broken loose. We often got little b.a.l.l.s like schoolboys' marbles, among lots of Mexican antiquities, and these were most likely the b.a.l.l.s out of broken rattles.
Burning incense was always an important part of the Mexican ceremonies.
When the white men were on their march to the capital, the inhabitants used to come out to meet them with such plates as we saw here, and burn copal before the leaders; and in Indian villages to this day the procession on saints' days would not be complete without men burning incense, not in regular censers, but in unglazed earthen platters such as their forefathers used.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF AN AZTEC MASK. _Sculptured out of hard brown lava. Twelve inches high; ten inches wide. (From Mr.
Christy's Collection.)_]
Our word _copal_ is the Mexican _copalli_. There are a few other Mexican words which have been naturalized in our European languages, of course indicating that the things they represent came from Mexico.
_Ocelotl_ is _ocelot_; _Tomatl_ is _tomata_; _Chilli_ is the Spanish _chile_ and our _chili_; _Cacahuatl_ is _cacao_ or cocoa; and _Chocolatl_, the beverage made from the cacao-bean with a mixture of vanilla, is our chocolate.
Cacao-beans were used by the Mexicans as money. Even in Humboldt's time, when there was no copper coinage, they were used as small change, six for a halfpenny; and Stephens says the Central Americans use them to this day. A mat in Mexican is _petlatl_, and thence a basket made of matting was called _petlacalli_--”mathouse.” The name pa.s.sed to the plaited gra.s.s cigar-cases that are exported to Europe; and now in Spain any kind of cigar-case is called a _petaca_.
The pretty little ornamented calabashes--used, among other purposes, for drinking chocolate out of--were called by the Mexicans _xicalli_, a word which the Spaniards made into _jicara_, and now use to mean a chocolate-cup; and even the Italians have taken to it, and call a tea-cup a _chicchera_.
There is a well-known West Indian fruit which we call an _avocado_ or _alligator-pear_, and which the French call _avocat_ and the Spaniards _aguacate_. All these names are corruptions of the Aztec name of the fruit, _ahuacatl_.
Vanilla and cochineal were first found in Mexico; but the Spaniards did not adopt the unp.r.o.nounceable native names, _tlilxochitl_ and _nocheztli_. Vanilla, _vainilla_, means a little bean, from _vaina_, which signifies a scabbard or sheath, also a pod. _Cochinilla_ is from _coccus_, a berry, as it was at first supposed to be of vegetable origin. The Aztec name for cochineal, _nocheztli_, means ”cactus-blood,” and is a very apt description of the insect, which has in it a drop of deep crimson fluid, in which the colouring matter of the dye is contained.
The turkey, which was introduced into Europe from Mexico, was called _huexolotl_ from the gobbling noise it makes. (It must be remembered that x and j in Spanish are not the same letters as in English, but a hard guttural aspirate, like the German ch). The name, slightly altered into _guajalote_, is still used in Mexico; but when these birds were brought to Europe, the Spaniards called them peac.o.c.ks (_pavos_). To get rid of the confusion, it became necessary to call the real peac.o.c.k ”_pavon_” (big peac.o.c.k), or ”_pavo real_” (royal peac.o.c.k). The German name for a turkey, ”Walscher Hahn,” ”Italian fowl,” is reasonable, for the Germans got them from Italy; but our name ”turkey” is wonderfully absurd.
There may be other Mexican words to be found in our language, but not many. The Mexicans were cultivating maize and tobacco when the Spaniards invaded the country, and had done so for ages; but these vegetables had been found already in the West India islands, and had got their name from the language of Hayti, _mahiz_ and _tabaco_; the latter word, it seems, meaning not the tobacco itself, but the cigars made of it.
I do not recollect anything else worthy of note that Europe has borrowed from Ancient Mexico, except Botanic Gardens, and dishes made to keep hot at dinner-time, which the Aztecs managed by having a pan of burning charcoal underneath them.