Part 39 (1/2)
The subjoined detached pa.s.sages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of pole-star wors.h.i.+ppers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who, according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe but also to America.(153) Hewitt bases the latter a.s.sertion upon the ident.i.ty be perceived ”between Akkadian and American mythological traditions.”
As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias, related to the Zunis), as ”Mexican” (see vol. II, p. 243, etc.), a term which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the truly Mexican, ”teo-c.i.p.actli” as a ”fish-G.o.d” is unfortunate, as numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that c.i.p.actli signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an ident.i.ty of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake of gaining information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt's further a.s.sertion that ”the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators known by the Greeks as the Phnicians ... and who continued in their new land, America, the wors.h.i.+p of the rain G.o.d, to whom, as their fathers in central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross” (Hewitt, p. 492).
”The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-wors.h.i.+ppers who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia, as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the mother-G.o.ddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill; who is also wors.h.i.+pped as the mother Maga under the form of the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem.” In Essay VIII Hewitt states that these ”sons of the great witch-mother Maga” lived in Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the ”city of the Magnetes” referred to by Plato as ”the mother of laws.” The word mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. II, p. 54).
The Maya and Mexican fire altars and sockets and their a.s.sociation with the earth-mother and alligator in the native Codices has been discussed. The Mexican day-sign c.i.p.actli figures an alligator and is a.s.sociated with a female deity. The alligator altar at Copan, is described on p. 228. Were it not for limit of s.p.a.ce additional testimony could be cited here, proving that in Mexico the alligator was a.s.sociated with the mother of the race, the fire-socket, and was a tribal totem.
”As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of towns.... They adored the G.o.d of the twirling or churning fire-drill....
They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and thunder G.o.d and star-G.o.d who guides the stars in their courses and rules the beginning of the year” (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian ”Ukko is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly mountain” (vol. II, p. 155).
Compare Ku in Maya list, appendix III, also Tezcatli-poca or puca=Mexican fire-drill G.o.d, Ursa Major.
”They wors.h.i.+pped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of Naga=the Nahushas. They wors.h.i.+pped the Pleiades=the mother stars....”
The Nahuas traced ancestry to seven stars of Ursa Major and began their religious year at the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight.
”The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phnicians ... the red men, who wors.h.i.+pped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North, Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the Akkadians, Egyptians and Kus.h.i.+tes.... They reverenced the sacred 'shu'
stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the world ... as the sacred Shu stone.”
It should be added here that the Hitt.i.te sign for Ishtar was a triangle enclosing a stone: ”the mountain enclosing the stone of life.”
About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(_cf._ Kukul) under a great chief or lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. 206). In Mexico the name for turquoise is xiuitl and the G.o.d of fire is named Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is a.s.sociated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-G.o.ddess. The spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol of generation.
”Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uraeus serpent as a sign of royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so widely distant from one another as India and Egypt....”
We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200), that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief survived in Phnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found amongst the Semites. ”Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an animal, plant or heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of Nahash, 'or the serpent,' the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest and decimation of the latter.”
The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open serpent's jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured on the Central American stelae and bas-reliefs. The existence of totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the arbitrary method by which it was established by the Incas of Peru, when they founded the new colony, has been described.
”... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling air-G.o.d who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the Abyss, the a.s.syrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the magical rain-pole, called the G.o.d Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in front of every house ...” (p. 194). ”They are the Canaanites, or dwellers in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the race of Achaeans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent, the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the G.o.ds”
(Hewitt, p. 175).
Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. 56), whose bodies may be seen to consist of a repet.i.tion of the conventional sign for tlalli=land, consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These girdling serpents, whose heads unite, being directly a.s.sociated with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as springing from the sign Acatl (see p. 257).
On the other hand, the heavenly ”feathered serpent” of Mexico and Yucatan is distinctly a.s.sociated with the air and the circle; its conception curiously coinciding with that of the ”girdling air-G.o.d” mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet, but also on the allegorical figure of the ”Divine Serpent,” which may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake tribe, a.s.sociated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their name. The undeniable a.s.sociation, in Mexico, of the serpent with Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the ”sons of Achis, the serpent”=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.
In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man, the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned ”... his people had replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple, the home and symbol of the creating G.o.d, who had been the pillar of the house.... But in their eyes the father-G.o.d was not the central pillar but the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the gates of G.o.d.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts-the pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of religious festivals.”
Twin pillars, sculptured in the form of great serpents, whose names signify twins.h.i.+p, support the entrances to the ancient temples of Yucatan, Central America, and have been found on the site of the Great Temple of Mexico. The Mexican and Maya accounts of the culture hero Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan state that he and his followers were ”great necromancers” and magicians and that they taught handicrafts, metallurgy, and inst.i.tuted calendar, social organization and ritual. A personal, close examination of a large number of old Peruvian and Mexican as well as Coptic textile fabrics, has convinced me moreover of their ident.i.ty of technique.
”The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human sacrifices in order to obtain rain” (Hewitt).
”The Phnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices were made, to Moloch or Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice and the victim's cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes” (Sayce).
The human sacrifices of Mexico are familiar to all. The native dog and various kinds of birds were sacrificed. The Mexican priests, named papas, wore long hair, practised asceticism, gashed their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, arms and legs and pierced their ears and tongues. On the Palenque bas-reliefs, priests with long hair are sculptured. The human sacrifices of Mexico and those of Egypt, Phnicia and a.s.syria, described by Sayce and Hewitt (pp. 275 and 348), are closely alike. See also Hewitt's account of the blood brotherhood made between the sacrificer and the land on which the blood is poured (p. 196), and the Chichimec blood sacrifice described in the present work, p. 66.