The Stone of the Sun and the First Chapter of the History of Mexico

Front matter

The University of Chicago

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

BULLETIN VI

Starr's Introduction

INTRODUCTION

In the course upon Mexico, which has been given repeatedly to my students at the University of Chicago during the last twenty-five years, we have always devoted some time to the study of the "Aztec Calendar Stone." As a specimen of native American art it is of extraordinary interest; as a mass of symbols, in which the astronomical and chronometric knowledge of the ancient Mexicans is, in a sense, summarized, it is of the highest importance.

It has long been my intention to print a sort of study guide regarding the stone for the use of my students. My plan was to prepare a careful summary of the argument of each and every work who had seriously attempted to interpret the stone; to arrange these summaries in chronological order; to subject them to critical investigation in order to extract from them what appear to be final conclusions; to add some original suggestions as to significance; and, finally, to point out what further study was necessary in order to a full understanding of the monument.

While I delayed, another worker has done a task so nearly like the one I proposed that mine seems no longer necessary. Mr. Enrique Juan Palacios, of the City of Mexico, has presented a paper, entitled La Piedra del Sol y el primer capitulo de la historia de México, before the Sociedad Cientifica "Antonio Alzate," which has been printed in its Memorias. It is an admirable piece of work. I have felt that it would be better for me to translate it into English than to write a new work. Nor have I thought it desirable to recast his work or to alter it. I still think that, for students in a class, my method—presenting complete summaries of the ideas of each author, before attempting study of details—is preferable, but I present Señor Palacios' work as he made it. I have omitted some sentences or paragraphs which did not in any way affect either his argument or his conclusions; there are also a few verbal changes and one or two additions, but these have been made by the author himself and have been translated from his copy.

Señor Palacios has made an actual contribution to our knowledge of the Calendar Stone. This is not to say I am as yet prepared to accept each and all of his suggestions. His long-continued and capable study, however, deserves and earns serious consideration of his views. Faithful examination of his work will show students what may be accepted as settled; it will also indicate what problems remain to be solved.

Frederick Starr

Chicago June 21, 1921

Palacios' Introduction

THE STONE OF THE SUN AND THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE HISTORY OF MEXICO

The famous stone of the Archaeological Museum of Mexico, from the moment of its discovery, has given occasion that men of ability and eminence should interest themselves in it.

Rare must be the traveler who does not admire the architecture of the metropolitan cathedral, whose towers, crowned by bell-shaped terminations, majestically distinguish it among all the basilicas of the world. It was precisely the author of a considerable part of this façade, and in particular of the towers, Don José Damián Ortiz de Castro, who made the discovery of the stone, under the pavement of the Plaza Principal, on the seventeenth of December of the year 1790.

They were about to bury it anew, imitating an archbishop who two centuries before had been guilty of so strange a blunder; fortunately the viceroy of the colony at the time was a man of the character of the second Count of Revillagigedo, Don Juan Vincente de Güemes Pacheco de Padilla. This able and progressive governor opposed the execution of their plan, ordering that educated individuals should take charge of the stone, that they should measure and study it, and that it should be transported to the Royal University and placed in a public place “where it should be forever preserved as a notable monument of Indian antiquity.” With this act the said ruler, one of the most illustrious that New Spain ever had, once more demonstrated that talent and discretion of which he gave so many proofs.

The first to examine the monument with the interest and the scientific rigor which the work merited, and the first to draw and reproduce, with sufficient fidelity, the complicated relief figures upon it, was the illustrious Mexican astronomer, Don Antonio de León y Gama. This same modest and eminent savant was also the first to formulate an interpretation of the figures engraved upon the face of the monument; and his study with reference to it is of such sort that, although not final nor entirely correct, it has not only given the basis for all subsequent scientific studies, but remains a classic in the matter. Even today, when the decipherment of the monument goes largely along paths which León y Gama did not indicate, the thesis of the illustrious author is partly sustained and will always be an important treatise of the subject.

The admirable monolith could not fail to attract the attention of a man like Baron Alexander von Humboldt. He examined it in great detail, being the first to classify its petrographic nature in scientific terms, earlier indicated with fair accuracy by the prolific writer, Don José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez, and finally determined with the precision of modern methods by the distinguished geologist, Don Ezequiel Ordóñez, who refers it to the group of olivine basalts. Humboldt confirmed also the weight which Gama had attributed to the stone by means of ingenious calculations, and reproduced the drawing made by the same scholar, illustrating with it one of the pages of his beautiful Vues des Cordilléres. So far as concerned interpretation, he accepts completely the thesis of León y Gama (as thirty years later did a man of the ability of Albert Gallatin, who also made use of the drawing of our archaeologist), presenting it at length and fully discussing the chronological system of the aborigines and their theony and cosmogony. The vast knowledge of the German writer and his extensive journeys suggested to him various relations between the constructors of the stone, the Asiatics, and peoples of Southern America, an idea fecund in a certain way, but which has brought more ills than advantages to our archaeology, leading many investigators to devote their energies to tracing foreign affinities, instead of studying in themselves the products of the culture of Anahuac.

From that time up to near the end of the nineteenth century, no figure of first rank returned to the attempt of lifting the veil under which was hidden the guarded secret of the famous stone. Set in the lower part of the eastern tower of the basilica, savants and travelers coming from all parts of the world filed before the mysterious reliefs during more than a hundred years, contemplating it some with curiosity, some with wonder, all with admiration. It was there about 1805, when the talented Moxo relates that the common herd diverted itself with battering its figures and designs, although the learned “have not ceased to view it with the greatest astonishment and respect, considering it an original document which testifies to the notable knowledge of astronomy and geometry of the ancient Mexicans.”

There, with permission of Don Lucas Alamán, at the time minister of state, W. Bullock, proprietor of the museum of London, took a mold of it for the first time, which he successfully transported to his institution. The traveler relates that at that time (1823) the people of Mexico called the monument reloj de Moctezuma ("Montezuma's watch"), a statement which Brantz Mayor repeats in his work Mexico as It Was and Is (1844). Gama's drawing is reproduced in both books. (We may add that today excellent molds of the relief exist in the American Museum of Natural History of New York and in other foreign institutions.) There also was taken one of the most perfect existing photographs of the stone, which adorns the pages of the great work Monumentos del Arte Mexicano Antiguo; there also the expert and notable artist, Don José María Velasco, drew it with his customary fidelity and precision. Finally in the year 1885, the monument was transported to the place which it now occupies in the grand salon of the Museum of Archaeology.

At about this time, the able archaeologist, talented and illustrious historian, and eminent man of letters, Alfredo Chavero, produced a most brilliant disquisition, which for many years changed the course of ideas regarding the monument. Fundamentally contrary to the theory of Gama, although agreeing with it in some details, this study possesses very interesting aspects; nevertheless, rather than an adequate decipherment of the hieroglyphs it is a demonstration of the vast knowledge of Chavero in the general topics of archaeological science.

Following so luminous a work, there are no studies truly worthy of being taken into consideration, except that of Don Dionisio Abadiano, prolix and minute beyond any other, sufficiently erudite also, but in almost its entirety aberrant and full of inacceptable subtleties and arguments as distorted as arbitrary. We will say nothing very different of the work of Felipe J. Valentini, without denying, however, the merit of his other works to the German doctor.

As little can we admit, well elaborated and estimable as may be the work (The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations) in which it is propounded, the thesis of Señora Zelia Nuttall, investigator to whom the archaeological science of Mexico owes so many services. The distinguished Americanist claims in essence that the central part of the monolith represents the circumpolar zone of the celestial vault, the naolin and the four rectangles comprised in it being an allegory of the movements of the Great Bear, which form apparently the cross or Buddhist swastika gyrating around the Pole Star, center of the system whose strange and notable fixity was the origin of the worship which the aborigines and other peoples

Description and First Explanations

which contain the representation of the cosmogonic ages into which the indigenes arranged the history of the world, form this allegory. The figures sculptured in the said frames carry, all of them, four numerals; their symbolism has given rise to important studies ever since the time of Gama and especially by the learned archaeologist, Don Alfredo Chavero.

Artistically developed between the rectangular frames, with the shaft end downward and the point showing the meridian of the place, there is distinguished an arrow of elegant drawing at whose extremities above and below, to right and left, are read the dates Ce técpatl (with its attendant, Tletl) and below Ce quiáhuitl and Ome or Chicome ozomatli. Circumscribed, at the end of the arrow, and between the face and the claws of Tonatiuh, are glyphs and numerals of which we shall speak later. We may add that the very position of the arrow is sufficient proof that the monolith was placed vertically, and not horizontally.

Comprised within the same circle, to the right and the left of the rectangular frames of the naolin, are noted four great numerals. These do not relate to the said sign (which, by its very form, implicitly carries the name "four movements"), but to the face sculptured at the center of the stone. This being the old sun and being figured in a chronographic figure, a native of those times would without vacillation assign to it the value corresponding to it: it is the huehuetiliztli or century of the Indians, double and sacred cycle, which the ancient Mexicans called old duration or age; therefore the four numerals indicate four huehuetiliztli, which are 416 years. Such was the motive for not having figured Tonatiuh as in other representations, with a face radiant with life, but with the appearance of age; the stone confirms this repeatedly, as we shall see further on.

Sahagún, speaking of this chronological period and of its importance, expresses himself as follows:

The larger period of time which they counted was 104 years, and they called this count an age, and the half of it, which are 52 years, they called a bundle of years. This method of counting the years they had brought down from antiquity; it is not known when it began; but they held it for certain and as a belief that the world had to come to an end with the conclusion of one of these bundles of years, and they had a prediction and oracle that then the movement of the heavens had to cease, and they took as a sign the movement of the Pleiades on the night of this festival, which they called toxiumolpilia. In the central figure of the monument then it is not a question of the simple representation of the star of day; it treats rather of the chief chronological cycle of the aboriginal cultures, the true century or age of the Indians, as Sahagún tells us. The artist attempted to indicate, and in this face of an old man does perfectly indicate, a huehuetiliztli, a double xiuhtlalpilli: 104 years. The thought could not be better coneived nor better expressed.

Let us add that below the arrow there is another numeral; but it is not as large as the previous four, nor is it worked out in exactly the same way. Without doubt it should not be computed in the same fashion.

Let us consider the following circle, which is the third of the relief. Its description offers no difficulties, and its interpretation is the ABC of archaeological studies. It contains the twenty characters of the native month, symbols which—as they constitute the foundation of the calendars of the Nahua, Maya, Zapotec, Matlatzinca, and other races which vary in the designative terms, agreeing in the roots—we ought to consider as a common legacy from a civilizing population which served as a trunk to all the others. The signs begin with Cipactli and end with Xochitl. Mrs. Nuttall sees in these characters symbols of the native zodiac, and we do not consider the idea (suggested previously, more or less explicitly, by Boturini, Veytia, Fábrega, Orozco y Berra, del Paso y Troncoso and Chavero) absurd. The order is that well known from the monuments and the codices, to-wit:

Cipactli | Miquiztli | Ozomatli | Cozcacuáuhtli

Ehécatl | Mázatl | Malinalli | Ollin

Calli | Tochtli | Acatl | Técpatl

Cuetzpallin | Atl | Océlotl | Quiáhuitl

Cóatl | Itzcuintli | Cuáuhtli | Xóchitl

We may add that the style of the Cipactli appears here a somewhat peculiar one. Supporting themselves on this circle, and dividing the following one, display themselves four magnificent rays or pointers with curved base, which by their position indicate the principal divisions of the day: midday (Nepantla Tonatiuh), midnight (Yohual-nepantla), the hour of sunset (Tonaqui Tonatiuh), and that of dawn (Iquiza Tonatiuh). Gama established this symbolism.

Alternating with these, but less in size an with support upon the following circle, are other four rays, but with base not curved but straight, which express the following hours. Yet smaller and resting upon the following zone are seen eight asps between the rays described; they indicate, surely, a smaller subdivision of time. In total, the day of the aborigines was distributed into 16 hours of 90 minutes each.

The fourth zone or circle contains two hundred dots distributed in groups of five (each group in a little frame) which are commonly designated with the term of quintiduos (“quintettes”). In the asps already mentioned (six of which are entirely visible and two concealed in such a manner as induces us to assign the same elements to them) are eight quintiduos, giving a total of forty dots. We ought yet to add the ten circumscribed in the arrow of the naolin and the ten placed between the face and the claws of the Tonatiuh. These last are dots like the others; but the necessities of distribution of the relief do not permit their being arranged in an actually identical form. Altogether they sum up to two hundred and sixty numerals of equal kind, a reading already made by archaeologists.

Until now it has been assumed that the elements in question represent the tonalámatl or cecempohualli, fundamental computation of native chronology. Nevertheless, this is an error. Further than the fact that that appears inscribed in another part of the relief, the distribution of the 260 numerals in groups of five, and not of thirteen, dots demonstrates by itself alone that we are not here dealing with the sacred book composed fundamentally of thirteens. The dots in question denote years, not days as has been supposed; and if they appear distributed in fives it is because they allued to years of the planet Venus, that is to say, the synodical movements of that planet, five of which form a cycle in the calendar of the aborigines for reasons which we shall explain later.

The dots of the fourth circle, joined with the other elements of the same kind which may be read in the relief, represent then a period of 260 Venus years. Taking the synodical revolution of the planet as very close to 584 days, the total amounts to 151,840 days, or 416 solar years, great cycle of the aboriginal chronology, repeatedly figured in the monolith, as we shall see in the sequel. It is inferred that the Indians carried on simultaneously two calendars, that of the star of day and that of Venus, and by their combination they computed the course of time; in this method, with puerly astronomical elements, they formed their system of chronology.

Interrupted in its turn by the great and small rays, the fifth circle is formed of eight zones or glyphs which archaeologists have agreed in considering solar. Six of these zones contain ten glyphs, and each of the other two contain five: in all there are seventy glyphs of the same kind, to which are added the three which border each of the eight asps before mentioned, and the ten, a little smaller but of identical form, placed between the face and the talons of Tonatiuh. In total, they sum 104 solar glyphs, indicative of so many other years. Here as little is it a question of days, as the archaeologists have claimed, identifying dissimilar glyphs of the relief in order to compute the 365 days of the year: a procedure arbitrary and of course illogical in a work of the magnitude of the one we consider here. In reality the circle expresses the Indian century, or huehuetiliztli, period already read in the face of the center. Later we shall see the motive for the repetition of the cipher.

Nothing concrete has been said until now about the following circle. Some call the figures that compose it temples; others have seen them to resemble leaves or mountains; some simply call them little arches; but no one has penetrated their exact significance. In the most authorized descriptions they have generally been designated with the descriptive term “pentagons” (Chavero) or “trapeziodal figures,” symbolism of the most general kind having been attributed to them. If in passing beyond the third zone Peñafiel has said that the archaeologist entered upon the field of conjecture, with respect to this zone, the sixth in the relief, it may be affirmed that up to the present it has been enveloped in impenetrable mystery.

The monolith has no more interesting glyphs. Their number, their distribution, the form of the figure say sufficiently what they represent. They appear in four groups, separated by the great solar rays. The two upper groups present thirteen signs; and each one of the lower, twelve, it being necessary to presume the missing one, hidden by the plumes of the serpents which adorn this part of the stone. In total they sum up four groups of thirteen glyphs of the same form, the significance of which is somewhat of the most important which the relief contains; there is concentrated not only its own significance, but that of many of the other aboriginal monuments. It explains the tenacity with which the glyphs guard their secret.

The archaeologists have said that the characters of which we treat are a kind of pentagons. Without being such, speaking precisely, they may be considered as made up of five somewhat irregular sides; there is noticed, at the same time, the concavity of the inferior side. This is the figure of the jewel of Quetzalcóatl, as may be seen in many representations: on pages 42 and 59 of the Codex Borgiano, which represents of great size the double morning and evening star; in the beautiful statue belonging to the Trocadero Museum; on page 16 of the Codex Borbonico; on page 17 of the Codex Vaticanus A; and in others of the Codex Telleriano Remense, etc. The jewel shows an elegant outline with five indentations or side, "figure de cinco angulos," as Sahagún says, and is slightly concave below. In converting itself into a chronographic glyph, it received many conventionalizations—Hamy has described them minutely in his The Jewel of the Wind—which we may see in the monuments; but all are alike in the important details.

Ah well, was it a result of fancy or was it due to deliberate intention that this form attaches to the jewel of the deity? The more important pictographs (e.g., the Dresden Codex) reveal this practice of the tonalpouhque: to take as a unity the five years of the planet which make a running with eight solar years. Such was the origin of the festival of atamalqualiztli, celebrated at the end of this term. The unity thus formed was repeated thirteen times, as we see in the Dresden Codex itself (p. 24), in the Cospi, in the Borgian, in Vaticanus B, and in other documents, The conjunct equals 65 years of the planet, exactly equal to 104 solar, by virtue of the well-known equations:

584 | × | 5 | = | 365 | × | 8 | = | 2,920 | days

584 | × | 65 | = | 365 | × | 104 | = | 37,960 | days

The form of the jewel is allegorical of the five movements of Venus, which make cycle with the eight years of the sun; corroborating it, see the eight dots at the bottom of the representation of the double star on page 59 of the Borgian Codex; see eight solar glyphs under the face of the stone figure of Tepezuntla (commonly called Tzontémoc) corresponding to the five circles which the same beautiful figure has upon the forehead. That this stone represents Quetzalcóatl (the star Venus) in his descent of eight days into hell, the form of the ear ornament, which is typical, manifests without a doubt.

But there was another motive for dividing the jewel of the deity into five parts or distributing it into five points. In developing the calendar of the star, the periods of 584 days are begun with the symbols Cipactli, Cóatl, Atl, Acatl, and Ollin, and continuing the series of Venus years, the same characters are repeated in identical order, giving for result that of the twenty day signs of the native month; only five preside over the revolutions of the star, a fact discovered by the learned Seler. The number results eminently symbolical of the planet. We have then a little cycle of five revolutions of Venus equal to eight solar years, which are 2,920 days. Each of the frames inclosing five dots, each of the little pentagons, expresses this chronological value. Supposing the planet at the beginning of its matutinal apparition or its heliacal rising, it will have recovered the identical position, with respect to the star of day, at the termination of the cycle. The fact is a phenomenon of astronomical observation which could not pass unobserved to scrutinizers of the heavens like the Indians: an in order to commemorate it, they celebrated the festival atamalqualiztli of which Sahagún speaks. But we have seen that this unity is repeated thirteen times. There are two reasons for this: one, to equal with Venus years the great period of 104 solar years, a cycle equivalent to 65 synodical movements of the planet; the other, to equalize the two calendars, because when five Venus years have passed, the sixth commences anew with Cipactli, but this character goes this second time not accompanied by the numeral 1, but by 9, necessitating that the five years shall be repeated thirteen times, in order that Cipactli should return to be accompanied by 1, as at the beginning of the period, and the commencement of the one and the other calendar.

The cause of this phenomenon is known. The tonalámatl, that is to say, the series of twenty thirteens, run through the book of the planet the same as through that of the sun, calendars, one and the other, which are made up by the combination of thirteen numbers in order with the twenty day characters, so that these may not be confounded on being repeated. As the number 584 does not contain an exact number of thirteens, there are twelve units over in the first Venus year, eleven in the next, ten in the next, and so on successively, so that Cipactli comes to be accompanied by different numerals, the thirteen times that it begins the year, until the 65 counts of the planet's calendar are complete. Although all archaeologists know this, we copy anew the distribution of the thirteens and of the day characters in the computation which we are considering.

Figures which accompany the initial signs of the Venus year, in a series of 65 years:

Cipactli | 1 | — | 9 | — | 4 | — | 12 | — | 7 | — | 2 | — | 10 | — | 5 | — | 13 | — | 8 | — | 3 | — | 11 | — | 6

Cóatl | 13 | — | 8 | — | 3 | — | 11 | — | 6 | — | 1 | — | 9 | — | 4 | — | 12 | — | 7 | — | 2 | — | 10 | — | 5

Atl | 12 | — | 7 | — | 2 | — | 10 | — | 5 | — | 13 | — | 8 | — | 3 | — | 11 | — | 6 | — | 1 | — | 9 | — | 4

Acatl | 11 | — | 6 | — | 1 | — | 9 | — | 4 | — | 12 | — | 7 | — | 2 | — | 10 | — | 5 | — | 13 | — | 8 | — | 3

Ollin | 10 | — | 5 | — | 13 | — | 8 | — | 3 | — | 11 | — | 6 | — | 1 | — | 9 | — | 4 | — | 12 | — | 7 | — | 2

With the beginning of the 66th year of the series, Cipactli, with the numeral 1, returns to begin the count like that of the 37,960 days passed, and on this same day the sign with the same number gives beginning to the 105th year of the solar calendar; one and the other count are thus adjusted to each other. Serving as a base to both the tonalámatl finds itself exactly at its first day:

584×65=365×104=260×146

Now we may understand the thirteen pentagons inscribed in each one of the four parts of the circle of the monument. They denote the number of times that the five characters enter as initials of the Venus year in one huehuetiliztli. They figure in this fashion thirteen times, and just so many times was celebrated in said cycle the festival of the planet, atamalqualiztli, always coinciding with Cipactli. And that the intention of the astronomer-director of the engraving of the relief was to inscribe this number of glyphs, is plainly seen in the upper groups of the sixth circle; without aesthetic prejudice and almost compelled by the demand of symmetry, other pentagons might very well have been located in the space covered by the bands which issue from the serpents' tails. The artist might, with the greatest good taste, have placed six glyphs in this double empty space, but he deliberately prolonged the bands instead. His proposition could not be made more manifest The purpose was the engraving of a number, not of an ornament. This suffices to show us that there are no simply decorative signs in the relief, incomparable synthesis of art and science.

But there are four groups of Venus cycles, four zones of thirteen pentagons. To what necessity of the system can this repetition correspond? The synodical movement of Venus being taken as 584 days, there result 37,960 for each group, or 151,840 for the total of 52 pentagons of the circle. This period represents exactly 416 solar years. In other terms, if each group signifies 65 Venus years, equivalent, as we know, to a huehuetiliztli, the four correspond to as many sacred cycles, winch is what is indicated by the great numerals that surround the head of Tonatiuh, comfortably to the interpretation which we have already given. One and another circle, the second and the sixth, say exactly the same thing: 416 solar years. The fourth zone expresses an equal thing: 260 Venus years, number which is considered sacred. Everything in the monolith concurs in declaring one single and well-considered thought; we shall speak of its origin and admire its profundity and transcendence. Meantime we say, as proof that we are not dealing merely with arbitrary theories or purely speculative systems, that the numbers 37,960 and 151,840 appear in the Dresden Codex. Förstemann, its able interpreter, has read them in that admirable astronomical book.