Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/24

 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:

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.