Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/31

 Iriarte, who devoted four months to the work in order to illustrate a study of Señor Leopoldo Batres—copied this and some of the other elements with exactness, it is because, the meaning of the glyphs being unknown, their number and complicated distribution easily caused them to make errors. Further on we shall say in what the principal errors have consisted and shall speak of one very curious artificial anomaly of the stone.

We have still to explain the signs which form the scales or divisions or the body of the serpents and to count the numeral dots placed at the border of the stone and around the said divisions. Concerning those Beyer and other archaeologists maintain that they are symbolizations of fire. We have no reason to deny it; but our own opinion is that together they indicate the number of cycles or meetings of Venus and the sun, registered in the firmament and in the calendar departing from some certain date; later we shall see what this may be. With respect to the dots, Señor Chavero counted them and interpreted them well, finding in them the number of days in the native year. Nothing more logical: the cyclical coincidence of the 104 solar years and 65 Venus years is effected by the aggregation, one after the other, of series of 365 days. It was natural to place these dots where we find them. And they do not find themselves duplicated in the two serpents because it is the common element of both reckonings; it was sufficient to inscribe them once.

We, however, differ somewhat from Señor Chavero in our way of counting them. There are ten dots each in as many scales, there are eighteen in the single scale which follows the tyings or ligatures, twelve more are circumscribed in the triangle which forms the tail. In sum there are 130 dots on each side, or 260 in going all around, which gives us the fundamental basis of the chronology: the tonalámatl. If, on the other hand, we count the 63 large points of the border of the stone, added to the hundred of the first ten scales, we have 163 numerals, and with the 18 which follow the tyings, they sum up 181 on each side, or 362 in the entire circumference; almost hidden within the claws of the first scale (the first on each side, of course) are two other points, that is, four altogether. In sum there are 366. This is the result which we obtain, and thus we shall state it, even if in this case it appears a little defective; but we do not attempt, as some interpreters, to fit the facts to our theories, but from the facts themselves to infer the true decipherment. It might be admitted that this last dot signifies the intercalated day: the native bissextile.