Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/55

 date, as we might say the year in which they made the celebration of the event. This was the one always recorded in their annals by the Indians, who customarily made them fall upon the termination of a cycle.

Some other Aztec date ought to be found upon the relief. Persecuted and miserable as the Aztecs were at the time of the foundation of their city, the Mexicans were not in condition to work so grand a monument. And if they erected it later, it is clear that they would have desired to mark the date of the work. All peoples proceed in this way in a similar case.

Let us seek this date. Around the cylinder, over the projected part, there are 156 dots in a continuous series, which we may understand as so many other numerals. If we add them to the date 5720, we reach the 5876 of the native calendar. Singular fact! That year is precisely 1479 of our era, in which it is said that the emperor Axayácatl inaugurated a commemorative stone. From 1323, date of the foundation of Mexico, to 1479 precisely 156 years passed, the date of the commemoration being again a 13-ácatl. Is this merely a coincidence? Is the monolith of the museum then the stone of Axayácatl?

According to whether the procedure whereby we have found these last dates appears forced or legitimate, may be repudiated or accepted those which we suggest as Aztec marks; in any event, the dates directly expressed are of the Toltec chronology.

The reader will decide whether the 156 points may be interpreted as has been said. In any case, the monument expresses the Indian chronological system and cosmogony, the centuries of 104 years and the cycles of 416, the era of 1040 and that of 1664, begun, all these periods, with the character Ce técpatl and ended in 13-ácatl. Such a reading which is indisputable, suffices to constitute it, in the highest sense, the text par excellence which the aboriginal civilizations beve left us. We may add that it is the key of the great monuments, codices, and inscriptions before enigmatical: the Rosetta Stone of Mexican archaeology. It permits the inference that those fundamental concepts, everywhere distributed, were the common property of many primitive families, who received them from one civilizing people, trunk of the cultures anterior to the discovery of America.

Moreover, there is one kind of considerations relative to the date which we have supposed of the Aztecs which we ought not to omit.