Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/62

 Gama states that Ome ácatl was a deity and a particularly propitious sign, for which reason they placed his sign anywhere possible.

But it is a fact what, the more carefully it is examined, the sign in question is not a cane. Chavero himself came to that conclusion, and radically changing his view, claimed that the sign was técpatl and that it referred to Mars, planet symbolized in the central face; a thesis in all points arbitrary. (See the work Dioses astronómicos de los antiguos Mexicanos.) Neither does the glyph have anything of técpatl nor does it symbolize Mars, but the star Venus; nor can the image at the center of the stone, with the splendid rays which surround it, be confounded with anything except the radiant face of Tonatiuh.

Incapable of categorically undoing the difficulty, we will only venture a conjecture: the glyph considered is that distinctive of the orb itself, since it also appears on the forehead of the solar snake of the same relief. The numerals might indicate that the chronological value of the face ought to be taken twice in some computation. What might this be? The central zone of the relief, circumscribed by the serpents, by its position on the face of the monument easily denotes the present epoch, or the historic sun. In this, of course, there should continue, as in the previous ones, 1664 years. The elements of the circles which compose it (and this is explained by the repetition, at first sight without object) actually give the number:

c) Of the cosmogonic ages figured in the four rectangles, we know nothing to add to the masterly study of Don Alfredo Chavero; but we understand him to have erred as to their duration, determined by the very numerals inscribed in the rectangles. The illustrious archaeologist did not restrict his attention to them, preferring to resort to the chronology of the Vatican Codex, not entirely happy in our judgment. We have elsewhere stated that each dot represents 416 years, and the four 1,664, datum confirmed in Ixtlilóchiti and by the