Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/65

 believes another thing: that the dates indicate the days on which the sun passes by the zenith of the city (May 17 and June 26), which is possible and can be tested by experiment; but it cannot be fitted with the theory that the stone had to be placed horizontally. Various modern interpreters of the stone have fallen into this error; adopting in general the explanation of the dates proposed by Gama, they claim that the stone had to be laid down, as Chavero affirms; without observing that the theory of the first archaeologist requires the vertical position of the monolith. Only so can the shadows be produced.

Concerning the symbol Ce técpatl, placed in a prominent part, near to the face of the sun, we know that it represents the beginning of the chronology, beginning of the creation, and the first day of the fourth age of the world, which was the present one for the constructor race (Toltec or Aztec). For such a reason it bears the mamalhuaztli, glyph of the new fire. The count begun with this character necessarily concludes in 13-ácatl, the date inscribed in the frame at the top of the monolith, at the end of 52, 104, 416, and 624, 1,040 or 1,664 years. And all these cycles are read in the stone, but especially that of 416. The nature of the system determines this result, in which may be seen the capital idea of the relief, although omitting the reading of dates alluding to concrete incidents; the present age, begun in Ce técpatl (for this reason the copilli, royal symbol, accompanies the character—idea of Señor del Paso y Troncoso communicated to Señor Batres, although this archaeologist believed that the symbol ruled only one tlalpilli) will end on the day 13-ácatl, upon the completion of the development of the serpent of time.

We repeat that in this may be seen the culminating reading of the relief, and the conception harmonizes perfectly with what we know of the cosmogony and chronology of the Toltecs, with so much the more reason as the initial character of the computations of the Aztecs was tochtli, and not técpatl. The thesis that the monument expresses the ideas and history of that people possesses without doubt extreme substantiality. Nevertheless, it is not absurd to admit that 780 years, of the present historic epoch, the fourth in any case, had passed at the moment of working the stone, 624 of the scales affected by the half-circles, until the founding of Tenochtitlan, in the year 13-ácatl (1323), and 156 more which we take from the dots of the edge or cylindrical projection. With these there is reached the year 1479 (13-ácatl also) of Axayácatl. Because we must agree that the half-circles and the dots were placed with some object, such a mode of