Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/77

 calli, tochtli, reading which has escaped the interpreters. They are the classic names of the chronological series: therefore they appear in the serpent of time.

Ah well, the total number of the bars attains exactly to 416, a fact which could not be a mere coincidence. There are 52 groups in each serpent, distributed as follows:

Groups of four little bars:

In total, there are 52 groups of little bars in each serpent; summed, they give 416 years, most eloquent and irrefutable confirmation of our interpretation. The first beginning with the character Ce técpatl controlling, as the copilli shows, will conclude on the day 13-ácatl.

The stone presents a curious anomaly; in the mandible of the solar serpent there are four groups of little bars; but in that of Quetzalcóatl, a profane hand has attempted to place a fifth group, which has made the reproducers of the relief commit errors. Gama did not see these little bars of the heads and omits them in his drawing, otherwise sufficiently correct. Who could be the author of such an offense? Someone who had access to the monolith for having it modeled or some other circumstance; but as he lacked the skill of the natives, he made the group visibly imperfect, the bars result much more narrow, and they do not show the clear relief which without exception the others show. What was the object of the offense? To combine some of those arbitrary periods—Egyptian, Persian, Chaldean, or Hebrew—which they had desired to read on the Toltec relief. Always the archaeological discord of affinities with the Old World damaging the knowledge of autochthonous things!