Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/82

 life, open their throats, and have upon themselves indications of time past and data of that which ought to follow.

Our reading of the flames offers this surprising result: it indicates the date 4992, date mentioned in Ixtlilxóchitl as the end of the third age of the world. By error, in the edition made by Chavero, the date 4996 appears; but as the Texcocan chronicler himself adds that between this date and that of 5097 or Ce técpatl, with which the Toltecs began their era, there was an interval of 104 years, it is evident that the year is 4992. This is that which the flames of the relief indicate; the value which we have attributed to them is thus confirmed. Adding the number of 104 years, of the meeting of the heads, we arrive exactly at the 5096 of the world in the chronology of the Indians, which was a 13-ácatl year.

This last date being inscribed in the frame which the two serpents indicate with the tips of their tails, it appears to us that the stone says what is here read: that the number of the year figured in the body of the symbolical beings is 5,096. In other words, that the date in question was 13-ácatl.

Moreover, our reading shows what device was employed by the Indians to escape the defect of their system, which causes the dates of each 52 years to become confounded with each other: to repeat them in different modes, when they were important. Thus every reason for equivocation ceases.

n) Many authors have seen in the glyphs of the projection of the monolith the Milky Way or the symbol of the firmament. They appear in analogous fashion in other monuments, such as the stone called the stone of Tizoc and a multitude of cuauhxicalli. They are técpatl which face each other and figures in which we see the constellation Itzpapálotl. There are in the museum many stones where the butterfly occupies the principal place in a large sculptured surface.

The said signs in the relief counted, and attributing to them the value which, in consonance with the rest of the interpretation, ought to correspond to them, the date 4992 before read is repeated. There are thirty-two butterflies and thirty-two groups of técpatl, that is to say 64 elements of the last class. The fact that these face each other might strengthen the thesis that the monument expresses Toltec conceptions. We know that that people began their chronological counts by técpatl. Ah well, if a xipoualli (cycle of 52 years) began with the day Ce técpatl in a year of the same name, the first day of the following