Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/104

96 Among the ruins was found a stone, one of the two above mentioned, inscribed with characters. Of this a cast was taken, and sent to New York. The stone was one metre sixty-two centimetres high, and twenty-six centimetres wide. The inscription on it represents the king, Cocom, who was tributary to Chaacmol, king of Chichen-Itza, and whose portrait, full-length, is on the castle wall of Chichen. Dr. Le Plongeon writes:—

"Next we will meet him in the reception-room of Queen Kinich-Kakmo, the wife and sister of the great King Chaacmol. That king, Cocom, is the personage represented on the anta of the castle, in the bas-reliefs of the Queen's Chamber, at Chichen, and on the slab found by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in Mayapan. One has only to look at his unique, unmistakable nose, his short stature, and towering hat, to become satisfied of the fact of his identity. And then his name,—it is symbolized by a little yellow flower, in some cases closed, in others open. In the Maya dictionary, cocom is a plant with yellow flowers, from the leaves of which, during the feast of Saint John, people make a kind of cigar, Cocom was the name of an ancient Maya dynasty, and is still preserved as an Indian family name among the natives of Yucatan. By the number of feathers in the cap of the king is indicated his exalted rank. The man before him holds a scroll,—and this is proven by Landa, that they had scrolls, written on large leaves, folded and enclosed between two boards.

When any of the ancient family of Cocom died, the principal lords cut off their heads and cooked them, in order to clean the meat from the bones, after which they sawed off the hind part of the skull, preserving the front with its jaws and teeth. They then replaced the flesh on the half-skull with a certain putty, giving them the same appearance they had when alive; they then placed them among their cinerary statues, which they had with their idols in their oratorios, and looked upon them with great reverence and love."

On the smaller slab the Doctor found, he says, inscriptions that his knowledge of the Maya tongue enabled him to translate, which were intended for the God of Fire, represented among the Mayas by the same hieroglyph that the Egyptians used for the Sun God, and by the emblems of one of the principal gods of the Assyrians. On the "Gnomon Mound" of Mayapan there