392 THE "CARA GIGAMTESCA" OF YZAMAL O YUCATAN. 



Amoiif? the ancients of Mexico and Peru it was considered a x)rinci- 

 pal re([uisite for a sovereign, or even a lord of lesser powers, that he 

 should never fiiil at any time to first receive the hi.yh coniuiands of 

 Heaven, which with all theocratic nations formed the base of all secu- 

 larlaw and justice. It was likewise indispensable for him to listen impar- 

 tially to the supplications of those whose destinies Providence had 

 placed in his hands. Without the most scrupulous observance of such 

 sacred duties no monarch or lord could rightfully and for any length of 

 time enjoy the high prerogatives of his exalted station. The history of 

 the Toltecs and Aztecs, like that of the Mayas in Yucatan, records sev- 

 er:il examples of reckless monarchs and transgressing rulers, against 

 whom an indignant nation rose up in the defense of the outraged laws. 

 Such revolutionary movements terminated, almost without an exception, 

 in the loss of crown and life by tlie accused, and in most cases with an 

 entire breaking up of the empire itself. The Toltecs on such an occa- 

 sion lost their whole prestige in the valley of Mexico. The Mayas, their 

 immediate descendants in Yucatan, repeated the same twice. Here the 

 first enactment of popular wrath ended with the destruction of the 

 realm of Chichen Itza, the oldest in that peninsula. The licentiousness 

 and profligacy of two brothers ruling at the same time, under a sort of 

 duumvirate, was the cause of the uprising of the nations which cost 

 the t\A'0 piinces their lives and the supremacy of that realm. In a 

 similar way the kingdom of Mayapau, the then center of Maya glory 

 under the dynasty of the " Cocomes," came to its end by a twenty years' 

 war, the cause of which was the most insulting neglect of the nation's 

 laws on the part of the rulers of Mayapan, while all the other con- 

 federate powers, and especially those of the kingdom of Uxmal had risen 

 to satisfy the offended i)eople. The destruction of Mayapan, a large 

 fortified city of nearly three Spanish leagues in circumference, took place 

 about a hundred years before the first Spanish invasion of Yucatan, 



Deaf to the sacred word of the law and deaf to the prayers of the suf- 

 fering subjects, these supreme lords of the nation, forgetful of their ob- 

 ligations, forfeited crown and life, and their defections, like an untied 

 knot, necessarily weakened the very foundation of the whole political 

 structure. It is, therefore, but natural if the contemi)lative mind of those 

 ancient nations, in their ever apparent symbolism, laid such stress upon 

 the hearing organ of their rulers. 



The ideological view of this particular, confessedly so taken by the 

 Peruvian, Mexican, and JMaya, may also explain the singukir customs 

 among the former, where the lucas and the high nobility used to arti- 

 ficially enlarge their ears by wearing in them from early boyhood heavy 

 gold rings and other trinkets. The extraordinary size of the external 

 hearing organs, by themselves so much appreciated as a mark of high 

 distinction, did not fail to bring them into ridicule with the Spanish 

 conquerors, who nicknamed them " Orejones^' — that is, "Big ears." 



Whether or not the Mayas ever extended symbolism to such a degree 

 as to subject parts of the living body to a similar official disfiguring is 

 not known ; but a hyperbolic shaping of the ears or other members of 

 the body on the persons of high distinction can be frequently observed 

 throughout the representations of their graphic arts, and our present 

 relic furnishes an unmistalcable example of it. 



Here two orbicular plates with perforated center take the place of the 

 ears. Four knobs in high-relief, probably with reference to the four 

 cardinal points, divide these rings, or perhaps Avheels, into so many 

 equal quadrants. Eings and wheels signify among the glyphics of the 

 Aztecs and Toltecs, and consequently also of the Mayas, the space of 



