234 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



trasted with glooms of deep recesses or valleys. While the phallus 

 represented life giving or bearing energy, and the yoni passive 

 receptivity, the contrasting ideas were [paralleled with those of life 

 and death The woman represented the door of darkness or even- 

 ing, into which the sun descended as into its grave, but out of 

 which theneAf-born sun arose, or Horus was born of Osiris and 

 Isis. With all her tiualities of loveliness, fascination, and attrac- 

 tion, she was, by force of certain similes, represented as the insa- 

 tiable monster craving for and swallowing up all life, and hence 

 her extreme emblem, Death, or the Dragon, or most horrid mon- 

 ster of destruction. To quote the language of the Churcli, she 

 was — ' ' Anna diaJmli, via iniquitatis, scorpionis pcrcitssio, nociviaii 

 ^i^cm/s, scpulihri f if 11/ us.'' In this phase she was the type of death 

 and destruction, hateful and devouring. In the Palenque Tablet and 

 the Ferj^rvi\ry picture the phallus raises out of the yoni, which in 

 turn rests upon the head of a devouring monster, or of a skull : 

 either of which answers for the appropriate syml)ol intended. 



THE RICHARDSON TABLET. 



(See Fij^ure xi.) 



This Mound Builder relic was found by Mr. j. M. Rich- 

 ardson on the 31st day of January, 1879, in excavating a mound 

 on the road leading from Wilmington, Ohio, to Harveysburg, 

 known as the Wilmington and Waynesville Pike, about three and 

 one-half miles from Wilmington. The bones with which the relic 

 was found were decayed to a lime-like dust, but the teeth were 

 yet preserved. The history of this fipd is contained in a pamphlet 

 entitled "An Illustrated Desciiption of Pre-historic Relics found 

 near Wilmington, Ohio," published in 1879, by Dr. L. B. ^Velch 

 and J. M. Richardson. This account was copied into the American 

 Antiquarian, in the October number, 1881. The writer thinks 

 there can be no doubt as to the genuineness of the Richardson 

 Tablet. It is formed after the same general plan with the Gest 

 Tablet, and serves to explain and interpret the latter. In it the 

 picture is so plain that there can be no mistaking the key-fact 

 intended to be disi^layed. Figure xi is a very exact reproduction of 

 the tablet. 



The picture is formed on a representation of the phallus, with 

 testes, m the form of an inverted Tau cross. The testes form the 

 base or bar of the cross. The left testis, as one looks at the repre- 



