entire Group of the Ball 

 Court and the Group 

 of the Columns date in 

 all probability from the 

 foreign regime and con- 

 sequently cannot have 

 been erected before the 

 last quarter of the 

 twelfth century. The 

 architecture of these 

 buildings as well as the 

 sculptures show strong 

 resemblances to work in 

 Tula, Teotihuacqji and 

 other sites in the valley 

 of Mexico. The native 

 religion seems to have 

 suffered from the foreign infusion also. 

 New forms appear in the religious art 

 and it is not unlikely that the human 

 sacrifice at the Sacred Cenote was in- 

 augurated by the intruders. The game 

 played in the Ball Court seems not to 

 have been known by the Maya in earlier 

 times, and indeed the only examples of 

 ball courts in Yucatan are seen at Chi- 

 chen Itza and Uxmal. 



This, in brief, is the story of Chichen 

 Itza.^ Founded when the Huns under 

 Attila were battling with the failing 

 armies of Rome, it was abandoned for 

 the first time when Mohammed was 

 laying the leaven of Arab conquest. 

 Reestablished in the era of the Saxon 

 kings, it flourished during the Crusades 

 and lost its freedom to a foreign power 

 when our fathers were struggling for the 

 Magna Charta, and sank into oblivion 

 while the English and French fought 

 out the Hundred Years' War. Surely 

 a city with such a history can hardly be 

 dismissed as void of interest and inspira- 

 tion. 



1 For a more detailed account of this and other 

 points in Maya history see a Study of Maya Art 

 by Herbert J. Spinden in Memoirs of the Pea- 

 body Museum of American Arcliaeology and 

 Ethnology. Harvard University, vol. VI, Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., 1913 



A human-like head in the distended mouth] of a plumed monster. 

 The claws of the monster are seen at the bottom and between them 

 hangs the great forked tongue. 



Sculptured colmnn made of drum-shaped sec- 

 tions — South Temple of the Ball Court. The 

 designs represent warriors, rechning figures and a 

 wealth of highly conventionalized serpent heads 



31 



