456 COSMOS. 



it is indeed very probable, from the high degree of civilization 

 of the Egyptian people and their early regulation of a calendar, 

 that even at that time the length of shadows had been 

 measured in the valley of the Nile ; but no knowledge of this 

 has come down to us. Even the Peruvians, although less 

 advanced in the perfection of calendars and intercalations 

 than the Muyscas (mountain inhabitants of New Granada) 

 and the Mexicans were, possessed gnomons, surrounded by 

 a circle marked upon a very level surface. They stood in 

 several parts of the empire, as well as in the great temple of 

 the Sun at Cuzco ; the gnomon at Quito, situated almost 

 under the equator, was held in greater veneration than the 

 others, and cro \vned with flowers upon the equinoctial feasts. 4 * 



42 Garcilaso, Comment. Reales, part i. lib. ii. cap. 22-25 ; 

 Prescott, Hist, of the Conquest of Peru, vol. i. p. 126. The 

 Mexicans possessed among their twenty hieroglypliical signs 

 of the days, one held in especial veneration called OUin- 

 tonatiuh, that of the four movements of the Sun, which 

 governed the great cycle, renewed every 52=r4x 13 years, 

 and referred to the course of the Sun intersecting the solstices 

 and equinoxes, and hieroglyphically expressed by foot-steps. 

 In the beautifully-painted illuminated Aztec manuscript, which 

 was formerly preserved in the villa of Cardinal Borgia at 

 V eletri, and from which I derived much important informa- 

 tion, there is the remarkable astrological sign of a cross, 

 the day signs which are written on the margin by its side 

 would perfectly represent the passage of the Sun through the 

 zenith of the town of Mexico (Tenochtitlan), the equator and 

 the solstitial points, if the points (round discs) added to the 

 day signs on account of the periodic series, were equally 

 complete in all three passages of the Sun. (Humboldt, Vues 

 des Cordilleres, pi. xxxvii. No. 8, pp. 164, 189 and 237.) 

 The King of Tezcuco, Nezahualpilli (called a fast child, 

 because his father fasted for a long time previously to the 

 birth of the wished-for son) who was passionately given to 

 astronomical observations, erected a building which Torque- 

 mada rather venturously calls an observatory, and the ruins of 



