42 MAYA AND MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS. 



they believed that the dead went towards the north. For which rea- 

 son, in the superstition which represented the dead as covered with 

 inantas (cloths) and their bodies bound, they made them sit with then- 

 faces turned toward the north, or Mictlampa. The fourth figure was 

 the house, and was dedicated to the west, which they called Cioatlampa, 

 which is nearly toward the house of the women, for they held the opin- 

 ion that the dead womeu, who are goddesses, live in the west, and that 

 the dead men, who are in the house of the sun, guide him from the east 

 with rejoicings every day, until they arrive at midday, and that the de- 

 funct women, whom they regard as goddesses, and call Cioapipiltin, 

 come out from the west to receive him at midday and carry him with 

 rejoicing to the west." 26 



Veytia's statement in regard to the same subject is as follows : 



' ; The symbols, then, which were used in the aforesaid monarchies for 

 the numeration t >f their years were these four: Tecpatl, that signifies 

 flint; Calli, the house; Tochtli, the rabbit; and Acatl, the reed. 

 * * * The material signification of the names are those just 

 given, but the allegories that they wished to set forth by them are the 

 four elements, which they understood to be the origin of all composite 

 matter, and into which all things could be resolved. 



" They gave to fire the first place, as the most noble of all, and sym- 

 bolized it by the flint. * * * By the hieroglyphic of 'the house' 

 they represent the element earth, and gave it the second place in their 

 initial characters. 



" By the rabbit they symbolized the air, * * * and represented 

 it in various ways, among which was the sign of the holy cross. * * * 



"Finally the fourth initial character, which is the reed, which is the 

 proper meaning of the word Acatl, is the hieroglyphic of the element 

 water.' 27 



At page 48 : "It is to be noted that most of the old calendars — those 

 of the cycles as well as those of years and months, which they used to 

 form in circles and squares, ran from the right to the left, in the way 

 the orientals write and not as we are accustomed to form such figures. 



* * * But they did not maintain this order in the figures that they 

 painted and used as hieroglyphics in them, but placed them some looking 

 to one side and some to the other." 



Gemelli Carreri 28 writes as follows in regard to the Mexican calendar 

 system : 



" A snake turned itself round into a circle and in the body of the 

 serpent there were four divisions. The first denoted the south, in that 

 language call'd Uutzlampa, whose hieroglyphick was a rabbit in a blew 

 field, which they called Tochtli. Lower was the part that signify'd the 

 east, called Tlacopa or Tlahuilcopa, denoted by a cane in a red field, 



26 Hist. Gen. de las Cosas de Nueva Espana, tome 2, p. 256. 



" Hist. Ant. Mex., vol. 1, p. 42. 



88 Churchill's Voyages, vol. IV, pp. 491, 492. 



