Photo by Hiram Bingham 



THE entrance; to a clan group: machu picchu 



The exterior of the gateway to Ingenuity Group, 

 showing the steps leading to it and the re-entrant angles 

 in the door-posts, characteristic of nearly all the gate- 

 ways to clan groups. 



THE PROBABEE use OE SNAKES EOR 

 AUGURY 



As will be seen from the photograph 

 (see page 491), the wall is not perpen- 

 dicular, but inclines inward at the top. 

 This angle is characteristic of nearly all 

 the vertical lines in the ruins. Doors, 

 windows, and niches are all narrower at 

 the top than at the bottom. 



In the semicircular tower which con- 

 nects with this fine wall the ingenious 

 cutting of stones in such a way as to fol- 

 low a selected curve reaches a perfection 

 equaled only in the celebrated wall of 

 the Temple of the Sun (now the Do- 

 minican Monastery) , in Cuzco. Like that, 

 it is a flattened curve, not round (p. 485). 



One of the windows in this 

 tower (see pages 492-494) has 

 several small holes near the bot- 

 tom. These were found to con- 

 nect, by very narrow channels, 

 barely large enough for a snake 

 to crawl through, with circular 

 holes within the wall, where the 

 snakes might have constructed 

 their nests. 



There are still many snakes at 

 Machu Picchu. There are also 

 snakes carved on several rocks, 

 (page 497). Lizards are not 

 common, and the holes within the 

 wall are much too large for liz- 

 ards' nests ; but they are of the 

 right size for a comfortable 

 snake's nest — for a small snake. 

 It seems tome possible that in 

 this wall the priest of this clan 

 group kept a few tame snakes 

 and that he used their chance 

 exits out of one hole or another 

 as a means of telling omens and 

 possibly of prophesying. 



The so-called sacred plaza is 

 the site of two of the finest 

 structures at Machu Picchu. One 

 of these — the Temple of the 

 Three Windows — has already 

 been referred to; the other is a 

 remarkable structure, about 12 

 feet in height, built around three 

 sides of a rectangle some 30 feet 

 long and 18 feet wide. A de- 

 scription is hardly necessary, as 

 a better idea can be gained from 

 the pictures (pp. 409, 501, 502, 

 503, and 512) than from any 

 words of mine. Suffice it to say that it is 

 marked by a very pleasing symmetry, by 

 the use of tremendous blocks of granite, 

 three of them being over 12 feet in 

 length, and by the projection in an ob- 

 tuse angle of the ends of the sides. 



"THE PIvACE TO WHICH THE SUN IS TIEd" 



On top of the beautifully terraced hill 

 (pp. 498, 507, 508), behind this temple, 

 is a stone, generally agreed to be an inti- 

 huatana stone, or sun-dial — the intihua- 

 tana being the "place to which the sun is 

 tied." Similar stones were found by the 

 Spanish conquerors in Cuzco, Pisac, and 

 Ollantaytambo. An idea of this stone 

 may be gained from the picture on page 

 509- 



472 



