NUMERAL WORSHIP AND BUILDING UP IMAGES, ETC. 79 



intricate I have not found time to analyze them. This was only the ordinary — the 

 cheap form, so to speak. They builded most of the period symbols in other shapes as 

 well — principally in the guise of grotesque faces having a reptile, bird, beast, or human 

 semblance ; but in whatever form they appear, every principal feature — eye, ear, jaw, 

 etc., or the ornament substituted for it — is constructed from a numeral or a combina- 

 tion of numerical signs that in the aggregate denote the period, and usually denote it 

 over and over again. So with the altar-pieces of Palenque ; they are simply builded 

 up by numeral signs from the 1, 5 or 20 day sign at the bottom to the 136,656,000 

 day sign, or great dragon-bird, at the top. So, again, when the massive stela? at 

 Copan and Quirigua are reached. The colossal images on them are nothing more than 

 compositions from numeric symbols. Their eyes, ears, ornaments, and all the elaborate 

 accessories simply resolve themselves into number signs. 



I arrived at a similar conclusion concerning the codices long back, but it never 

 occurred to me that anything analogous would be found in the inscriptions until the 

 discovery forced itself upon me a short time ago. The two conclusions were so entirely 

 separate in my mind, and were arrived at by such distinctly different processes, that I 

 hold them to be strongly corroborative of each other. This for a slight substantiation 

 of my intuition ; but to proceed : 



If idols and altar-pieces constructed purely of numerical signs were objects of 

 worship — as indicated by the priests, decorated in appropriately numerated regalia, 

 making offerings to them — then it is certain there must have been a deification of 

 numbers and an uplifting of them as objects of adoration. The concept is so novel 

 that at first thought it seems absurd. But at second thought, would it be so ridiculous 

 for us, even, to venerate them 1 — the only true, infallible and absolute things we know 

 of, or at least the only ones we can comprehend. Eliminating pretended revelation, 

 eliminating the efforts of fiery apostles — eliminating, in short, all superstitious influ- 

 ences — I know of no object of veneration to which the mind of man should as readily 

 turn as to mathematics, the single force whose constant pressure, by manifold ways, 

 elevates from savagery. Fortunately the Archaic Mayas lived before the time of Moses 

 and Paul, and escaped the unhappy fate of the later Maya nations, to whom Moses 

 and Paul were preached with accompaniments of torture. They had nothing in the 

 shape of revelation or apostleship to affect them, and naturally gravitated on the line 

 of least resistance — in other words, according to their own inclination — to a form of 

 worship. The one great thing that impressed them was that they had arisen from 

 savagery through their discovery of the power of numbers, and that the science of 

 numbers was what had kept on elevating them, till it finally achieved an apparently 

 superhuman triumph in the perfection of their marvelous calendars. What wonder, 

 then, that they ascribed to the numerals supernatural power, and deified them 1 Other 

 peoples have sanctified objects for a thousandfold less reason. 



Let the reason be what it may, that they did deify numbers and make them objects 



