180 



which is found among the hieroglyphics ; four 

 hundred, or twenty times twenty, by an ear of 

 corn *, a pine-apple, or a quill, in which gold 

 dust was kept ; twenty times four hundred, or 

 eight thousand, by a purse-}-, a value determined, 

 as it appears, by the custom of enclosing so many 

 thousand cacao nuts in a bag. This is the mode 

 in which a sum of money was formerly designat- 

 ed in the Lower Empire, and is still in the Otto- 

 man states. 



" This method and these denominations indi- 

 cate the origin of the symbols of numbers in the 

 Mexican book. We see how great an analogy 

 this painting, which represents a state of primitive 

 society, offers with the historical inscriptions in 

 the ruins of Thebes, of which Tacitus speaks ; 

 and in which a long list of conquests was follow- 

 ed in the same manner by that of taxes paid in 

 kind by the conquered nations X- The laws, like 

 the religious precepts of the mysteries, were ex- 

 hibited within the temples, and on the chests of 

 mummies ; as those pictures of the mysteries of 

 Eleusis, copied from those of Egypt, which tra- 



* PL 58, Fig. 10. + PI 58, Fig. 16. 



+ Legebantur et indicta gentibus tribata pondus argenti, 

 ct auri, numerus armorum equorumque, et dona templis, ebur 

 atque odores, quasque capias frumenti et omnium utensilium 

 quitque natio pendeat. 



