82 



Baal Berith, burnt by Abilnelech, was a strong 

 place. A great staircase led to the top of the 

 truncated pyramid, and on the summit of the 

 platform were one or two chapels, built like 

 towers, which contained the colossal idols of the 

 divinity, to whom the teocalli was dedicated. 

 This part of the edifice must be considered as 

 the most consecrated place: like the vzoq, or 

 rather the aem%\ of the Grecian temples. It was 

 there also, that the priests kept up the sacred 

 fire. From the peculiar construction of the 

 edifice we have just described, the priest who 

 offered the sacrifice was seen by a great mass of 

 the people at the same time l the procession of 

 the teopixqui, ascending or descending the stair- 

 case of the pyramid, was beheld at a consider- 

 able distance. The inside of the edifice was 

 the burial place of the kings and principal per- 

 sonages of Mexico. It is impossible to read the 

 descriptions, which Herodotus and Diodorus 

 Siculus have left us of the temple of Jupiter 

 Belus, without being struck with the resem- 

 blance of that Babylonian monument to the 

 teocallis of Anahuac. 



At the period when the Mexicans, or Aztecks, 

 one of the seven tribes of the Anahuatlacks, 

 (inhabitants of the banks of rivers), took posses- 

 sion, in the year 1190, of the equinoctial region 

 of New Spain, they already found the pyra- 

 midal monuments of Teotihuacan, of Cholula, or 



