82 
Baal Berith, burnt by Ai)i[iielech, 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 v^oq, or 
rather the jsnoq, of the Grecian temples. It was 
there also, that tiie 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 : the procession of 
the teopixqul^ 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 Azteeks, 
one of the seven tribes of the Anabuatlacks, 
(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 
