180 
wliich 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'l-, 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, olfers 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 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- 
PI 58, Fig. 10. + PI 58, Fig. 16. 
+ Legtbantur et indicta gentibus tributa pondus argentic 
et auri, numerus urmorum equorumque, et dona templu, ebur 
atque odores, quasque capias frimienti et omnium utensilimn 
quceque ^atio pendent. 
