350 
which a bundle of ears of corn ^ fills up the 
whole of the place, which Ceres, Iris, Astrea, or 
Erig-one, ought to occupy in the sign of the har- 
vests and vintages. It is thus we find, from the 
remotest antiquity, among the most distant na- 
tions, the same ideas, the same symbols, the same 
tendency to refer natural phenomena to the mys- 
terious influence of the stars. 
The Mexican hieroglyphic tecpatl indicates a 
keen edged stone of oval form, lengthened at 
both ends, like those which were made use of as 
knives, or which were fastened to the end of a 
pike. This sign recalls to mind the crittka or 
sharp knife of the lunar zodiac of the Hindoos. 
On the great stone represented in the 23d Plate, 
the hieroglyphic tecpatl is figured in a manner 
somewhat different from the form commonly 
given to this instrument. The silex is pierced 
through the centre, and the opening seems des- 
tined to receive the hand of the warrior, who 
makes use of this weapon with two points. We 
know, that the Americans had a peculiar art of 
boring the hardest stoties and working them by 
friction. 1 have brought from South America, 
and deposited at the Museum at Berlin, a ring 
of obsidian, which was a girl’s bracelet, and 
forms a hollow cylinder near seven centimetres 
* IdeWr, Sternnameii, S. 17*3, Dupuis, Origine des Cultes, 
T©m. 2, p. 22B — 234. Atlas, p. 0. 
