Ancient mexican cities and pyramids

ANCIENT MEXICAN CITIES AND PYRAMIDS. (Humboldt’s Views of the Cordilleras.)

“AMONG those swarms of nations, which, from theseventh to the twelfth century of the Christianera, successively inhabited the country of Mexico, fiveare enumerated, the Toltecks, the Cicimecks, the Acol-huans, the Tlascaltecks, and the Axtecks, who, not-withstanding their political divisions, spoke the samelanguage, followed the same worship, and built pyra-midal edifices, which they regarded as teocallis, that isto say, the house of their gods.—These edifices were allof the same form, though of very different dimensions;they were pyramids, with several terraces, and the sidesof which stood exactly in the direction of the meridian,and the parallel of the place. Each house of a Mexicandivinity, like the ancient temple of Baal Berith, burntby Abimelech, was a strong place. A great staircaseled to the top of the truncated pyramid, and on thesummit of the platform were one or two chapels, builtlike towers, which contained the colossal idols of thedivinity, to whom the Teocalli was dedicated. The in-side of the edifice was the burial place of the kings andprincipal personages of Mexico. It is impossible to readthe descriptions, which Herodotus and Diodorus Siculushave left us of the temple of Jupiter Belus, without be-ing struck with the resemblance of that Babylonian mo-nument to the Teocallis of Anahuac.

At the period when the Mexicans, or Aztecks, oneof the seven tribes of the Anahuatlacks, (inhabitants ofthe banks of rivers,) took possession, in the year 1190,of the equinoctial region of New Spain, they already foundthe pyramidal monuments of Teotihuacan, of Cholula,or Cholollan, and of Papantla. They attributed thesegreat edifices to the Toltecks, a powerful and civilizednation, who inhabited Mexico five hundred years earlier,who made use of hieroglyphical characters, who com-puted the year more precisely, and had a more exactchronology than the greater part of the people of the oldcontinent. We ought not to be astonished, that no his-tory of any American nation should precede the seventh century; and that the annals of the Toltecks should beas uncertain as those of the Pelasgi and the Ausonians.The learned Mr. Schloezer has clearly proved, that thehistory of the north of Europe reaches no higher thanthe tenth century, an epocha when Mexico was in amore advanced state of civilization than Denmark,Sweden and Russia.

The Teocalli of Mexico was dedicated to Tezcatlipo-lica, the first of the Azteck divinities after Teotl, who isthe supreme and visible Being; and to Huitzilopochtli,the God of war. It was built by the Aztecks, on themodel of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, six years onlybefore the discovery of America by Christopher Colum-bus. This truncated pyramid, called by Cortez theprincipal temple, was ninety-seven metresA French revolutionary measure of 3 feet, 11½inches.—Ed. in breadthat its basis, and nearly fifty-four metres in height.

The group of the pyramids of Teotihuacan is in thevalley of Mexico, eight leagues north east from the ca-pital, in a plain that bears the name of Micoatl, or the Path of the Death. There are two large pyramids de-dicated to the Sun (Tonatiuh,) and to the Moon (Meztli);and these are surrounded by several hundreds of smallpyramids, which form streets in exact lines from northto south, and from east to west. Of these two greatTeocallis, one is fifty-five, the other is forty-four metresin perpendicular height. The basis of the first is twohundred and eighty metres in length; whence it results,that the Tonatiuh Yztaqual, according to Mr. Oteyza’smeasurement, made in 1803, is higher than the Myce-rinus, or third of the three great pyramids of Geeza inEgypt, and the length of its base nearly equal to that ofthe Cephren. The small pyramids, which surround thegreat houses of the Sun and the Moon, are scarcely nineor ten metres high; and served, according to the tradi-tion of the natives, as burial places for the chiefs of thetribes. Around the Cheops and the Mycerinus in Egypt,there are eight small pyramids, placed with symmetry,and parallel to the fronts of the greater. The two Te- ocallis of Teotihuacan had four principal stories, each ofwhich was subdivided into steps, the edges of which arestill to be distinguished. The nucleus is composed ofclay mixed with small stones, and it is encased by a thickwall of tezontli, or porous amygdaloid.Mandelstein of the German mineralogists. This construc-tion recalls to mind that of one of the Egyptian pyramidsof Sakharah, which has six stories; and which, accord-ing to Pocock, is a mass of pebbles and yellow mortar,covered on the outside with rough stones. On the topof the great Mexican Teocallis were two colossal statuesof the Sun and Moon: they were of stone, and coveredwith plates of gold, of which they were stripped by thesoldiers of Cortez.—When bishop Zumaraga, a Francis-can monk, undertook the destruction of whatever relatedto the worship, the history, and the Antiquities of thenatives of America, he ordered also the demolition ofthe idols of the plain of Micoatl. We still discover theremains of a staircase built with large hewn stone, whichformerly led to the platform of the Teocalli.

On the east of the group of the pyramids of Teoti-huacan, on descending the Cordillera towards the Gulphof Mexico, in a thick forest, called Tajin, rises thepyramid of Papantla. This monument was by chancediscovered scarcely thirty years ago, by some Spanishhunters; for the Indians carefully conceal from the whiteswhatever was an object of ancient veneration. The formof this Teocalli, which had six, perhaps seven stories,is more tapering than that of any other monument ofthis kind; it is nearly eighteen metres in height, whilethe breadth of its basis is only twenty-five. This smalledifice is built entirely with hewn stones, of an extraor-dinary size, and very beautifully and regularly shaped.Three staircases lead to the top. The covering of itssteps is decorated with hieroglyphical sculpture, andsmall niches, which are arranged with great symmetry.The number of these niches seems to allude to the threehundred and eighteen simple and compound signs of thedays of the Cempohualilhuitl, or civil calendar of theToltecks.

The greatest, most ancient, and most celebrated ofthe whole of the pyramidal monuments of Anahuac isthe Teocalli of Cholula. It is called in the present daythe Mountain made by the hand of man (monte hecho amanos.) At a distance it has the aspect of a natural hillcovered with vegetation.

A vast plain, the Puebla, is separated from thevalley of Mexico by the chain of volcanic mountains,which extend from Popocatepetl, toward Rio Frio, andthe peak of Telapon. This plain, fertile though desti-tute of trees, is rich in memorials, interesting to Mexi-can history. In it flourished the capitals of three repub-lics of Tlascalla, Huexocingo and Cholula, which, not-withstanding their continual dissensions, resisted withno less firmness the despotism and usurping spirit of theAzteck kings.

The small city of Cholula, which Cortez, in hisLetters to Charles V. compares with the most populouscities of Spain, contains at present scarcely sixteenthousand inhabitants. The pyramid is to the east of thecity, on the road which leads from Cholula to Puebla.

The Teocalli of Cholula has four stories, all of equalheight. It appears to have been constructed exactly inthe direction of the four cardinal points; but as theedges of the stories are not very distinct, it is difficultto ascertain their primitive direction. This pyramidicalmonument has a broader basis than that of any otheredifice of the same kind in the old continent. I mea-sured it carefully, and ascertained, that its perpendicularheight is only fifty metres, but that each side of its basisis four hundred and thirty-nine metres in length. Tor-quemada computes its height at seventy-seven metres;Betancourt, at sixty-five; and Clavigero, at sixty-one.Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a common soldier in the armyof Cortez, amused himself by counting the steps of thestaircase, which led to the platform of the Teocallis;he found one hundred and fourteen in the great templeof Tenochtitlan, one hundred and seventeen in that ofTezcuco, and one hundred and twenty in that of Cholula.The basis of the pyramid of Cholula is twice as broad asthat of Cheops; but its height is very little more thanthat of the pyramid of Mycerinus. An adit dug through the Teocalli of Cholula, to examine its exter-nal structure, would be an interesting operation; and itis singular, that the desire of discovering hidden trea-sure has not prompted the undertaking.—During mytravels in Peru, in visiting the vast ruins of the city ofChimu, near Mansiche, I went into the interior of thefamous Huaca de Toledo, the tomb of a Peruvian prince,in which Garci Gutierez de Toledo discovered. discovered on digg-ing a gallery, in 1576, massive gold amounting in valueto more than five millions of francs, as is proved by thebook of accounts, preserved in the mayor’s office atTruxillo.

The size of the platform of the pyramid of Cholula,on which I made a great number of astronomical obser-vations, is four thousand two hundred square metres.From it the eye ranges over a magnificent prospect;Popocatepetl, Iztaceihuatl, the peak of Orizaba, and theSierra de Tlascalla, famous for the tempests which gatheraround its summit. We view at the same time threemountains higher than Mount Blanc, two of which arestill burning volcanoes. A small chapel, surroundedwith cypress, and dedicated to the Virgin de los Reme-dios, has succeeded to the temple of the god of the air,or the Mexican Indra. An ecclesiastic of the Indianrace celebrates mass every day on the top of this antiquemonument.

In the time of Cortez, Cholula was considered as aholy city. No where existed a greater number of Teo-callis, of priests, and religious orders (tlamacazque;) no spot displayed greater magnificence in the celebrationof public worship, or more austerity in its penances andfasts. Since the introduction of Christianity among theIndians, the symbols of a new worship have not entirelyeffaced the remembrance of the old. The people assem-ble in crowds, from distant quarters, at the summit ofthe pyramid, to celebrate the festival of the Virgins. Amysterious dread, a religious awe, fills the soul of theIndian at the sight of this immense pile of bricks,covered with shrubs and perpetual verdure.”