I Too Close To Be Ignored
In one of the many startling moments of One Eternal Round, a study of Book of Abraham facsimile 2 (the hypocephalus), Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes describe the Aztec Calendar Stone as "too closely resembling the Joseph Smith hypocephalus to be ignored" (197; see pages 197-200).
The reader holds his breath--a vast distance obtains between Egypt and Mesoamerica--as the authors quote the long forgotten but striking words of Zelia Nuttall:
The Calendar Stone is "an image of the nocturnal heavens as it is of a vast terrestrial state which. . . had been established as a reproduction upon earth of the harmonious order and fixed laws which apparently governed the heavens." It is also, note Nibley and Rhodes, "a calendar with stars as indicators, marking time and space together," even--so Nuttall--"a complete count. . . expressive of a great era of time." "Like the hypocephalus, the Calendar Stone is conspicuously divided into two parts," worlds above and below (Zelia Nuttall, The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: a comparative research based on a study of the Ancient Mexican religious, sociological and calendrical systems, Cambridge, MA).
Referencing Nuttall, Nibley and Rhodes continue: "Around the center are placed 'symbols of the four elements, the union of which was believed by the native philosophers to be essential for the production and maintenance of life.'" Nibley here recalls the four sons of Horus standing just below the central quadrifrons, or four-faced, creator and sun god, though on the lower, upside-down side of the hypocephalus. The Egyptians associated these sons of Horus with the funerary canopic jars, which hold the vital organs taken from the deceased and sealed up for the mummy's promised day of resurrection. The Calendar Stone's "central luminary," in Nuttall's words, who provides "the motive power," even "the divine power who ruled heaven and earth from a changeless and fixed centre in the heaven," is likewise quadrifrons, gazing out toward the four directions: "the quadruple lord, 'He who looks in four directions." The Calendar, at once, depicts the fourfold former world eras, "ages that have collapsed--Jaguar, Wind, Fire, and Rain" (David Carrasco, Daily Life of the Aztecs, 174). The "Four Movement" name of the present, fifth, age is Earthquake.
While the sons of Horus (or surely also of Geb, god of earth, whose four "sons" travel back-and-forth in the four quarters of the earth), certainly keep the elements of life in their manifestation as the canopic jars, there is more to consider; for the quadruple heads of the central ram-headed figure, according to Egyptian texts, also represent the four ba's, or the four spirits, powers, colors, cardinal points, or elements, so well as the four dynasts ruling over their respective patriarchal spheres and ages, these last being primeval eras in which semi-mythical rulers held sway long before Egypt's Pyramid Age (see David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple, 99, 168).
As element or mineral, we accordingly find the successive generations, ages, or reigns, of Re (fire), Shu (air), Geb (earth), and Osiris (water). The quadrifrons Ram of Mendes, ancient and enduring image of fruitfulness and potency, at the center of the hypocephalus, is thus the forefather of every king, beginning with Re, Shu, Geb, Osiris, who "happen to be the male progenitors of the Heliopolitan cosmogony (Re-Atum begat Shu, Shu begat Geb, Geb begat Osiris)" (Klotz, 99). Osiris' son Horus succeeds him, the pattern for each successive historical king, or Horus, of Egypt, a fifth age. If such concerns stand revealed in the iconography of the hypocephalus, how telling that the first chapter of the book of Abraham, from verse one forward, comments on the patriarchal order that held sway in earlier eras, sets forth the origins of Egyptian kingship, and further introduces the cosmogonic and cosmological themes that make up the balance of the book.
Many have wondered why Joseph Smith so blithely termed the hypocephalus "Facsimile 2 of the book of Abraham." Did he not know that the object was nothing more than an ordinary funerary amulet? Everyone on the Internet knows that.
The correspondence of color and mineral to the fourfold Mendesian Ram also evokes Nibley's rare quest to trace links between the hypocephalus idea and green gemstones, a theme to which he and Rhodes devote an entire--and deeply beautiful--chapter. And why not? For as David Carrasco points out of the Aztec Calendar: Tonatiuh, the sun god, "wears a headband studded with three jewels of precious greenstone. . . and circular ear spools with [descending] greenstone jewel signs" (Carrasco, 173). In fact, the entire Stone glistens with representations of precious jewels, including, says David Stuart, the green xiuhhuitzolli diadem.
The round hypocephalus, placed "under the head" of the mummy is, significantly, also a "headband."
Diadem? In another chapter, Nibley and Rhodes treat the all-important idea of the cosmocrator, the conquering emperor who aspires to rule the whole cosmic demesne. Nibley notes how the name of the owner of the hypocephalus, Sheshonq, is associated with a whole line of Egyptian cosmocrators--including Pharaoh Sheshonq himself. Whether Nibley's identification of a royal Sheshonq, in this particular case, is correct or not, another significant name, Heliopolis, or Pillar City, occurs more than once on the hypocephalus rim--and Nibley hastens to note the significance of the place as the center of royal and priestly rule and the setting of the unfolding of the solar cosmogony. At once, Heliopolis is both an earthly temple complex and a heavenly solar city, a pillar or axis of the Egyptian cosmos.
Mayanist David Stuart, in a paper appearing just this month, "El emperador y el cosmos," notes how glyphs suggesting the names of Moteuczoma II (the same Moctezuma or Moteczoma who welcomed Cortez), the Warrior god Huitzilopochtli, so well as glyphs representing the precious green jade and the word central plaza or market, all occur on the Aztec Calendar. To Stuart, these glyphs signal the (solar) deification of the warrior king, or in other words, a solar identity for Moteuctzoma II as cosmic emperor, what we might even call a "solarization" of his face. Remember that the very name of the Aztec ruler, Frowning in severity like a lord, reflects the angry heat of the sun at its apex (Gordon Whittaker, Mexicolore.co.uk). And now consider Dimitri Meeks's explanation of the hypocephalus as "solarized" head of the deceased, who now finds identity with Re, or rather Amun-Re, and participates in his ever-encircling procession. In this sense, the hypocephalus becomes a mask, as replacement and substitute for Amun-Re's invisible head. (Amun signifies "hidden"; "not visible.") (Dimitri Meeks, "Dieu masque, Dieu sans tete," Archeo-Nil, 1991).
The Solar stone, Professor Stuart postulates, was "carefully designed to link the above-mentioned energized and animated cosmic spaces and spheres to the specific identities of Moteuczoma II and the heroic deity of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, both represented as if one sole being in the center of the cosmos" (Stuart, "El emperador y el cosmos: nueva mirada a la piedra del sol"," Arqueologia Mexica, No. 24, 2018; for a draft of the same in English, see also: https://decipherment.wordpress.com/tag/piedra-del-sol/ ).
And exactly who is the Transcendent Cosmic Amun-Re (Hidden Supreme god-and-Sun), as Professor Klotz "names" the central figure on the hypocephalus? There is no Western "exactly" to keep in mind--and certainly no pretentiously "precise" reading. For is this central power not also, so Klotz, the Cosmic Amun-Shu (Hidden-Supreme god-and-brilliant solar atmosphere)? the Unified and Resurrected Re-Osiris (sun-and-deified deceased king)? as also the four-faced Ram of Mendes: Re-Atum, Shu, Geb, Osiris? or even the Transcendent Amun--Ta-Tanen (Hidden Supreme god-and-emergent god of Earth)? Does it not also represent the resurrected Osiris Sheshonq? or even the royal Osiris Sheshonq? The accompanying text refers to him simply, though most Abrahamically, as the "great" and "noble" god of the "First Time," ruler of the five regions of cosmic space.
Again, How does the cosmology of the Calendar Stone tie-in to ritual? For the Mexica, the sun must "draw its power from the sacrifices carried out by gods and humans" (Carrasco, 173), a rejuvenating power. We recall how the Prophet Joseph Smith explains Facsimile 2 in light of "revelation" "from God to Abraham, as he offered sacrifice upon an altar." (His own community also attempted to offer Abraham himself upon an altar--but God delivered him.) David Stuart notes that the Aztec Calendar is essentially the uppermost level of a fourfold altar, an altar positioned in the capital's main plaza to represent the enthroned center and thus the axis of the universe. As such, the Stone also becomes a mirror image, reflecting both day and night, sun and stars, and especially the Pleiades that signal the cosmic center and govern the time of the all-important New Fire Ceremony, the re-igniting of sun and hearth fire, a new and ever-repeating cosmogony, cycling round every 52 years (Stuart, "El emperador y el cosmos").
The seven stars of the Pleiades cross the zenith of the night sky to signal the regeneration and re-transmission of the solar flame. When Professor Stuart further notes how the Pleiades and the Sun, standing at the separate poles of the cosmos--night and day--become each the reflection of the other, and that here we find the true significance of the Calendar Stone, we come close indeed to the idea of the Transcendent Cosmic Amun-Re, the hidden Re, or power beyond the sun. For the Egyptians the sun is a star, for the stars are all Re's, or suns (r'.w). Re thus stands lord of Re's (nb r'.w). Joseph Smith sees on the hypocephalus a celestial hierarchy, including hints at multiple "suns." Does the idea of Enish-go-on-dosh being both "one of the governing planets" so well as sun, though found in the upside-down region, or of Kolob as both superstar and supersun, stray far off the mark?
And does not Joseph Smith inform us that the sun, according to the Egyptians, "receives its power through the medium" of other celestial powers, an idea which signals the necessity of a continuing solar replenishment? Everything about this replenishment and renewal is timed by complementary celestial revolutions, according to his Explanation anyhow. The hypocephalus, like the Calendar Stone, is thus programmed by "the measurement of time," including, "the measurement of this earth." Ritual procedure thus accords with cosmically timed measurement to ensure the continuing downward flow of divine power. That's the Egyptian view and the Egyptian practice--and that's also what Brother Joseph is telling us.
The timing, which also depends on the convergence of the various earthly, lunar, solar, and planetary or stellar, cycles or revolutions, requires the precision of a priestly class of observers.
David Carrasco, detailing the standard reading of the iconography, speaks of "a narrow band of the twenty day-signs circling the central core of the stone," which again describes the coordinated revolutions of earthly and celestial time (Carrasco, 174). Another ring--of turquoise, the precious greenstone--runs round the symbolic "day count," and is pierced by the four solar rays at the four quarters of the cosmic scheme (see Khristaan Villela, http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/calendar/calendar-stone; and K.
Villela and M. E. Miller, eds,. The Aztec Calendar Stone).
Stuffed between the rays are a profusion of feather symbols, which recalls the double ostrich feather crown, a symbol of intense and translucent atmospheric radiance, sported by the standing solar figure in the upper half of the hypocephalus disk. His tall feather crown pierces, at apex, or zenith, the rim of facsimile 2 (here see One Eternal Round, 267). Along with the feathers are what Villela tells us are likely droplets of blood, the sacrificial blood that empowers the whole. Might they also represent droplets of atmospheric water, shot through with light--the vivifying rains? The outermost circle, the rim, represents "the blue sky vault," which recalls the text on the hypocephalus rim that speaks to the ever-encircling course of the sun and his retinue through the sky with its bright Heliopolitan gates or shrines. (Hugh Nibley notes how the outer rim of Achilles' Shield displays the earth-encircling Okeanos.)
(For new translations of facsimile 2 rim, see http://bit.ly/1bthZpQ .)
II Test Results
"Too closely resembling the Joseph Smith hypocephalus to be ignored?" Note how, in this last sentence, "Joseph Smith hypocephalus" signals both the standard Egyptian hypocephalus and, at once, the Prophet's Explanation of the particular example in his possession. In other words, not only might we compare the round Calendar to the round Egyptian object per se, we can go so far as to compare what Mesoamericanists say of the one to what Joseph Smith says of the other.
So let's hold the explanations of both Joseph Smith and the Egyptologists regarding hypocephali studiously in mind, as we examine the principal themes that Professor Stuart, writing this very year, descries in the Aztec Solar Stone:
1) temporal and solar dynamism
2) the vertical axis, earth to celestial zenith
3) the idea of the cosmic center (both in heaven and on earth)
4) cyclical movement
5) the cosmic rule of the divinized earthly ruler, as warrior, in the likeness of the sun
6) the divinized earthly ruler as the "embodiment of time"
Nibley and Rhodes (2013: ps. 240-241) helpfully sum up Joseph Smith's "brief explanation" with the following headings over "words used":
1) cosmology: earth, planets, firmament, Sun, stars, moon, revolution
2) measurement and number: measurements of time, celestial time, day, cubit, years, one thousand, quarters, revolution
3) transmission of power or energy: receiving light, borrows its light, governs planets or stars, receives its power, governing power
4) hierarchy or dominion (intelligence and purpose): creation, residence, government, key, power, God, throne, authority, crown, light, the governing power
5) ordinances and procedures (relating the above to humanity): sacrifice, altar, Temple
6) Joseph Smith's use of "special idiom or notation to convey the above," that is, the idea of representation, overlapping of symbolism, iconography conveying more than one meaning: represent, signify, pertaining to, answering to, "but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify" x and not just y.
We don't yet know how Professor Stuart's peers will receive his new interpretations of the Stone, but that's not our present concern. We speak of a Prophet; and his most vocal, and even mocking and shaming, critics to the contrary, Joseph Smith's spare and orderly Explanation shows, should we compare it to what others say about like circular cosmic drawings, a thoughtful and ordered thematic reading. Professor Robert Ritner hears in the Prophet's Explanation voluble ravings in the manner of pre-Egyptologist Athanasius Kircher (Ritner, "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham--A Response"). Here's how Kircher translates a handful of hieroglyphs:
Hemphta the supreme spirit and archetype infuses its virtue and gifts in the soul of the sidereal world, that is the solar spirit subject to it whence comes the vital motion in the material or elemental world, and an abundance of all things and variety of species arises. From the fruitfulness of the Osirian bowl, in which, drawn by some marvelous sympathy, it flows ceaselessly. . .
Is Ritner correct? The "ceaselessly flowing" example from Kircher by which Ritner illustrates what he considers Joseph Smith's own absurd interpretations lacks the specificity, balance, concision, and coherence one finds throughout the thematically compact book of Abraham--and a little mystery besides. Kircher elaborates on but a single, spent, idea.
Joseph Smith's Abraham, including the Explanation of facsimile 2, merits a second look. Even should one disagree with him to the point of laughter, Joseph's take on the matter merits a jot of charity. Remember what he sadly records of the persecution he continuously suffered at the hands of even neighbors: "being of very tender years, and persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have endeavored in a proper and affectionate manner to have reclaimed me" (Joseph Smith--History 1: 1:28). Where was kindness, propriety, affection?
Whether we believe even a jot of it, we can all take a charitable look at Joseph Smith's explanation of Kolob (the central solar figure) as being: "The First Creation . . First in government, last pertaining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time." The Prophet's focus on revolutions, temporal cycles and measurement, "grand governing" and thus hierarchically descending cosmic powers; on stars, earth, and sun, and transmission of light; or on altars and sacrifices and thrones, hardly deserves to be pilloried by either supremely gifted and educated scholars (who really must smile at amateurs); or by the countless following eager sophisticates who, though professing an advanced and and up-to-millennial understanding of all things past, present, and on Wikipedia, have never given a moment's thought to the symbolic representations found on works of great antiquity.
III Case Two: The Turquoise Mosaic Shields
Though products of vastly differing cultures, such nevertheless breathtaking points of thematic comparison between the hypocephalus and the Calendar Stone, which certainly date from chapter drafts of One Eternal Round made by Hugh Nibley in the mid-Eighties (the book was posthumously published in 2013), also serve to introduce my own new comparative findings about another Mexica artifact depicting the cosmos: the mosaic Aztec shields. These rare mosaic shields also merit a page or two in any consideration of the hypocephalus.
"The mosaic design on the shield now in the British Museum. . . portrays the principal division of the Aztec universe. The small circular shape of the shield corresponds to the surface of the earth. At its center is a circle of mosaic with four rays. . . this is a solar disc. The four rays emanating from the solar disc divide the earth into four quarters. In each quarter stands a sky-bearer" (Colin McEwan, et al., Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico, 62). As the reader will recall, the sons of Horus may also take the role of sky-bearers at the corners of the earth. The Prophet Joseph Smith explained these last figures, as follows: "Represents this earth in its four quarters."
Of a recent finding we further read "The position of the mosaic disc discovered at the bottom of Offering 99 [at Templo Mayor--the pyramidal center of the universe--to which compare Nibley and Rhodes, 100] links it with the night-time journey of the stars through the earth's interior during the recreation of the Mesoamerican underworld--one of the very important functions of this journey was the underworld's fertilization."
A similar theme obtains on the lower, nightly, half of the hypocephalus, which depicts the upside-down netherworld dominated by the mother cow and replete with symbolism of her impregnation, for she will bear the brilliant central power which, in the form of the four-faced Ram of Mendes, we can call the Transcendent Cosmic Amun-Re (see discussion in One Eternal Round). For the Egyptians, the mother cow, represents Hathor, a goddess who is not only the mother of the sun, but herself the Female Sun, Solar Disk of Solar Disks, at Dendara, the Female Heliopolis, or Sun City. Joseph Smith expresses the idea thus: "and [the cow] is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun." Even so, Rait, nearly a textual "unknown," hardly contests Re's glorious one act play.
The name Joseph claims the Egyptians gave her: Enish-go-on-dosh is right on the mark for the Lady of Dendara. Should on-dosh reflect 'n-ds(r), beautiful in (her) solar redness (as the Eye of the sun); then Enish-go might well answer to ins-q3, both "exalted in scarlet" and also "exalted as the scarlet solar eye." I see the name as referring to the Female Sun, the exalted (go) and beautiful (on) Red (enish, dosh) Solar Eye (Enish and Dosh), in an elaborated word play typical of such Hathorian names and, at once, powerful recalling the name attached to one of Horus' sons in his manifestation as fiery red star--one of the seven Akhu--that is, as a sun himself: Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins (the One whose two eyes are red [dSr.(ty) j3t.ty], who dwells in the House of Scarlet [Hw.t jnsw.t], i.e., in the Horizon, sometimes also called the House of Dosh [Hw.t dSr.wt]).
The surprising Egyptian view of a female sun in a feminine netherworld, the womb of creation, at opposite pole from the solar powers on the upper half of the disk, leads us on to Professor Stuart's conclusion about the Stone: "We might with justification argue that the upward-facing solar image was but a reflection and was thus, in a concrete and physical sense, materially 'in the earth,' while, at once, uniting the earthly and netherworldly sphere with the solar zenith." (translating, "Puede verse que la imagen solar acostada fue un reflejo y estuvo, materialmente, 'en la tierra,' uniendo la esfera del suelo con el cenit solar").
IV A Many-Valued Logic and an Openness to Surprise
Eduard Seler, losing patience with the array of re-interpreters of the Aztec "Sunstone" ("Earthstone?"), famously decreed of the central figure: "It is the sun--no more and no less." David Stuart takes a more nuanced view. When Professor Stuart asks us to accept that a particular representation on the Calendar or elsewhere need not refer to a sole god or a single concept but to multiple interpretations, we wonder whether he has, after all, read Erik Hornung on the many-valued logic of the Egyptian mind (Hornung, The One and the Many; compare the magnificent Burr Cartwright Brundage, The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World, 1979).
We all resist facile comparisons between Egypt and Ancient America, an often exceptionally cloying and boring game. And we may consider how even brilliant students, like Nuttall, Brundage, or Florescano have themselves shot beyond the mark in targeting cross-cultural comparisons; yet try as we might to push the poles back to their places, try as we must to understand separate cultures on their own terms, and on their own soil--authochthons all--we may still take up Stuart and Carrasco one day, Klotz and Meeks the next. And should we chose to marvel, what of it?
If Hugh Nibley chooses to compare the Homeric Shield of Achilles to the Round Egyptian hypocephalus--Why not? The abounding parallelism delights the reader. When critics simplistically carp at "parallelomania," not only are they often blind to crystalline influence, they also fail to discern a rich and buoyant poetics, a "loud and bold" new look from "a peak in Darien."
Or shall we, like Calvin at Geneva, careful, prosaic, special, clerical, scientific, and so very deeply and puritanically disturbed, avert our eyes from Keats's teeming Pacific?
Did any idea ever bridge that deep? The Mexica themselves famously do say their own ancestors made that sea-crossing, carrying with them an ancient "book of knowledge" (Sahugun, Codice Matritense de la Real Academia; see esp. Alfredo Lopez Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist; I'm translating from Miguel Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos a través de sus crónicas y cantares (1961): .
They arrived, they came. . .
Over the water in their ships they came,
in many groups.
And it was there they arrived, at water's edge,
on the north coast.
And that very place where they beached their ships
is Panutla,
Over the water in their ships they came,
in many groups.
And it was there they arrived, at water's edge,
on the north coast.
And that very place where they beached their ships
is Panutla,
which means: the place where one goes over the waters,
and we still call it Panutla today.
We must point out," says Lopez Austin, "that the data [about Panutla, their migrations to Tamoanchan near the snow-capped volcanoes, the loss of their "original books" and creation of new ones] is so strange and enigmatic that it has led to many interpretations"--but that's the joy of it (Lopez Austin, Tamoanchan, 79; 55; for a map and diagram showing the ships and migrations, fig. 3, 57). "The document is a history of the Mexica, told by themselves" (Lopez Austin, 56), that is to say, the emic view, that which touches as close to the reality of the Mexica origins as we can possibly come.
It is left to us, outsiders, to take up the etic view of things, to make models that approximate, but never reach, the cultural, religious, and historical truth. Such models must be shaped with rigor and with care, in a word: scholarship; yet curious students keep on the lookout for all kinds of surprises. My own work in Egyptian and Hebrew won't permit me, for instance, to look favorably on the conclusions of others who have tried to see in these languages a dual-origin for Uto-Aztecan--a startling enterprise. All I can see, despite the formidable work spread before me, are the telling multiple misses about Egyptian and Hebrew semantics and phonology. And once you start to tally the misses, it's easy to whittle down the cognate count to next to nothing: consider the case of Japanese and Korean. But at least I give things a considered examination.
Of the extant hypocephali, the Calendar Stone, or the Mosaic Shields: What thematic correspondence, what shared semiotic, may we, with eagle eyes, descry on these? Our keen informants again tell us that the latter "commemorates the descent of the stars into the interior of the earth," a cosmic dance of seven all-encircling "warlike star deities" in which Descent and Ascent make up One Eternal Round, a continual renewal of the powers of life. (See Turquoise Mosaics, notes on Image 94 by Adrian Velazquez and Maria Eugenia Marin).
Indeed, some curious students today discern the symbolism of the caterpillar and the butterfly, images associated with the warrior cult, both coursing the rim and unfolding at center of the Aztec Calendar itself:
"The outer image is the body of some kind of animal or insect that has fire symbols in boxes along its body. . . The body of the animal or insect curves down to the bottom, and the heads face each other as gaping serpent jaws. . . The traditional view is that these huge images are 'fire serpents,' as indicated by the huge serpent heads and the images of fire that cover their bodies. . . But a more recent interpretation, offered by Karl Taube, suggests that these images are not serpents at all, but giant caterpillars representing the transformation and rebirth of the warrior as the sun, emerging in the center of the image in the shape of a great butterfly" (Carrasco, Daily Life, 174; Karl Taube, "The Turquoise Hearth: Fire, Self Sacrifice, and the Central Mexican Cult of War," in Mesoamerica's Classical Heritage, 2000; also, Taube, "The Symbolism of Turquoise in Ancient Mesoamerica").
For Professor Taube, the imagery of jaguar, serpent, and butterfly (or caterpillar) all overlap. Vanishes forever, in the light of multiple approaches, the prohibitive Western voicing: "no more and no less." Whether they know it or not, and whether it speaks, at all, to influence, diffusion, or the like--and that's impossible to unscramble--today's Mesoamericanists not only discern in the Mayan glyphs the same system of mixing logographic and syllabic writing that obtains in the hieroglyphs of Egypt, they likewise find in Ancient American composition, both text and iconography--to us, richly chaotic--an "illogical" many-valued logic perfectly at home in Ancient Egypt.
And the noses of these serpent-caterpillars converging at the nadir of the Calendar Stone? These, says Professor Villela, are indeed bespangled with star symbols. According to Taube, their proper "supernatural caterpillar" home is the fifth level of the heavens, whence dart falling stars. One wonders whether falling stars, in appearance of fiery serpents or caterpillars, might have been thought to fertilize the ground? (See Karl Taube, "Symbolism of Turquoise"). The New Fire Ceremony likewise draws the flaming energy from the Pleiades to this lower earth: "Go and Catch a falling star."
Do not all these things also recall the two serpents appearing at either side the ram-faced figure of the hypocephalus, a manifestation of powerful solar energies? (lightening bolts? comets? meteors?) or even the fledgling falcon, with tiny, hopeful, outstretched wings (labeled imty or Infant on certain disks dramatically appearing in the upper left panel as symbol of solar rejuvenation, in the cycle of time, manifest in the heavenly firmament (see Explanation of Facsimile 2, fig. 4)?
These serpents, says Tamas Mekis, in a new dissertation considering all extant hypocephali, both "protect" the central solar god and also "ensure" for him a continuation of "light and energy, at day or at night" ("Hypocephli," Budapest, 2013). All of which recalls what Joseph Smith explained about the figure of four-faced ram, an emblem for the Ancient Egyptians of both unceasing creative and procreative abundance: the central figure receives his power through the medium of other powers. As for the fledgling solar falcon, Mekis tells us, citing the hieroglyphic label, that it embodies in mysterious and transcendent form, as Amun-Re's Ba of Ba's, that is, at once both hidden and radiant, all four of the Ba's, or powers, aspects, and cosmic extension, of the four-faced ram. Now glimpse the Calendar Stone's unfurling butterfly bursting from its chrysalis with four manifest wings--"strange sights"--each bearing the epochal record and pattern of a Sun.
"Tell me where all past years are."
V Cultural Diffusion or Independent Invention?
Yet how could all these themes and motifs from Ancient Egyptian iconography also appear in 16th century Mexico? Obviously, given the intervening millennia separating the two, core ideas and attitudes from Ancient Egypt were as likely to circle the globe several times over as was the royal Egyptian bloodline. Do not the mathematical models of genealogy show us how every living person today must descend from the royal line that built the pyramids?
"When you walk through an exhibit of Ancient Egyptian art from the time of the pyramids, everything there was very likely created by one of your ancestors--every statue, every hieroglyph, every gold necklace.
"If there is a mummy lying in the center of the room, that person was almost certainly your ancestor, too.
"It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right" ("Statisticians: Common Ancestor of All Humans Lived 5,000 Years Ago," AP, 5 July 2006).
Nibley and Rhodes, while insisting on the arcane and rarefied nature of the hypocephalus idea, an idea that can be summarized in a few telling points, also take us far afield: the Ascension Literature (the Apocalypses of Abraham, Enoch, and so on, the Shield of Achilles, the Hermetic Tradition, a word or two about the Chinese jade disks--even a page about the Aztec Calendar. Nothing is said about the Book of Mormon or of Jaredites, Mulekites, Southeast Asians, or any others who might have borne the freight of the cosmic circle. However telltale the cross-cultural signs of recognition, however clear the trace of the pollen, Nibley leaves the matter in the air.
Diffusion of knowledge from clime to clime is a delicate thing, as delicate as the lift of a butterfly.
Notes: Essay updated in January 2018.
We must point out," says Lopez Austin, "that the data [about Panutla, their migrations to Tamoanchan near the snow-capped volcanoes, the loss of their "original books" and creation of new ones] is so strange and enigmatic that it has led to many interpretations"--but that's the joy of it (Lopez Austin, Tamoanchan, 79; 55; for a map and diagram showing the ships and migrations, fig. 3, 57). "The document is a history of the Mexica, told by themselves" (Lopez Austin, 56), that is to say, the emic view, that which touches as close to the reality of the Mexica origins as we can possibly come.
It is left to us, outsiders, to take up the etic view of things, to make models that approximate, but never reach, the cultural, religious, and historical truth. Such models must be shaped with rigor and with care, in a word: scholarship; yet curious students keep on the lookout for all kinds of surprises. My own work in Egyptian and Hebrew won't permit me, for instance, to look favorably on the conclusions of others who have tried to see in these languages a dual-origin for Uto-Aztecan--a startling enterprise. All I can see, despite the formidable work spread before me, are the telling multiple misses about Egyptian and Hebrew semantics and phonology. And once you start to tally the misses, it's easy to whittle down the cognate count to next to nothing: consider the case of Japanese and Korean. But at least I give things a considered examination.
Of the extant hypocephali, the Calendar Stone, or the Mosaic Shields: What thematic correspondence, what shared semiotic, may we, with eagle eyes, descry on these? Our keen informants again tell us that the latter "commemorates the descent of the stars into the interior of the earth," a cosmic dance of seven all-encircling "warlike star deities" in which Descent and Ascent make up One Eternal Round, a continual renewal of the powers of life. (See Turquoise Mosaics, notes on Image 94 by Adrian Velazquez and Maria Eugenia Marin).
Indeed, some curious students today discern the symbolism of the caterpillar and the butterfly, images associated with the warrior cult, both coursing the rim and unfolding at center of the Aztec Calendar itself:
"The outer image is the body of some kind of animal or insect that has fire symbols in boxes along its body. . . The body of the animal or insect curves down to the bottom, and the heads face each other as gaping serpent jaws. . . The traditional view is that these huge images are 'fire serpents,' as indicated by the huge serpent heads and the images of fire that cover their bodies. . . But a more recent interpretation, offered by Karl Taube, suggests that these images are not serpents at all, but giant caterpillars representing the transformation and rebirth of the warrior as the sun, emerging in the center of the image in the shape of a great butterfly" (Carrasco, Daily Life, 174; Karl Taube, "The Turquoise Hearth: Fire, Self Sacrifice, and the Central Mexican Cult of War," in Mesoamerica's Classical Heritage, 2000; also, Taube, "The Symbolism of Turquoise in Ancient Mesoamerica").
For Professor Taube, the imagery of jaguar, serpent, and butterfly (or caterpillar) all overlap. Vanishes forever, in the light of multiple approaches, the prohibitive Western voicing: "no more and no less." Whether they know it or not, and whether it speaks, at all, to influence, diffusion, or the like--and that's impossible to unscramble--today's Mesoamericanists not only discern in the Mayan glyphs the same system of mixing logographic and syllabic writing that obtains in the hieroglyphs of Egypt, they likewise find in Ancient American composition, both text and iconography--to us, richly chaotic--an "illogical" many-valued logic perfectly at home in Ancient Egypt.
And the noses of these serpent-caterpillars converging at the nadir of the Calendar Stone? These, says Professor Villela, are indeed bespangled with star symbols. According to Taube, their proper "supernatural caterpillar" home is the fifth level of the heavens, whence dart falling stars. One wonders whether falling stars, in appearance of fiery serpents or caterpillars, might have been thought to fertilize the ground? (See Karl Taube, "Symbolism of Turquoise"). The New Fire Ceremony likewise draws the flaming energy from the Pleiades to this lower earth: "Go and Catch a falling star."
Do not all these things also recall the two serpents appearing at either side the ram-faced figure of the hypocephalus, a manifestation of powerful solar energies? (lightening bolts? comets? meteors?) or even the fledgling falcon, with tiny, hopeful, outstretched wings (labeled imty or Infant on certain disks dramatically appearing in the upper left panel as symbol of solar rejuvenation, in the cycle of time, manifest in the heavenly firmament (see Explanation of Facsimile 2, fig. 4)?
These serpents, says Tamas Mekis, in a new dissertation considering all extant hypocephali, both "protect" the central solar god and also "ensure" for him a continuation of "light and energy, at day or at night" ("Hypocephli," Budapest, 2013). All of which recalls what Joseph Smith explained about the figure of four-faced ram, an emblem for the Ancient Egyptians of both unceasing creative and procreative abundance: the central figure receives his power through the medium of other powers. As for the fledgling solar falcon, Mekis tells us, citing the hieroglyphic label, that it embodies in mysterious and transcendent form, as Amun-Re's Ba of Ba's, that is, at once both hidden and radiant, all four of the Ba's, or powers, aspects, and cosmic extension, of the four-faced ram. Now glimpse the Calendar Stone's unfurling butterfly bursting from its chrysalis with four manifest wings--"strange sights"--each bearing the epochal record and pattern of a Sun.
"Tell me where all past years are."
V Cultural Diffusion or Independent Invention?
Yet how could all these themes and motifs from Ancient Egyptian iconography also appear in 16th century Mexico? Obviously, given the intervening millennia separating the two, core ideas and attitudes from Ancient Egypt were as likely to circle the globe several times over as was the royal Egyptian bloodline. Do not the mathematical models of genealogy show us how every living person today must descend from the royal line that built the pyramids?
"When you walk through an exhibit of Ancient Egyptian art from the time of the pyramids, everything there was very likely created by one of your ancestors--every statue, every hieroglyph, every gold necklace.
"If there is a mummy lying in the center of the room, that person was almost certainly your ancestor, too.
"It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right" ("Statisticians: Common Ancestor of All Humans Lived 5,000 Years Ago," AP, 5 July 2006).
Nibley and Rhodes, while insisting on the arcane and rarefied nature of the hypocephalus idea, an idea that can be summarized in a few telling points, also take us far afield: the Ascension Literature (the Apocalypses of Abraham, Enoch, and so on, the Shield of Achilles, the Hermetic Tradition, a word or two about the Chinese jade disks--even a page about the Aztec Calendar. Nothing is said about the Book of Mormon or of Jaredites, Mulekites, Southeast Asians, or any others who might have borne the freight of the cosmic circle. However telltale the cross-cultural signs of recognition, however clear the trace of the pollen, Nibley leaves the matter in the air.
Diffusion of knowledge from clime to clime is a delicate thing, as delicate as the lift of a butterfly.
Notes: Essay updated in January 2018.
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