seeing in the said constellation the figure of a warrior, but that of a gigantic butterfly of brilliant sparkling (a more beautiful conception), must have considered it formed of seven principal stars, three of the belt and four of the great parallelogram, whose corners correspond to the eyes of the butterfly‘s wings. This being so, we can already explain the figures of the butterfly which appears on the edge of the relief: they mark a succession of xiuhmolpias. The same sign is seen, among celestial signs, in the pages of the tonalámatl; and here we recall that in the Mixtec codex from Santa Maria Yolotepec there is a butterfly placed upon a throne. It is to be noticed also that this figure is the motif par excellence of many worked stones in the museum and of stones, slabs, Columns, and figures of great size.
It seems more natural that a primitive people should take into account, at the solemn moment of making the new fire, the movements of a great constellation like this butterfly than of the little group of the Pleiades. We repeat that it is reasonable to see in Orion the symbolical Itzpapálotl, so many times mentioned in the codices; we believe that it is this which is represented by the stars of the plumes. It will be noticed that there are fourteen: this is natural, because in the huehuetiliztli the constellation culminated twice, marking the beginning of a cycle.
j) Let us see the figures of the inner border of the serpents. They have been called Cipactli, phonetics of water, plumes, half-plumes, clouds, flames, rain of fire, and various other things. We believe it probable that they are conventionalizations of fire. But the groups of four stout stars in which they terminate, by their unusually regular form, their position, and their arrangement, are clearly shown to be numeral signs. In agreement with the general meaning of the relief, we can do no less than to assign to them the value of 416 years, or what is the same, each flame symbolizes the huehuetéotl of the center with four numerals. The supposition is not at all forced; a modern artist, before a similar problem, would not proceed very differently. On the other hand, the thesis of Senor Abadiano is inacceptable, since he claims to find in the combination of the flames the years anterior to the Christian Era, in which the family of Israel penetrated the Promised Land. The relief cannot refer to that event.
But it is evident, from the position of the glyphs, separating almost from the serpent of time, that they refer to past epochs, in contradistinction to the present, which is displayed in the body of the serpents, allegory as simple as beautiful. Therefore, the serpents have
68
