The Stone of the Sun and the First Chapter of the History of Mexico/Palacios' Introduction
THE STONE OF THE SUN AND THE FIRST CHAPTER OF
THE HISTORY OF MEXICO
The famous stone of the Archaeological Museum of Mexico, from the moment of its discovery, has given occasion that men of ability and eminence should interest themselves in it.
Rare must be the traveler who does not admire the architecture of the metropolitan cathedral, whose towers, crowned by bell-shaped terminations, majestically distinguish it among all the basilicas of the world. It was precisely the author of a considerable part of this façade, and in particular of the towers, Don José Damián Ortiz de Castro, who made the discovery of the stone, under the pavement of the Plaza Principal, on the seventeenth of December of the year 1790.
They were about to bury it anew, imitating an archbishop who two centuries before had been guilty of so strange a blunder; fortunately the viceroy of the colony at the time was a man of the character of the second Count of Revillagigedo, Don Juan Vincente de Güemes Pacheco de Padilla. This able and progressive governor opposed the execution of their plan, ordering that educated individuals should take charge of the stone, that they should measure and study it, and that it should be transported to the Royal University and placed in a public place “where it should be forever preserved as a notable monument of Indian antiquity.” With this act the said ruler, one of the most illustrious that New Spain ever had, once more demonstrated that talent and discretion of which he gave so many proofs.
The first to examine the monument with the interest and the scientific rigor which the work merited, and the first to draw and reproduce, with sufficient fidelity, the complicated relief figures upon it, was the illustrious Mexican astronomer, Don Antonio de León y Gama. This same modest and eminent savant was also the first to formulate an interpretation of the figures engraved upon the face of the monument; and his study with reference to it is of such sort that, although not final nor entirely correct, it has not only given the basis for all subsequent scientific studies, but remains a classic in the matter. Even today, when the decipherment of the monument goes largely along paths which León y Gama did not indicate, the thesis of the illustrious author is partly sustained and will always be an important treatise of the subject.
The admirable monolith could not fail to attract the attention of a man like Baron Alexander von Humboldt. He examined it in great detail, being the first to classify its petrographic nature in scientific terms, earlier indicated with fair accuracy by the prolific writer, Don José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez, and finally determined with the precision of modern methods by the distinguished geologist, Don Ezequiel Ordóñez, who refers it to the group of olivine basalts. Humboldt confirmed also the weight which Gama had attributed to the stone by means of ingenious calculations, and reproduced the drawing made by the same scholar, illustrating with it one of the pages of his beautiful Vues des Cordilléres. So far as concerned interpretation, he accepts completely the thesis of León y Gama (as thirty years later did a man of the ability of Albert Gallatin, who also made use of the drawing of our archaeologist), presenting it at length and fully discussing the chronological system of the aborigines and their theony and cosmogony. The vast knowledge of the German writer and his extensive journeys suggested to him various relations between the constructors of the stone, the Asiatics, and peoples of Southern America, an idea fecund in a certain way, but which has brought more ills than advantages to our archaeology, leading many investigators to devote their energies to tracing foreign affinities, instead of studying in themselves the products of the culture of Anahuac.
From that time up to near the end of the nineteenth century, no figure of first rank returned to the attempt of lifting the veil under which was hidden the guarded secret of the famous stone. Set in the lower part of the eastern tower of the basilica, savants and travelers coming from all parts of the world filed before the mysterious reliefs during more than a hundred years, contemplating it some with curiosity, some with wonder, all with admiration. It was there about 1805, when the talented Moxo relates that the common herd diverted itself with battering its figures and designs, although the learned “have not ceased to view it with the greatest astonishment and respect, considering it an original document which testifies to the notable knowledge of astronomy and geometry of the ancient Mexicans.”
There, with permission of Don Lucas Alamán, at the time minister of state, W. Bullock, proprietor of the museum of London, took a mold of it for the first time, which he successfully transported to his institution. The traveler relates that at that time (1823) the people of Mexico called the monument reloj de Moctezuma ("Montezuma's watch"), a statement which Brantz Mayor repeats in his work Mexico as It Was and Is (1844). Gama's drawing is reproduced in both books. (We may add that today excellent molds of the relief exist in the American Museum of Natural History of New York and in other foreign institutions.) There also was taken one of the most perfect existing photographs of the stone, which adorns the pages of the great work Monumentos del Arte Mexicano Antiguo; there also the expert and notable artist, Don José María Velasco, drew it with his customary fidelity and precision. Finally in the year 1885, the monument was transported to the place which it now occupies in the grand salon of the Museum of Archaeology.
At about this time, the able archaeologist, talented and illustrious historian, and eminent man of letters, Alfredo Chavero, produced a most brilliant disquisition, which for many years changed the course of ideas regarding the monument. Fundamentally contrary to the theory of Gama, although agreeing with it in some details, this study possesses very interesting aspects; nevertheless, rather than an adequate decipherment of the hieroglyphs it is a demonstration of the vast knowledge of Chavero in the general topics of archaeological science.
Following so luminous a work, there are no studies truly worthy of being taken into consideration, except that of Don Dionisio Abadiano, prolix and minute beyond any other, sufficiently erudite also, but in almost its entirety aberrant and full of inacceptable subtleties and arguments as distorted as arbitrary. We will say nothing very different of the work of Felipe J. Valentini, without denying, however, the merit of his other works to the German doctor.
As little can we admit, well elaborated and estimable as may be the work (The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations) in which it is propounded, the thesis of Señora Zelia Nuttall, investigator to whom the archaeological science of Mexico owes so many services. The distinguished Americanist claims in essence that the central part of the monolith represents the circumpolar zone of the celestial vault, the naolin and the four rectangles comprised in it being an allegory of the movements of the Great Bear, which form apparently the cross or Buddhist swastika gyrating around the Pole Star, center of the system whose strange and notable fixity was the origin of the worship which the aborigines and other peoples
of the earth consecrated to it. Without descending to details, we will only say that the theory—although developed with the most powerful logic and extreme wealth of data—omits the analysis of the greater part of the signs and glyphs of the relief, which, without speaking of other serious objections, reduces the probabilities of likelihood. At all events, the work of the illustrious lady writer is a work of many merits.
An original and sufficiently probable hypothesis concerning how the relief was engraved is due to the expert and well-informed archaeologist, Don Ramón Mena. The official explanations of the Museum, published in its Catalogues—work of the illustrious writer and professor of archaeology in the institution, Don Jesús Galindo y Villa—and contained in notes and labels fixed to the objects in its collections—notes edited in part by Señor Mena and in part also due to the inspiration of Don Eduard Seler and of the notable savant and archaeologist, Don Francisco del Paso y Troncoso—describe the stone without pretending to interpret it, except in a very general way; in basis, and so far as concerns the monument of which we are speaking, they follow many of the ideas of Chavero, and in less degree those of León y Gama.