--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Cannon, Elizabeth R. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 13 number: 1 published: 1909-11 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Elizabeth R. Cannon, "The Pyramids of the Sun, Moon and Stars," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 1 (November 1909): 55–66.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1301unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1301unse start_page: 55 end_page: 66 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-11) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1301unse publication_year: 1909 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Pyramids of the Sun, Moon and Stars The Pyramids of the Sun, Moon and Stars. BY ELIZABETH R. CANNON. (With Photographs by the Author.) We take the train at Mexico City in the early morning, curve past the church-crowned hill of Guadalupe, which, with its holy well and sacred legend, is Mecca of Mexico; then travel the through fields of maguey until it gives way to wastes covered with giant Nopal cactus. After an hour's ride we stop at the station of San Juan Teo- tihuacan, where native women sell us tunas, the insipid-tasting fruit of the cactus, and small boys offer to the gullible tourists calendar stones and genuine antiques which one chap naively informs us "are made by my father. " Still there is compensation, for one woman remarked that she liked "made ones, because they are not so dirty and broken as the others." To the uninitiated, the great Pyramid of the Sun, rising clean-cut, bathed in the brilliant sunlight of Mexico, looks very near indeed. The woman from San Francisco, how- ever, had a pretty clear idea of the distance, for she insisted on riding a A modern inhabitant of San As she weighed two hundred ^^ ^ ^ ^.^ ^ ^^ b urr0i Juan Teotihuacan. they made rather slow progress. 03 03 «.s THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. 57 As we approach the pyramid we notice that it rises tier upon tier, terrace after terrace, 216 feet into the air. It is nearly as large as Cheops of Egypt. The building itself is of conglomerate rock cemented together. Terraced platforms of pure cement dec- orate one corner at the base, while stairs of hewn stone, in a per- fect state of preservation, rise clear to the summit. Here is the old Egyptian mystery again presented, as to how such blocks of stone can be raised to such heights without the aid of machinery. The work was probably done then, as it is now in Mexico, by man labor. On examining the construction more closely it seems easier. The Pyramid apparently is solid; that is, as far in as the government has tunneled. It has found one stratum built upon another, which leads to the conclusion that the New World, like the old, had Pharaohs who were proud and liked to leave their names in solid masonry. If the diggers go far enough, they will probably find the The stairs that lead to the summit of center of the building hol- the Pyramid of the Sun. low, for the first king built a temple, the second one covered it, and made it larger; so each one had left a finer building to commemorate his reign. The fifth layer exposed to the elements had fallen into decay, vegetation had sprung up on it, and it was as its companion, the Pyramid of the Moon, is now. After the Dismal Night, when Cortez retreated with the rem- nant of his little band, he camped on a hill at this place. He was in desperate straits. His cannon were in the bottom of the lake; and even if he had had guns, he had no powder to charge them with; every man in his company was wounded, and worst of all, starvation stared them in the face. As if he had not troubles enough, the plains below became a THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. 59 seething mass of Aztec warriors. The captain looked down upon them and reflected that the survivors of the horrors of the Sad Night were to be butchered like sheep. He held the advantage of posi- tion on a mound. In the center of the advancing army he beheld the white plume of the chief. By a trick of memory he remem- bered that he had heard that among some of the Indian tribes, when the Cacique went down the warriors considered it a sign of ill-omen and fled. Shouting "Santiago and Forward," Cortez dug the rowels of his spurs into his horse. Alvarado, Sandoval, and several other Aztec Calendar and Stone Idols, National Museum, City of Mexico. captains followed him. Trampling the naked Indians under the horses' iron-shod hoofs, they made straight for the center of the field where Cortez cleft the skull of the chief with his battle ax. The Spaniards hewed right and left, and when the Indians saw their leader's plume borne triumphantly on a Spanish spear, they faded away into the distance. 60 IMPROVEMENT ERA. The mound on which the Spaniards were stationed, at the bat- had been built by the Toltecs, (the Builders), a race tle of Otumba, which was dead and gone when the Aztecs came from the north. But for many ages yet these silent monuments to a for- gotten race will stand. When you view the un- couth Aztec idols of crude designs in the National Mu- seum of Mexico, you think that Prescott's Conquest, with its description of the Indian's advancement and cul- ture, is a tremendous fiction. However, they did not have the chisel, and cut stone only with soft copper. The build- ers of the Pyramids evidently had better tools, for their workmanship in stone, as everything else, denotes a higher civilization. The stone work of the Pyramids is symmetrically Some of the statues found among the wrought, some of it in the ruins. rarest onyx. The designs are conventional, closely resembling the Egyptian. The massive carved objects seem to have been designed for use and ornament, rather than worship. At the gate of the Pyramid of the Sun a regiment of soldiers is stationed. These men take your name, relieve you of your camera, (unless you are a very clever smuggler, indeed) and furnish you a government guide. So many of Mexico's antiquities have found their way to museums of other countries, that now she takes care of her own. The trunk of every traveler coming from Mexico is overhauled at the border, to see that he does not carry away any little stone gods. Through the cactus, we trail to the "House of the Priests," THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. 61 as well excavated and clean cut as the ruins of Pompeii.Here the cement floors are uncovered, and parts of the walls are standing. From the paintings on one of these, the place takes its name. An enor- mous sun is painted in terra-cotta, and near it is a yellow-ochre moon surrounded by numerous green stars. The imperishable design is as hard and smooth as flint. From the frequent repetition of the sun symbol found in the ruins, scientists have deduced the theory that these "Unknowns" were sun worshipers. On the terrace of the Pyra- We skirted the base of the Sun mid of the Sun, Mexico. Pyramid, dodging the immense bould- ers being hurled down by the govern- ment excavators, and started on the ascent. Unanimously we ask the same question, "What was it built for?" "Sepulchre?" No — there are no tombs there. "Public Building?" There are no chambers. "Sports?" There is not room on the top to accommodate a large number of people. After toiling up the stairs, flight after flight, one is led to believe- that only two things would induce people to undergo the hardship of getting to the top, -wor- ship, or the splendid view of the surrounding country with which we were rewarded at the summit. Undoubtedly the pyramid was a temple. It was at one of the frequent stops on the stairs that I sprang my camera on them, but was warned to conceal it again as it is against the law to take pictures of the ruins. "You ought to have an elevator up here," the fat woman puffed. — "We are going to have, next year at the Centennial," answered the Old Fossil out there trying to discover a means to kill the vegetation, which is the greatest enemy of the archaeol- ogist. "Is President Diaz coming out then?" "Yes, but he has already been here." 62 IMPROVEMENT ERA. "He did not climb these stairs?" "No, he avoided them and scrambled up the cliffs, and the rest of his party had to follow suit." The fat woman sighed and went on. From the broad, beautiful top, where the air is like champagne, we looked down upon myri- ads of round mounds. Their mysteries must be solved by the digger's spade. Some are tombs, most of them dwelling houses, and perhaps others are the Star Temples clustered around their great A Collection of Antiquities, Mexico. nucleus, the Sun. The Calle del Morte, the Street of the Dead, leads from the base of the larger building to the Pyramid of the Moon. The path derives its name from the fact that it is lined with tombs on both sides. When we started down it, the Mexican muchacho (boy) who was our burden-bearer, stopped at the mouth of a cave and. picked up a stone face, per- fectly moulded, about an inch and a half in diameter. Dur- ing the course of the day we collected about a dozen oth- ers, some of which we found, and others we bought of the children, who are adepts at finding them in the plowed fields near the ruins. No two of them were alike, and Terraces at the Base of the Pyramid of the Sun. they offer absolutely different types in feature and expres- sion, varying from pure Egyptian and Greek profiles to the lowest African. Some think they were children's toys, but their number, and the careful workmanship exhibited in their carving, led us t j believe that they were portraits perhaps of departed friends. As THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. few of them measure more than two inches, they were not masks that covered the faces of the dead, as one learned archaeol- ogist gravely informs us. He evidently had not been on the grounds of San Juan Teotihuacan, although he wrote a book on the subject. Many are the stories suggested, but not told, on this mortu- ary road. The children are buried upright in great jars, so that one can lift the lid, and, like Ali Baba's maid-servant, look down upon a cranium. One great crypt contained limbs and bones hurled in there pell mell. One skeleton buried on top of another to which he was fastened suggested the ancient form of punishing a murderer by chaining him to the corpse of his victim. The Moon Pyra- mid is covered with century plants. It is believed to be hollow, a fact of which we were convinced when one of our party mys- teriously disappeared and the guides had to haul him out of a cavity ten feet deep into which he had fallen. A subterra- nean passage, just discovered, connects the two, and it is be- lieved that one end The Government is protecting the wonderful coloring of the frescoes with plate glass. of it will lead into the mysterious chambers of the moon. To one side of the Street of the Dead is a palace, whose rich mural decorations have been preserved by heavy plate glass. Con- ventional designs in all colors of the rainbow are interspersed with pictures of rabbits, bears, wolves, snakes, and turtles, all of which had symbolical meaning. There again is the ever present sun. A large chimney, which seemed more popular with the ancients than with the modern Mexicans, ascends from one corner of the room. 64 IMPROVEMENT ERA. In the long halls of another casa were bases of pillars similar to the Hall of the Monoliths at Mitla. Below this lay the Subter- ranean City, with its queer passages, its many stone-lined rooms, and its deep well gurgling with the water that moistened the lips of a dead race. Such a well in this underground house meant life itself to the people in time of siege. Hall of the Monoliths, Mitla. Near the watering place we found human vertebras and shat- tered spear-points of obsidian. For miles around, the ground is speckled with bits of this glittering black stone. As we walked through the corn fieldswe picked up arrow points and pieces of hatchets. The shattered implements of war located a battle ground. All over Mexico are the same indications of a great conflict. Through the fields my muchacho led me to an ancient house that a Mexican had been excavating on his own account. Even after lusty halloos the owner of the house failed to appear, although we caught a glimpse of him over a rock wall, his head swathed in bloody bandages. The paintings here were finer than any belonging to the ruins proper. An Egyptian queen, with a sceptre in her hand, who looked like the Queen of Hearts, — as perhaps she had been, — smiled benignly from the west wall. Amid broken pottery and ancient stone gods, looking very shabby and THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. 65 bedraggled, compared with this thousand year old Queen, was a canvas of the Catholic Virgin of Guadalupe. Exterior of the Hall of the Monoliths, Mitla. Here we picked up [an olla, a rare-shaped'jardiniere which — was "No antiqua,— no moderna, Azteca— middle period.'' The Imperishable Mosaic Work of Mitla. third race had also left its ruins, for the Catholic church, decayed and moss-grown, was most desolate of all. The pagan hieroglyphics 66 IMPROVEMENT ERA. graved in its building stone were less easily read than its forsaken sepulchers and tatter-demalion shrine. "Do you think that Teotihuacan, Mitla, and Palenque were built by the same race?" I asked Senor Perez, director of the Natural History Museum. "Who shall say!" with a shrug of the shoulders. "I have here a pair of pincers. Who can tell by looking at it, whether it is made in Germany, England, or the United States." True, the cities are all built massively, the absence of arches is no- ticeable at all of them, they all have pyramids, and the sign of the cross is found at all three. Palenque, which covers twenty square miles, is mas- sive enough to withstand the jungle growth. Its carvings are magnificent. One great swinging stone hammock contains the figures of a man and a woman. In its paint- ing, life-sized women hold out A Daughter of the Ruins, Mitla, Mexico. children as if for blessing. Its pyramids are amphitheater-crowned, containing tier after tier of seats, as if used for great assemblies. And its walls are covered with writing. Mitla, with its beautiful, long galleries, its monolithic pillars, its colored tiles and exquisite Mosaic work, shows a luxury-loving people. Teotihuacan means the "House of God." Is it not possible that Palenque was the seat of govern- ment, with its written laws, and halls of embassadors; that Mitla contained the palatial homes of the rich; and that San