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LET us revert to our inquiry concerning the cust at funerals by both Mayas and Egyptians. We one or two so remarkable that they cannot be h uted to mere coincidence.

We have seen that in Mayach, as in I Egypt, and many other countries, a certain ki held sacred; its worship being, no doubt, clo that of ancestors. But how came the cynocepl nected in Egypt with the rites of the dead? monkey is not a native of Egypt, but is of Co where it is very abundant.

Thoth, the god of wisdom and letters, preceptor of Isis and Osiris. He was supp office of scribe in Amenti, where his busin down the actions of the dead, and present or them to Osiris while sitting as judge of t Thoth, in that capacity, is key, in a sitting posture seated on the top of the

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In the struc

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consisted of

iets, anklets,

From times elry has been Greece. Nose

naments essen'hey are still as es living on the ents, in the very

vol. iii., chap. xvi.,

mere coincidence that in Egypt, as in Mayach, cynocephali were thus associated with the king of the dead? That such was the fact there is no doubt. But who can to-day tell what circumstances concurred to originate it? The cynocephalus is a native of Ethiopia, not of Egypt. It is also indigenous of Yucatan and other parts of Central America.

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Images of cynocephali, always in the attitude of prayer, are found in many places in Yucatan, as well as in Copan (Honduras) and Guatemala.' Baaɔ and Chuen, of whose metamorphosis into monkeys we read in the "Popol-vuh," s and which is said to have taken place in Xibalba, the lower regions, the kingdom of darkness, were worshipped in Mayach, particularly in Yucatan and Oaxaca."

Baaɔ and Chuen are the names of personages who lived in times anterior to those when King Canchi and his family reigned over Mayach. Their history has come to us, in the sacred book of the Quichés, in the form of a myth. Deified after their death, as all rulers were, the generations that followed them paid them divine homage. Baaɔ is the Maya word for "cynocephalus." The meaning of the name Chuen is now lost. We only find it as that of the eighth day of the month.

Like the Mayas," the Egyptians regarded the West as the region of darkness, the place where the souls of the dead

'Plinius, Hist. Nat., viii. 54; vii. 2.

'Horapollo, Hierogly., lib. i., 14, 15. In astronomical subjects two cynocephali are frequently represented standing in a boat in attitude of prayer before the sun.

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Popol Vuh, part ii., chap. vii., et passim.

Fray Geronimo Roman, Republica de las Indias Occidentales, lib. ii., cap. xv.

Codex Cortesianus, plate viii.

returned to the bosom of their ancestors in the realms of Amenti. There King Osiris sat on a throne in the midst of the waters; there, also, it was that Thoth performed his office of scribe. Was, then, the worship of the cynocephalus, his totem, brought to Egypt from the Lands of the West?

Another funeral custom among the Egyptians, mentioned by Champollion Figeac1 and Sir Gardner Wilkinson,2 was that of placing the right arm of the mummies of distinguished persons across the chest, so that the right hand rested on the left shoulder. We find that this same custom obtained in Mayach. We shall refer to it more at length, later on, when explaining the sculptures that ornamented Prince Coh's mausoleum.

If we examine the ornaments worn by the personages represented by the atlantes, those portrayed in the bas-reliefs on the jambs of the doorway and on the antæ that supported the entablature of the portico of Prince Coh's Memorial Hall, likenesses, probably, of individuals who lived when the structure was erected, who were, no doubt, friends and relatives of the deceased prince, we find that said ornaments consisted of ear-rings, nose-rings, nose-studs, armlets, bracelets, anklets, garters, necklaces, breastplates, and finger-rings. From times immemorial to our day, the same kind of jewelry has been used in India, Chaldea, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Greece. Nose rings and studs, however, seem to have been ornaments essentially belonging to the Western Continent. They are still as much the prevalent adornment among the tribes living on the banks of the upper Amazon River and its affluents, in the very

'Champollion Figeac, L'Univers, Egypte, p. 261.

'Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, vol. iii., chap. xvi.,

p. 486.

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heart of the southern American continent, and with the majority of the Mexican tribes, as they were among the Mayas even at the time of the Spanish Conquest. They are habitually worn by women of all classes in India; by Arab women of Mesopotamia, as they were by Jewish women in the time of Isaiah. He threatened the daughters of Zion, on account of their haughtiness, with the loss of their ornaments, among which were their rings and other nose jewels. So far as we know, nose-rings and nose-studs were not in vogue among the ancient Aryans. They, therefore, did not introduce the custom of wearing such ornaments in the countries they invaded. Said custom must have been brought to Asia, in very remote ages, by immigrants from America. It is a noticeable fact that it only obtained in countries where vestiges of the Mayas and their civilization are found.

Must we regard as a mere coincidence the use of these nose and lip ornaments that, to us, seem not only extremely inconvenient, but rather disfiguring than beautifying the face of the wearer, yet so prevalent among many peoples living thousands of miles apart, knowing nothing of each other's existence?

Perhaps those knowing professors who pretend to explain all these identical customs existing in so many diverse nations, by the tendency of the human mind, in its struggles to free

Paul Marcoy (Lorenzo de Saint-Bricq), Travels in South America, vol. ii.

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Bancroft, Native Races of America, vol. i.

Diego de Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucathan, lib. xii., chap. vii., p. 699. Diego de Landa, Las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 182.

C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Himalayas and on the Indian Plains, chap. iv., p. 90. Bishop Heber, Narratives of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, vol. ii., pp. 179, 188.

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Henry Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 153-262.

Isaiah, chap. iii., verse 21.

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