1

1 Mr. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, p. 300, in a foot-note remarks: "I do not give the name of number four' in this table, because in the Akkadian it seems quite distinct." The Akkadian word San is (in Maya) can. See farther on for the various meanings and the power of that word, which among the Mayas was the title of the dynasty of their kings. It meant "serpent." Mr. Lenormant (p. 232) says that "the serpent with seven heads was invoked by the Akkadians." Was this seven-headed serpent the Ah-ac-chapat, totem of the seven members of the family of King Canchi of Mayach, that no doubt the Nágás worshipped at AngorThom in Cambodia? (See Le Plongeon, Sacred Mysteries, p. 145.) Sir George Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i., p. 122) says, “The Accadians made the serpent one of the principal attributes, and one of the forms of Hea."

Modern Assyriologists, after translating the tablets on Assyrian and Chaldean magic, written in the Akkadian language, agree with the prophetical books of Scripture in the opinion that the Chaldees descended from the primitive Akkadians, and that those people spoke a language differing from the Semitic tongues. A writer in the British and Foreign Review says: "Babylonia was inhabited at an early period by a race of people entirely different from the Semitic population known in historic times. This people had an abundant literature, and they were the inventors of a system of writing which was at first hieroglyphic. Of the people who invented this system of writing very little is known with certainty, and even the name is a matter of doubt."

According to Berosus, who was a Chaldean priest, these first inhabitants of Babylonia, whose early abode was in Chaldea, were foreigners of another race (alloɛ0vεìs).2 He carefully establishes a distinction between them and the Assyrians.

1 British and Foreign Review, No. 102, January, 1870, vol. ii., p. 305. Berosus, Fragments, 5, 6, 11.

Those primitive Akkadians, those strangers in Mesopotamia, the aborigines would naturally have regarded as guests in the country. Taking a hint from this idea, they called their first settlement ula or ul, a Maya word meaning "guests newly arrived." In this settlement in the marshy ground, lest the natives or the wild beasts that swarmed in the reeds should attack them, the strangers surrounded their dwellings with palisades, and designated the place as Kal-ti, whence Kaldi by which their tribe continued to be known even when they became influential. The word kalti is composed of two Maya primitives-kal, "to be enclosed with posts," and ti, place."

66

In my work "The Monuments of Mayach and their Historical Teachings," I have traced step by step the journey of the Maya colonists, along the course of the Euphrates, to the "City of the Sun," Babylon, called in Akkadian, according to Mr. Lenormant,' Ká-Dingira or Tin-tir, the etymology of which appears to be unknown to him, though very easily found by means of the Maya. The name Ká-Dingira seems to be composed of four Maya primitives-Cah, "city;" Tin, a particle which in composition indicates the place where one is or an action happens; Kin, "priest; " La, "eternal truth," the god, the sun. Cah-Tin-kin-la, or be it Ká-Dingira, is

"the city where reside the priests of the sun."

The name Tin-tir, Maya Tin-til, means Tin, "the place where a thing actually exists; " Tiliz, by elision til, "sacred," "mysterious," "venerable." Tin-til would therefore be "the holy, the mysterious place," a very appropriate title for a sacred city. Til may, again, be the radical of Tilil, which means "property." Tin-til would in this case signify "this place is 'Lenormant, Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, pp. 193, 353.

my property; it belongs to me, the god, the sun," which is in perfect accordance with this other ethnic name of Babylon, Ka-Ra, or be it Cah-La, "the city of eternal truth," of "the sun."

The name given to the temple of the "seven lights of heaven, as well as its mode of construction, shows that the builders were colonists from a country where that kind of edifice-the pyramid of stone-was not only common, but had so been from remote ages.

Babel is a word whose etymon has been a bone of contention for Orientalists and philologists. They are not yet agreed as to its meaning, simply because they do not know to what language it belongs nor whence came the people who raised the monument. We are told they were strangers in the plains of Shinar. Did they come originally from Mayach? They spoke the vernacular of that country far off beyond the sea toward the rising sun, and Genesis asserts that they had journeyed from the east.1

Ba, in Maya, has various meanings; the principal, however, is "father," "ancestor."

Bel has also several significations. Among these it stands for "way," "custom."

Ba-bel would therefore indicate that the sacred edifice was constructed according to the way, the custom, of the builders' ancestors.

Landa, in his work "Las Cosas de Yucatan," informs us that the Mayas were very fond of giving nicknames to all persons prominent among them. The same fondness exists today among their descendants, who seldom speak of their superiors by their name, but a sobriquet descriptive of some marked Genesis, chap. xi., verse 2.

1

characteristic observed by them and belonging to the individual. For instance, should anybody inquire concerning me, by my proper name, of the men who for months accompanied me in my expeditions in the ruined cities of Yucatan, they certainly would shake their heads and answer, "Don't know him." But if asked about the Ahmeexnal, "he of the long beard," then they would at once understand who was

meant.1

This same custom seems to have prevailed among the primitive Akkadians, judging from the names of their first kings, the builders of the cities along the banks of the Euphrates, whose seals are stamped on the bricks used in the foundations of the edifices erected by them.

Urukh, we are told, is one of them; Likbabi is another frequently met with.

It is well known that no stones are to be found on the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, that consequently the first cities were built of mud; that is, of sun-dried bricks-adobes. It is probably from that fact that they called the king who ordered them to be built Urukh, “he who makes everything from mud."

It always was, and it is to-day, a characteristic of the Mayas to give surnames to those whom they regard as their superiors. Cogolludo speaks of that peculiarity, and mentions their great witticism in thus giving nicknames, so that those to whom they were given could not take offence, even when they knew they were derided. An instance of this kind comes to my mind. Nakuk-Pech, a native nobleman who wrote a narrative of the conquest of Yucatan by the Spaniards, in the Maya language, represents them as addicted to drunkenness and to all sorts of debauchery; yet calls them Kul-uinicob, the holy men, who came to preach a "holy religion." But that nickname has a second meaning. Kul, it is true, means holy. Pronouncing the k softly, which a foreigner unaccustomed to the Maya pronunciation invariably does, it sounds cul, which means a "cup," a "goblet," a "chalice," just as the Greek xvle. Therefore, cul-uinicob means men addicted to the cup"-drunkards.