opan
swastika, p. 222. At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelae
found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable
discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum
Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking
confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. 220, namely, that the
personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelae, were high-priest
rulers, who bore the title "Divine Four," and were "rulers of the four
regions."

Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon's report, published in vol. I, no. I,
of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that,
beneath several stelae examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous
vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre
of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming
the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault
is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the
branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of
pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would
appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan
performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of
these artificially cosmical centres.

What seems quite clear is that the subterraneous vault constituted a
sacred cosmical chamber and that the stelae were memorial stones, which
probably represented the image of a lord, and the record of his fixed term
of office which formed a period or era of the native calendar (see p.
221). The stela which formed the stable, visible centre of the hidden
substructure may also have been employed as a gnomon during some period of
time, and in the monument the initiated must undoubtedly have recognized
the underlying cosmical conceptions, and regarded it as a highly developed
form or variant of the archaic cross, the primitive record of a year. It
is remarkable how closely analogous are the Central American stelae with
their hidden cruciform vaults, to the conception of the Egyptian "star of
Horus" explained by Hewitt as the meridian pole raised in the centre of a
cross denoting the four quarters.

The most striking evidence of a close affinity between the ancient Central
American ah-men, or master-masons, who built cruciform windows in the
walls of temples and designed the cruciform vaults under the