, Egyptians and Kushites.... They reverenced the sacred 'shu'
stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as
the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain
stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the
central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to
have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to
have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the
world ... as the sacred Shu stone."

It should be added here that the Hittite sign for Ishtar was a triangle
enclosing a stone: "the mountain enclosing the stone of life."

About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(_cf._ Kukul) under a great chief or
lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. 206). In Mexico the
name for turquoise is xiuitl and the god of fire is named
Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is
associated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-goddess. The
spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol
of generation.

"Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uraeus serpent as a sign of
royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so
widely distant from one another as India and Egypt...."

We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200),
that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief
survived in Phoenician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found
amongst the Semites. "Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an
animal, plant or heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the
serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and
Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the
Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of
Nahash, 'or the serpent,' the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after
the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest
and decimation of the latter."

The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates
the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open
serpent's jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured
on the Central American stelae and bas-reliefs. The existence of
totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the
arbitrary method by which it was established by th