we have an interesting and suggestive variant of the scheme and it
suggests the possibility that, possibly actuated by ambition, Cucumatz had
grasped and united in his person the prerogatives of the chiefs or heads
of each tribe. On the other hand, it may be that it was the original
custom for the high priest to be a sort of animated calendar sign in
unison with the separate chiefs of each tribe, who represented, in
rotation, the totemistic ancestors of their people.

Having shown how the lords of the Four Quarters were indissolubly linked
to the four major calendar-signs which also symbolized the elements, let
us examine the data establishing that the capital of each of the four
provinces was named a tecpan. From Duran I have already quoted that in the
Mexican metropolis there were two tecpans or official houses in which the
affairs of the government were attended to and councils held. It is
significant that one of these was named "the tecpan of men" and the other
"the tecpan of women." Whilst the metropolis, the seat of the dual
government, thus had its two tecpans which were presided over by the two
supreme rulers, we have learned from other sources of the four tecpans in
Guatemala and that Texcoco, near the city of Mexico, was also termed a
tecpan and that its ruler bore as a title one of the four major
calendar-signs. These facts explain his position and the reason why the
"lord of Texcoco" was one of four lords who supported Montezuma when he
met Cortes in full state. A careful investigation of the derivation and
true significance of the word tecpan yields interesting results.
Cen-tecpan-tli means, a count of twenty persons; the verb tecpana
signifies, "to establish something in concerted order; to establish order
amongst people." The verb tecpancapoa means, to count something in regular
order.

The Maya verb tepal=to govern or reign, or to be "one who mediates,"
appears to be allied to the above Nahuatl words and it is not unlikely
that the employment of the flint-knife or tecpatl as an emblem of office
had been suggested by the fact that its Nahuatl name resembles, in sound,
the above words formed with tecpan, and also the Maya verb tepal. It thus
constituted a bilingual rebus, expressing the sense=to govern, to rule, to
regulate, etc., and, employed as the symbol of the North and Polaris, it
conveyed the idea that the latter was not only the producer of life but
the regulator of the Universe.

From the fact t