es, which crowned each
structure. Historical tradition relates that the larger pyramid, known as
the "Enclosure of the Sun (=Tonatiuh-I-Tzacual)," originally bore on its
summit a colossal image of the sun, covered with plates of gold, whilst
the other, the "Enclosure of the Moon" exhibited a similar image, covered
with silver. The distinguished and reliable historian Orozco y Berra
quotes this tradition adding that the soldiers of Cortes despoiled the
images of their precious metals and that the Bishop Zumarraga ordered a
further destruction of all monuments at Teotihuacan.

The tradition which records the existence of a silver and of a gold image,
cannot be dismissed as unfounded, because it meets with a certain amount
of corroboration by other data. In the first case the so-called "battered
goddess," a mutilated stone image, which was found in the courtyard at the
base of the "Pyramid of the Moon," looks as though it may have been the
very monument which was once plated with silver. Traces of concentric
bands of ornamentation seem to indicate that its round face had originally
occupied the centre of a sculptured disc, in which case this must have had
a diameter of about twelve feet. In Peru, as already stated, a silver
image of the moon, associated with the female sovereign, was the
complement to the golden effigy of the sun, associated with the Inca.

Even if data had not already been produced which establishes the existence
of two religious cults in ancient Mexico, the respective symbols of which
were the sun and the moon, the presence of two pyramids at Teotihuacan
would suggest the existence of a division of some sort. The origin of
these great and imposing structures is shrouded in mystery, but it is
generally conceded that they must have been built long before the
comparatively modern inhabitants of the valley of Mexico, the wandering
Aztecs, had taken up their abode in the midst of the salt lagoons. The
erection of two pyramids, however, proves that their builders had already
practised the cult of the middle of heaven and earth, or Above and Below,
and of the Four Quarters for so long a time, that there had been a
separation of religions and government into two almost independent parts,
each complete in itself. In the light of the testimony produced it is safe
to infer that for an indefinite time the rival cults developed side by
side until dissension and consequent disintegration followed. The Mexican
state wa