Page 153 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 20

Children of the First Men

Palenque, Chiapas Province
Evening was settling in. I sat just beneath the north-east corner of the
Mayan Temple of the Inscriptions and gazed north over the darkening
jungle where the land dropped away towards the flood plain of the
Usumacinta.
The Temple consisted of three chambers and rested on top of a nine-
stage pyramid almost 100 feet tall. The clean and harmonious lines of
this structure gave it a sense of delicacy, but not of weakness. It felt
strong, rooted into the earth, enduring—a creature of pure geometry and
imagination.
Looking to my right I could see the Palace, a spacious rectangular
complex on a pyramidal base, dominated by a narrow, four-storied tower,
thought to have been used as an observatory by Maya priests.
Around about me, where bright-feathered parrots and macaws skimmed
the treetops, a number of other spectacular buildings lay half swallowed
by the encroaching forest. These were the Temple of the Foliated Cross,
the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Count, and the Temple of the
Lion—all names made up by archaeologists. So much of what the Maya
had stood for, cared about, believed in and remembered from earlier
times was irretrievably lost. Though we’d long ago learned to read their
dates, we were only just beginning to make headway with the deciphering
of their intricate hieroglyphs.
I stood and climbed the last few steps into the central chamber of the
Temple. Set into the rear wall were two great grey slabs, and inscribed on
them, in regimented rows like pieces on a chequerboard, were 620
separate Mayan glyphs. These took the form of faces, monstrous and
human, together with a writhing bestiary of mythical creatures.

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