The following is the certificate of Charles O. Thompson, Principal and Professor of Chemistry at the Worcester Free Institute, who made the chemical analysis of part of the cremated remains found in the stone urn that was near the chest of the statue that occupied the centre of the mausoleum raised to the memory of the famous warrior Coh, twenty feet below the upper plane of the monument.
"Stephen Salisbury, Jr., Esq., submits an unknown solid for qualitative examination.
"Under microscope it presents a certain compactness and horny aspect characteristic of animal matter which has been charred in a close vessel, it loses 9 per cent. when dried at 100° and 9 per cent. more by combustion. After calcination, a dross and residue remains which contains 3 per cent. fenic oxide, a little alumina and much silica. Warm water exposed to action of residue shows traces of potash and soda.
"These results are consistent with the theory that the mass was once part of a human body which has been burned with some fuel."
There is a fact certainly worthy of notice, and this is that the names of the personages mentioned in the various accounts of the fratricide are precisely identical, or are words having the same signification. May not that be regarded as unimpeachable proof that they all refer to the same event?
No one who has any knowledge of philology will ever deny that A-bel—A-bal—Bal-_i_—_Balam_ are identical words.
A, contraction of _Ah_, is the Maya masculine article, _the_. _Bal_ is the radical of Bal_am_. Balam is for the superstitious aborigines, even to-day, the _Yumil Kaax_—the "Lord of the fields" the "_Leopard_" which they also call _Coh_—the totem of the victim of Aac is the leopard—and it is so represented in the bas-reliefs and sculptures.
In Egypt, the spotted skin of the leopard, usually without the head, but sometimes with it, was always suspended near the images and statues of Osiris. The skin of a leopard was worn as a mantle over the ceremonial dress of his priests.
Besides, when represented as King of the Amenti—of the "West"—the symbol of Osiris was always a crouching leopard with an open eye over it.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the leopard's skin worn by Nimrod and Bacchus was a sacred appendage to the Mysteries. It was used in the Eleusinian as well as in the Egyptian mysteries instituted in honor of Osiris. It is mentioned in the earliest speculations by the Brahmins on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers the _Aytareya Brahmana_, and is used in the _agnishtoma_ the initiation rites of the _Soma_ mysteries. When the neophyte is to be born again he is covered with a "leopard skin," out of which he emerges as from his mother's womb. A leopard skin is worn by the African warriors, who are so fortunate as to possess one, as a charm to render them invulnerable to spears according to the French traveler Paul du Chaillu.