I am much indebted to Sir Clements D. Markham, the President of the Royal Geographical Society, for the kind permission to reproduce here a hasty drawing he made, in 1853, of a gold plaque (size 5-8/10 inches) found in Cuzco (fig. 50). It was then in Lima, being the property of the President of Peru, General Echerrique. This curious relic exhibits the image of a monstrous face surrounded by a band with subdivisions containing various signs. The plaque was looked upon by its owner as a Calendar, but Sir Clements Markham, after studying its subdivisions with a view of ascertaining their agreement with the twelve divisions of the Peruvian year, preferred to let his notes on the subject remain unpublished, not having come to a satisfactory conclusion on the subject. I am permitted, however, to state that Sir Clements Markham specially noted the resemblance of a sign, which is represented on the cheeks of the central figure and recurs four times on the encircling band, to the well-known Maya glyph ahau=chief, lord.
It is, indeed, a cursive representation of a human head and moreover resembles those figured on the garment of a gigantic red sandstone statue found at Ak-Kapana and figured in Stübel and Uhle's Tiahuanaco. On this garment the heads alternate with squares and form a close design. This resemblance between the conventional faces on this archaic statue and those on the gold plaque has made me attach more importance to the latter and at all events regard it as preserving ancient native symbolism. In connection with these I wish to point out that the plaque itself offers a certain resemblance to well-known Mexican calendars, the centre of which usually exhibits a face which is surrounded by a band with day or month signs. It is remarkable that above each eye there are four dots, especially as the Quechua word for eye=naui is homonymous with the Nahuatl numeral four=nahui, and this is so constantly associated with an eye in the Mexican sign Nahui ollin=four movements (_cf._ fig. 2). As strange a coincidence as this is furnished by the mark on the forehead of the image, not because the latter resembles the sect mark of the Vishnu worshippers, but because it offers a marked analogy to the Mexican Acatl sign which is frequently carved or painted as a cane standing in a square receptacle with recurved ends. I am strongly tempted to interpret this symbol according to the native mode of thought, as signifying the centre, the union of the Above and Below and to regard the upper part of the face itself as a representation of the Above, the heaven, with its two eyes (the Moon and Sun), whilst the lower part and teeth, as in Mexico, signified the Below, the earth and underworld. By means of the head on each cheek and the number four over each eye, the dual and quadruple rulerships of the empire could well have been expressed. Postponing a more thorough study of the gold plaque, I merely note here that it exhibits curious analogies not only to Maya but also to Mexican symbolism.