THE RICHARDSON TABLET.

(See Figure xi.)

This Mound Builder relic was found by Mr. J. M. Richardson, on the 31st day of January, 1879, in excavating a mound on the road leading from Wilmington, Ohio, to Harveysburg, known as the Wilmington and Waynesville Pike, about three and one half miles from Wilmington. The bones with which the relic was found were decayed to a lime-like dust, but the teeth were yet preserved. The history of this find is contained in a pamphlet entitled "An Illustrated Description of the Pre historic Relics found near Wilmington, Ohio," published in 1879, by Dr. L. B. Welch and J. M. Richardson. This account was copied into the American Antiquarian, in the October number 1881. The writer thinks there can be no doubt as to the genuineness of the Richardson Tablet. It is formed after the same general plan with the Gest Tablet, and serves to explain and interpret the latter. In it the picture is so plain that there can be no mistaking of the key-fact intended to be displayed. Figure xi is a very exact production of the tablet.

The picture is formed on a representation of the phallus, with testes, in the form of an inverted Tau cross. The testes form the base or bar of the cross. The left testis, as one looks at the representation, has the form of the male human head-male, because of the chin-beard, the right one has the form of a female human head - female, because of the side-locks or curls. Thus, under this form, man and woman, or male female, is represented in one figure. So, also, from the general character of the tablet, the male head, with its abundance of hair, represents the sun, heat, and dryness, or earth, while the female head represents the moon, coolness, and moisture, or water. The male expresses active, vitalizing energy, the female expresses passive receptivity. A strand of hair from the male head distinctly lines out the body or shaft of the phallus, and doing so turns and then returns on a line parallel to the first, back to the head. From the space occupied by the female head, a line extends up vertically through the length of the phallus, and issues out of its summit in waves of water to the right and left, forming the expanse of the firmament. The space intermediate between the testes or bar and the heavens is divided into four quarters. In the first, on the female side, and next to the head, is to be found a shape like the crescent new moon. In the second, or the next

above, and on the same side, is a shape as of the full moon. In the third, on the opposite side at the top, is to be found a shape as of the moon in her third quarter. And, finally, in the fourth, or in the compartment next to the male head, is to be found no moon at all, or the dead quarter. It will be observed that the quarter next to the male head, contains a great quantity of its hair, a fractional portion of which extends up into the quarter above. The opposite quarter, next to the head of the woman, contains the rough outlines of a duck. The quarter above this shows a dead, leafless branch; while the opposite quarter, at the top has, beside the strand of hair, a patch like a garden, and also waved curved lines as perhaps of wind. It would thus seem that, beside the four quarters of the moon, the slab is intended to represent the four seasons of the year. Spring, with the germinating heat rays and garden patch, summer heats, by the mass of hair or rays of the sun, autumn by the duck, and winter by the leafless branch. It seems, moreover, that the figure, in the summer quarter, formed by the strands of hair, is intended rudely to show the head of the goat sucker, inverted, with its wide mouth and very short beak, the mouth wide open, as it is to be seen in the summer heats when catching insects. This bird, or, as it is commonly called, the bull-bird, has very few species or varieties; it is almost alone, exceedingly characteristic, and markedly a bird of the summer heats.

The tablet has some very peculiar number markings at the top, set, one part to one side, and on the lower part, to the left, as you look at it, of the upper line, and one part to the other side, and on the upper part, to the right as you look at it, of a lower line. Commencing in the center, and counting as we proceed toward the left, the spaces are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, or ten spaces, while the projections between the spaces are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, or nine projections. On the other side, counting as we proceed from the center to the right on the lower line, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, or ten spaces to the turn of the row of spaces and projections downward on the side, then there are two more spaces down the side, or II and 12, thus making a separation of the 12 spaces into 10 spaces and 2 spaces. By a like counting the protuberances are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, or nine protuberances, distinctly, to the turn at the corner down the side, then two more, or 10 and 11, making eleven protuberances sepa

rated into 9 and 2. The description of spaces and protuberances is conventional, for they may be taken either way, with the same numerical results. By this we have two sums, which, added, give 18, and multiplied give 81; also 9 and 12, which added, give 21, the reverse of 12, and multiplied give 108; also, 9 and 11, which added, give 20; also, 9+10=19, and 11+12=23. The sum of these is 42, and their difference is 6, and so on

This tablet is of Waverly sand stone 3% inches wide, 47% inches long, and 5% inch thick. The reverse is unmarked save by 5 deep

and 3 shallow grooves. It will at once be seen that the number of values which the markings are capable of forming, are singularly a repetition of the type measures, so much used in Mound Builder construction in the Ohio Valleys. Around the edge of the tablet, making of it an embracing cartouche, is to be found a long, curiously wrought and armed arrow, or dart, and because of the resemblance the writer is tempted to call attention to the Mexican ideograph or symbol of Itz-co-atl, or Obsidian Serpent," pictured in Mr. Rau's Contribution in volume 22, of the Smithsonian Contributions, on page 51, as also to the explanatory text.

sameness.

THE GEST TABLET.

(See Figure xii.)

This tablet is so remarkable as a work of advanced art that it can be ranked with those of Palenque and Copan. Examined carefully with those and it presents a likeness of artistic culture, a So, too, it presents the same features which Mr. Rau notices as to the Palenque productions. He says: "Anyone who examines the representation of the Smithsonian tablet will be struck with the want of symmetry of its sculptures and its incorrect (a tistically) outline. * This asymmetrical appearance of the slab, is not at all owing to its restoration, as might be imagined at first sight, but simply to a lack of precision on the part of the sculpThough the bas relief figures on it show a commendable finish, the total aspect of the sculpture is not that of a well executed work, at least not in our sense. The Palenque cross shows some incongruities in the proportion of its parts, and the glyphic signs and ornaments are not disposed in an absolutely harmonious order. *** The absence of accurateness in the execution of details observable at Palenque did not escape Morelet's critical judgment.

tor.

**

The ruins at Palenque,' he says, 'have been perhaps too much eulogized. They are magnificent, certainly, in their antique boldness and strength, but I must say, without contesting their architectural merit, that they do not justify, in their details, all the enthusiasm of archaeologists The ornamental lines are wanting in regularity, the drawings in (modern artistic) symmetry, and the sculpture in finish."" The artist had all the mental conceptions, but he lacked the perfect skill of the later Greek, or of our day, for artistic perfection of his work. The work was "irregularly regular," to quote the apt expression of Mr. Gest; and so peculiarly so, as to confirm its genuineness. Perhaps the chief reason of all this was the lack of adequate instruments for working in hard stone. "Instruments of flint. or some other hard stone were much better suited for that purpose,' says Mr. Rau, speaking of the obduracy of the stone of the Palenque tablet. And, indeed, stone chisels were all the Mound Builders could have had for working the Gest tablet. Mr. Rau describes the tablet of the Palenque cross as being 34 inches thick, and consisting of a hard, fine-grained sandstone of yellowish gray color; the relief of the sculpture being of an inch.

As to material, the Gridley measure is likewise a hard, finegrained sand-stone of yellowish gray color, ths of an inch thick. The Gest tablet answers, for material, also to this description, though the grain of the stone may be a trifle coarser than that of the Gridley measure. The Gest tablet is 5gths of an inch thick, and the relief of the sculpture is ths of an inch, distinctly defined even in detail, but not sharply. Had the tablet been found at Palenque it would have been taken as belonging to the Palenque material and style and culture.

On comparison, the general resemblance of the Richardson and Gest tablets will be at once seen. The Gest tablet (Figure xii) like the Richardson, has the phallus and testes as the base of its representation, in the form of an inverted Tau cross. In place of the human heads for the testes those in the Gest tablet are represented by the labyrinths of ducts belonging to the organ, with a seed vesicle in the midst. These labyrinths unite by a ligament which continued forms the shaft of the phallus. At the summit a waved line or bar projects either way, in place of, and for, the waves of water in the Richardson slab. In the body of the phallus the seed