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yet known from the bicameral period of China. But as civilization begins again in Mesoamerica around 900 B.C., it is as if we were back in the Near East several millennia earlier, though with certain unique prospects: huge heads carved out of hard basalt, often eight feet tall, usually with a cap, sometimes with large ear pads like a football helmet, resting bodiless on the ground near La Venta and Tres Zapoltes (some of them now removed to Olmec Park at Villahermosa). The eye indices of these heads ranged from a normal 11 percent to over 19 percent. Usually the mouth is half open as in speech. There are also many Olmec ceramic idols of a strange sexless child, always seated with legs spread-eagled as if to expose his sexlessness, and leaning forward to stare intently through wide slits of eyes, the full-lipped mouth half open as in speech. The eye index, if the eyes were open, in the several of them I have examined averaged 17 percent. Figurines in the Olmec culture were sometimes half life-sized with even larger eye indices 3 they are often found in burials as at the Olmec-influenced site of Tlatilco, near Mexico City, of about T h e god Abu, with an unknown
goddess on facing page. Both
were found in a temple at T e l l
Asmar near present-day Baghdad
and are now in its museum.
From about 2600 B.C.
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500 B.C., as if the deceased was buried with his own personal idol which still could tell him
what to do.
Mayan idols do not usually show such ab-
normal eye indices. But in the great cities of Yucatan, portrait statues were made of deceased leaders for, I think, the same hallu-
cinogenic purpose. The back of the head was
left hollow and .the cremated ashes of the dead placed in it. And according to Landa, who
witnessed this practice in the sixteenth cen-
tury, "they preserved these statues with a great deal of veneration."38
The Cocoms that once ruled Mayapan,
around A.D. 1200, repeated what the Natufian
culture of Jericho had done 9000 years ear-
lier. They decapitated their dead "and after cooking the heads, they cleaned off the flesh
and then sawed off half the crown at the back, leaving entire the front part with jaws and
teeth. Then they replaced the flesh . . .
with a kind of bitumen [and plaster] which
gave them a natural and lifelike appearance
. . . these they kept in the oratories in their houses and on festive days offered food to
them . . . they believed that their souls re-
posed within and that these gifts were useful
to them."39 There is nothing here inconsistent Mayan god, a stela about twelve
with the notion that such prepared heads were
feet high, from Copan in Hon-
duras. It was carved about so treated because they 'contained' the voices 700 A.D.
of their former owners.
38 As quoted by von Hagen, World of the Maya, p. 109.
39 Landa as quoted by von Hagen, World of the Maya, p. 110.
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Many other kinds of idols were also used by the Maya, and in such profusion that when, in 1565, a Spanish mayor ordered the abolition of idolatry in his city, he was aghast when "in my presence, upwards of a million were brought."40 Another type of Mayan idol was made of cedar which the Maya called kuche or holy wood. "And this they called to make gods." They were carved by fasting priests called chaks, in great fear and trembling, shut into a little straw hut blessed with incense and prayer, the god-carvers "frequently cutting their ears and with the blood anointing the gods and burning incense to them."
When finished, the gods were lavishly dressed and placed upon daises in small buildings, some of which by being in more inaccessible places have escaped the ravages of Christianity or of time, and are still being discovered. According to a sixteenth-century observer, "the unhappy dupes believed the idols spoke to them and so sacrificed to it birds, dogs, their own blood and even men."41,42
The Speech of Idols
How can we know that such idols 'spoke' in the bicameral sense? I have tried to suggest that the very existence of statuary and figurines requires an explanation in a way that has not previously been perceived. The hypothesis of the bicameral mind renders such an explanation. The setting up of such idols in religious places, the exaggerated eyes in the early stages of every civilization, the practice of inserting gems of brilliant sorts into the eye sockets in several civilizations, an elaborate ritual for the 40 Von Hagen, World of the Maya, p. 32.
41 All quotations here are from Landa, a Spaniard who was describing what he saw in the sixteenth century as quoted by J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion, pp. 189—91.
42 The Incas too had a variety of idols that they called gods, some life-sized, cast of gold or silver, others of stone crowned and dressed in robes, all these found by Spaniards in outlying temples of the Inca empire. See von Hagen, Realm of the Incas, pp. 134, 152.
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opening of the mouth for new statues in the two most important early civilizations (as we shall see in the next chapter), all these present a pattern of evidence at least.
Cuneiform literature often refers to god-statues speaking.
Even as late as the early first millennium B.C., a royal letter reads:
I have taken note of the portents . . . I had them recited in order before Shamash . . . the royal image [a statue] of Akkad brought up visions before me and cried out: " W h a t pernicious portent have you tolerated in the royal i m a g e ? " Again it spoke: "Say to the Gardener . . . [and here the cuneiform becomes unreadable, but then goes on] . . . it made inquiry concerning Ningal-Iddina, Shamash-Ibni, and Na'id-Marduk. Concerning the rebellion in the land it said: " T a k e the wall cities one after the other, that a cursed one will not be able to stand before the Gardener."43
The Old Testament also indicated that one of the types of idol there referred to, the Terap, could speak. Ezekiel, 21:21, describes the king of Babylon as consulting with several of them.
Further direct evidence comes from America. The conquered Aztecs told the Spanish invaders how their history began when a statue from a ruined temple belonging to a previous culture spoke to their leaders. It commanded them to cross the lake from where they were, and to carry its statue with them wherever they went, directing them hither and thither, even as the unembodied bicameral voices led Moses zigzagging across the Sinai desert.44
And finally the remarkable evidence from Peru. All the first reports of the conquest of Peru by the Inquisition-taught Spaniards are consistent in regarding the Inca kingdom as one commanded by the Devil. Their evidence was that the Devil himself 43 R. H. Pfeiffer, State Letters of Assyria (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1935), p. 174.
44 C. A. Burland, The Gods of Mexico, p. 47.
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actually spoke to the Incas out of the mouths of their statues. To these coarse dogmatized Christians, coming from one of the most ignorant counties of Spain, this caused little astonishment. The very first report back to Europe said, "in the temple [of Pachacamac] was a Devil who used to speak to the Indians in a very dark room which was as dirty as he himself."45 And a later account reported that
. . . it was a thing very common and approved at the Indies, that the Devill spake and answered in these false sanctuaries
. . . It was commonly in the night they entered backward to their idoll and so went bending their bodies and head, after an uglie manner, and so they consulted with him. T h e answer he made, was commonly like unto a fearefull hissing, or to a gnashing which did terrifie them; and all that he did advertise or command them, was but the way to their perdition and ruine.46