Father Duran, in his MS. “Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana” A.D. 1585, quotes from the lips of a native of Cholula, over one hundred years old, a version of the legend as to the building of the great pyramid of Cholula. It is as follows:
“In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness, and void of any created thing; all was a plain, without hill or elevation, encircled in every part by water, without tree or created thing; and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of deformed stature and possessed the land, and desiring to see the nativity of the sun, as well as his occident, proposed to go and seek them.
Dividing themselves into two parties, some journeyed to the west and others toward the east; these travelled; until the sea cut off their road, whereupon they determined to return to the place from which they started, and arriving at this place (Cholula), not finding the means of reaching the sun, enamored of his light and beauty, they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky.
Having collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, ‘Have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamored of the light of the sun and his beauty?
Come and confound them, because it is not right that they of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle with us.’ Immediately the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice, and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth.”
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF CHOLULA.
One can recognize in this legend the recollection, by a ruder race, of a highly civilized people; for only a highly civilized people would have attempted such a vast work.
Their mental superiority and command of the arts gave them the character of giants who arrived from the East; who had divided into two great emigrations, one moving eastward (toward Europe), the other westward (toward America). They were sun-worshippers; for we are told “they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun,” and they built a high place for his worship.
The pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected by human hands. It is even now, in its ruined condition, 160 feet (48.77 meters) high, 1400 feet (426.72 meters) square at the base, and covers forty-five acres; we have only to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, covers but twelve or thirteen acres, to form some conception of the magnitude of this American structure.
It must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic priest, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, from the lips of an old Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain.
Observe the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of the building of the Tower of Babel:
“All was a plain without hill or elevation,” says the Indian legend. “They found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there,” says the Bible
They built of brick in both cases. “Let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto heaven,” says the Bible.
“They determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky,” says the Indian legend.
“And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had builded. And the Lord said, Behold . . . nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound them,” says the Bible record.
“The Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, ‘Have you observed,’ etc. Come and confound them,” says the Indian record.
“And the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the earth,” says the Bible.
“They scattered its builders to all parts of the earth,” says the Mexican legend.
Can any one doubt that these two legends must have sprung in some way from one another, or from some common source?
There are enough points of difference to show that the American is not a servile copy of the Hebrew legend. In the former the story comes from a native of Cholula: it is told under the shadow of the mighty pyramid it commemorates; it is a local legend which he repeats. The men who built it, according to his account, were foreigners. They built it to reach the sun–that is to say, as a sun-temple; while in the Bible record Babel was built to perpetuate the glory of its architects. In the Indian legend the gods stop the work by a great storm, in the Bible account by confounding the speech of the people.
Both legends were probably derived from Atlantis, and referred to some gigantic structure of great height built by that people; and when the story emigrated to the east and west, it was in the one case affixed to the tower of the Chaldeans, and in the other to the pyramid of Cholula, precisely as we find the ark of the Deluge resting upon separate mountain-chains all the way from Greece to Armenia. In one form of the Tower of Babel legend, that of the Toltecs, we are told that the pyramid of Cholula was erected “as a means of escape from a second flood, should another occur.”
