, and
give you the etymology of the names of their divinities in the American
Maya language.

The origin of the primitive Chaldees is yet an unsettled matter among
learned men. Some professing one opinion, others another. All agree,
however, that they were strangers to the lower Mesopotamian valleys,
where they settled in very remote ages, their capital being, in the time
of Abraham, as we learn from Scriptures, _Ur_ or _Hur_. So named either
because its inhabitants were worshipers of the moon, or from the moon
itself--U in the Maya language--or perhaps also because the founders
being strangers and guests, as it were, in the country, it was called
the city of guests, HULA (Maya), _guest just arrived_.

Recent researches in the plains of lower Mesopotamia have revealed to us
their mode of building their sacred edifices, which is precisely
identical to that of the Mayas.

It consisted of mounds composed of superposed platforms, either square
or oblong, forming cones or pyramids, their angles at times, their faces
at others, facing exactly the cardinal points.

Their manner of construction was also the same, with the exception of
the materials employed--each people using those most at hand in their
respective countries--clay and bricks in Chaldea, stones in Yucatan. The
filling in of the buildings being of inferior materials, crude or
sun-dried bricks at Warka and Mugheir; of unhewn stones of all shapes
and sizes, in Uxmal and Chichen, faced with walls of hewn stones, many
feet in thickness throughout. Grand exterior staircases lead to the
summit, where was the shrine of the god, and temple.

In Yucatan these mounds are generally composed of seven superposed
platforms, the one above being smaller than that immediately below; the
temple or sanctuary containing invariably two chambers, the inner one,
the Sanctum Sanctorum, being the smallest.

In Babylon, the supposed tower of Babel--the _Birs-i-nimrud_--the temple
of the seven lights, was made of seven stages or platforms.

The roofs of these buildings in both countries were flat; the walls of
vast thickness; the chambers long and narrow, with outer doors opening
into them directly; the rooms ordinarily let into one another: squared
recesses were common in the rooms. Mr. Loftus is of opinion that the
chambers of the Chaldean buildings were usually arched with bricks, in
which opinion Mr. Taylor concurs. We know that the ceilings of the
chambers in all the monuments