PLATE I
Top face of the monolith known as the "Dragon" or the "Great Turtle" of Quirigua. This is one of the group of stelae and "altars" which mark the ceremonial courts of this vanished Maya city (see Plate XXIII); and is perhaps the master-work not only of Mayan, but of aboriginal American art. The top of the stone here figured shows a highly conventionalized daemon or dragon mask, surrounded by a complication of ornament. The north and south (here lower and upper) faces of the monument contain representations of divinities; on the south face is a mask of the "god with the ornamented nose" (possibly Ahpuch, the death god), and on the north, seated within the open mouth of the Dragon, the teeth of whose upper jaw appear on the top face of the monument, is carved a serene, Buddha-like divinity shown in Plate XXV. The Maya date corresponding, probably, to 525 A. D. appears in a glyphic inscription on the shoulder of the Dragon, The monument is fully described by W. H. Holmes, Art and Archaeology, Vol. IV, No. 6.
