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EDITORIAL «ATLANTIC» - COCHABAMBA·BOLIVIA

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IEDITORIAL «ATLANTIC» - COCHABAMBA·BOLIVIA

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The present writing is designed to furnish the visitors ~tourists especially - with a guide, whenever they plan to visirthe ruins of the legendary city of Tiahuanaco.

At the same time, we wish to point out in the followingpages what we llave seen in these ruins. The larrer are atpresent in a really deplorable state of havoc, which increasesday by day, no effective measures having been taken for theirpreservation and restoration; that is why it is difficult for thevisitor to envisage in a clear impression, what the remainsthat appear before his eyes have been in the past, as most oíthem look at first sight but shapeless heaps of stones, isolatedcolumns or foundations which reveal nothing about thc whole.

Our project may seem daring, and no doubt, it will haveerrors, but we believe that years of study devoted to BolivianArchaeology authorize us to carry out this effort, and displaya sufficiently clear sketch of the whole.

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FIRST REMARK

FOREWORDI ¡

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The remains of a large serelemene, prior to the Incas, did'not pass unnoticed to the first Spaníards that set foot in thelands which ate now Bolivian. Many are rhe travellers andchroniclers who tell us of the admiration they felt at whatthey wcre contemplating, or, sometimcs, at what they werebeing told: and with no exception, the data thev hand downto us, correspond to a períod that goes far beyond the originof Inca Civilízation.

Cíeza de León, Garcilaso, Lizárraga, Cobo and others areamong the first to leave on print the admiration which rheseruíns aroused in them. At the sume time, in the lines theydevore to these, and in the extensive refcrence of P.B. Cobowhich is worthy of notíce, we can realizc that even in thosetimes, the antique monuments were in Q better state than to­dav's, It is to be noted a180, that these first visitors agreedin the existence of two large 1Ihcights" or "hand-made tu ...muli ((, i. e. the accumulatíon of huge quantities of earth.

Most of the authors in later periods did 110t realize whatthe aboye mentioned reference meant. To all of them, thesc«hand ..made turnuli- were simply, natural formations, merehillocks: thus minimizing the importancc of thc ruins.

Another point about which the old chroniclers agree isthat in their own times, a wa 11 was still standing, whichcorresponds to the present building called "Kalasasava",whose exístence a great number of authors have also denied.We shall presentIy deal with this at length.

TIAHUANACO AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST

the raílway line and bridges, those taken to the city of LaPaz, for the several public buíldings, especially for the Cathe­dral, etc., we can well imagine that at least two thirds of thestones which originally existed at the time of the Conquest,

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Scientífíc investígaríon fared better concerning the stuclyof this cívilization, outsíde the arca 06 the aboye mentionedcity: long ago, ir was easy to identífy the characteristics ofthe ceramics belonging ro the Tiahuanaco cívilization. Lateron, the same was traced from Cochabamba to the PeruvianCoast, including the North of Lima, and all the North ofChile. It was obvious that we were before a great culturalexpansión, which had taken place before the Incas, and whosescope was about half a million square kilometers. ., 1

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Later on come the scientific researchers. Their vision,generally speaking, did not encompass more than what wehave already mentioned. Plans of the ruins - all íncomplete- were drawn up, phorographs were takcn, sorne excavationswere made, more harmful tharr useful, and phrases such as"megalithíc ruins", "millenary cítv ' ran often, but no reallyserious studies werc carríed out.

The fundamental tnterpretarion was that the buildingknown as the Kalasasaya, consístíng of a series of columns orpíllars which surround a great quadrangular space, formed asort of "cromlech", similar to those of Europe and especiallyto that of Stonehenge in England. The "heights" as such,disappear in these descríptions, 01' else they are referred to asa natural híllcck, somewhat rcformed ro serve as a defensivefortress. .

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After the oId chróniclers, the ruins of Tiahuanaco onlvdeserve the .fleeting atrentlon of sorne traveIlers, amongwhom one counts sorne scholars or sorne curious people. Asa result, and added ro the older data,' actuallj' a legend isborn about these monuments. . ..

.-TIAHUANACO AND THE RECENT INVESTIGATIONS~~ .

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:THBI@UtTURAl: ~PERIODS OF:TIAHUANACO. ~

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"resoles than the incpin~¡ete stttdy éarried 0\lt up to now o.~rht' rUitls': Ír hasbeeri' póssible to divide rhe culture of Tia­huanaco 'in, three gteat periods of- develepmenr. ' . Similarwrititi:gs~::~·a~'e(r·'on·toe" i¿maÍlls 'of rhe buildings have not 'mettP5..?Pl'[~1'i~l.:of, ,.~~f.~.~~l1~e~t~g~tor~~and we ca~.~ar.tha~ theyi~ave, fa11e~,to ptov~convmcmg. '\ i' ,

l. . ..{Tb~e"toree above mentíoned periods, can be distinguíshed~~\f~II~\ys,~'~é,,:?~~~~~~~6th~'cera~j~s;' . , t " • •

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i!' Ies: characterístíc ..featurs. is a painted .and p(51ychr(jnl~·t¡y:pe; ~frt.~rariiies"w.it'b 'Uttle polish, its 'main terms' are:' sorne­okiud'Qf··.dethijQhn, a perfumer with a felíne head and another

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~s0)1'of demíjobn or small, long...neeked, .wíde-moutbed pítcher.J,heJ;e_¡)lr~no.staeues- oromonolíths.whlch.can with cerraintyb~,~asor~~clro j~hi.speriod, but we inelude; as belonging ro ít;the ones found ro the South. in [esus de Machaca OI Huan­~a~é,..J~l~'!~he:Sgl~JJmonolith found by...Wendel1 Bennett inthe small Kalasasava, whose adornments are very dífferenefrom the ones that are found latero Posnansky ascribes the.t~º1slpall. i..d~l$,..whích are seentq-day in front of rhe víllagec~ur~h}Iro this...períod, something whrch we víew wíth scep­t!c\sm.. 'OUt assumprions .are based. on the facr that ador­ments similar ro those- found Ion the monoliths at Huancané. ,

C~11be t~een in SOPle of the ceramics previouslv mentioned.b) CLASSICAl TIA·HUA·NACO -,

Belonging to this period we have a very fine type ofp'o1ychrome ceramícs, with careful polish and the greatesttHinness in' the sides of the vases. There are innumerablefénns: ~ The ruins ascribed ro this period .seem to be practi­c!a11r' a 11 rhe' .Tiahuanaco ruins, and the Sun Gate also, andthe' monclirhs-wíth geonretrícal figures, etc. Borhthis períod

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The issue of the antiquity of the Thiahuanaco Cívílíza­tion is something that was raised by the fírst chroníclers whovísited its ruíns, and there was one who asserted that thesewere the oldest in the continente In its original sense, thisstatement meant only that the ruins were older than theInca's, but the idea of an exaggerated antiquity successfullycaught fue.

There have been many writers who have ascribed fabu...lous dates to these ruins, most of the figures rangíng up to12.000 years B. C., a magic figure associated with the dateof the aIleged sinkíng of the assumed Atlantís and whichexerts its influence on many present living human beíng •.

TIAHUANACO ANO THE FANCIFUl ESTIMA TE OF ITSANTIQlITTY

lts ceramics contínues, at the beginning of the prevíousperiod, but already without arelstíc creation: it declines inevery way later on. There ís nor, in Tiahuanaco írself.. a:ny.' .architectural remain or monolith that could safely be ascríbedte this perlod, even though many tombs show ceramícs ofthe Expansive Periodo This ís the period that spreads outover the already menríoned regíons, from Cochabamba to theNorth of Lima and ro the North of Chile. We do not knowof one monolith coming &om these expansion sites. Thísperiod, towards its close, transforms íeself in the historieColla Kingdom, conquered by the Incas under .Pachacueec.

• • •e) EXPANSIVE TIAHUANACO

and the previous one had little geograpbical expansíon, andtherefore their remains can be found only in the south regiónof the Lake and in sorne of its islands. Therefore, local cultu­res achíeved in art what they could not achíeve in expansiono'.

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In a short time it is expected to arrive at exact datesabout the antiquity of Tiahuanaco, in each of the aboyemenrioned periods. These wíll be the result of the larestprocedure known as "14 Carbon Dating", through which ítis possible to fix the date in which any organic remaín cea sedliving, In Tiahuanaco ítself, samples for thts analysis havealreadv been obtained.

While awaiting the results of this test, it is right to statethat, according ro up ...ro-date knowledge, the antiquity ofthe ruins of Tiahuanaco, in its Classical Period, is not earlierthan the Christian Era; the Old Period is generally and líke ..wíse located within that Era, but sorne investigators date itsorne few centuries earlier.

The investigation carried out in this fíeld has encompas­sed the events that eook place in rhe Peruvian area where theTiahuanaco Civílízatíon spread during ehe third períod, in a

. .THE REAL ANTIQlllTY OF TlAHUANACO

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': .In Bolivia, especíallv, Engineer Arthur Posnansky devo ...ted many years of bis life to finding mvthical interpretationsto alleged astronomic calculus obtained measuring the ruins;bis ínferences were that the Tiahuanaco Cívílízatíon was sorne12.000 or 15.000 years oJd (Classícal Period), and that thesame had been the original center of world civilízation.

These interpretations have not been accepted by anyserious lnvestígator, neither in Bolivia nor in the rest of theworld. Furthennore, similar inrerpretations have been madeabout other remains of old cívílízatíons, not only of otherplaces in America but also in rhe Old Wotld. They are theproduce of an ínfannle state in scientific investigatíon. wherepersonal research work is not yet controlIed by adequateself..crirícism and where the criticism of other investigatorsis unknown or deliberatelv ignored.

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Even so, the historical Colla Kingdom would be a poli­ticalcontinuation of the Tíahuanaco Empire of the ExpansivePeriod, for it comprised a11the present territories of La Paz,Cochabamba, Northem Chile, and Puno and Arequipa in Perú.

At this date .. which marks an obvious decadence-might, .' nave started the cultural transformatíou which produced the

historical Colla Kingdom. conquered by the Incas in 1.400.This said cultural transformarion is noticed above all in 'theceramics, which aftcr the total decadence of the forms ofvases and their decorarions, takes up new leads and starts aweak renaissance already different to what Tiahuanaco hadbeen.

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.. 'We can state, in global terms, that what is accepted to ..

day about the antiquity of Tiahuanaco is as' follows.OId Tiahuanaco is placed in the first centuries of rhe

Era, and it must have prolonged itself more or les s until thevear ;00 A. D., the Peruvian ínvestigaror Julio C: TeIlo isrhe only important scholar who has accepred an antiquitythat could go up to a similar date before the Christian Era.

Classical Tíahuanaco might ha ve developed between 500-and 800 A. D. and sorne investigators have even stated1.000 A. D.

Expansive Tiahuanaco could have begun towards 900 or1.000 A.D. having lasted, in global figures, up to 1.200 A.D.

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higher proportion th~n the study conducred in Bolivia itself.The pioneer was Professor Max Ilhle, who first set down thecorrelatíons and the chronological dates. -The same werefollowed and modífíed «after being controlled- by severalinvestigators. 'among which we can .observe dífferences rang ..ing up to centuries but most of the times not surpassing themmucho ' ..

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'. As ro the origin of the Tiahuanaco Civílízarion, thesolution of the several íssues is slowl y taking place, aboveall through the comparíson with the rest of the indigenousci vilizations, and with the whole of the population of the

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.\ · The natíve population of América oríginallv derivesfrom rwo great and dístinct migrarion pathways originated inthe Old World. The first, very líkelv no less than 50.000years old, is the result -of an Asiatic migration, better saidSíberían, whích arrived here through the Behring Straírs. atthe begínníng of the last Ice Age.

Through this pathwav, and in succession, during severa!thousand years, several peoples arri ved: whites and prímitiveMongolians mainlv. Their culture was still very primitive,rhat of collectors and hunters. They spread throughout theContinent, without changing their original cultural type.

Later on, towards 2.000 B. C., as a first date, but conti­nuing at least until the Christian Era, new peoples arrived inthe Continen t, through the Pacific Ocean, who knew agri­culture. The first were simply primitive agriculturisrs, withceramics, like the present Chiriguanos from Santa Cruz, Bolí- -vía: with a tribal lífe but without a real civilized life. I

The origin of world civilization is found, in its firststages, in the North of Mesopotamia: rhence, it spread throug- .hout the world. From Mesopotamia, between -4.000 and3.000 B. C., civilization branched off towards Egvpt, rhroughTurkestan to China and by the Persian Gulf to India. FromIndia it passed into Indochina, the Malay Península, Micro­nesia, Central América (through the Pacific) and the AndineRegion.

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THE ORIGIN OF mE "CIVILIZATION OF TIAHUANACO

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Kanfalayita.llnd jite maq1-letteAcapanll or Ihe Grea! Py­ramidPumapuncu

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9. Tite Piers 01" ¡he amphi­ihuüre. fIJe Inca' s toriiingdtsk, Ihe broken morrolilh, tic.

10· Village remains

(Original drawing by Dick lbarra. Grasso, José de Mts«, TeresaGisberl).

2. KalasllsaYIl.3.' The Palqce of lI,e Sartophagi

The f4nteon gafe alld the.$nlall pyramids

•Small Karas~saYIl

1. The Sun. Gafe ana ¡he Priest

.(·TAYPICAtA·, IN. A YMA-RA) WITH· A TENTAT/VERESTORATION OF ITSPRINC1PAL' BUILDINGS.-

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.The Inca Cívilization, most likelv, is a marginal produce

of the Expansive Tiahuanaco Civilization. lts ceramics 1Slargely linked to that of the Colla Períod, although in sornedetails it has features of the Chincha Civilization, of Central

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Peru, whích was a1so ínfluenced by the Collas.

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Even before the event of the Tiahuanaco Civílization,several agricultural peoples with knowledge of ccramics andcopper arrived in the Andine Región of Bolivia. across eheAndes mountam range. These, however, did not knowabout the polychrome painting in ceramics, and it was rhese'peoples who went into the Argentine Northwest.

The First Period of Tiahuanaco alreadv displavs painted.ceramics, with clear evídence of a more developed culture;its style in painting is associated aboye all with the Recuaystvle,' from the Huayllas Passage in Peru. The Second Period,rermed Classical, has fine cera mies , beautifully painted, withthe typical fearureso] several Peruvían cultures appearing onit, Nazca particularlv: its birthplace líes to the South of Limaon the 'Peruvtan Coast.

The Expansíve Period is a derivarive, perhaps of a pro ...víncial srvle of the Classical Culture of Tíahuanaco. Wepartly find the explanation for its decadence in the fact thatthe militarv ínterests, necessarily the outcorne of the expan­sion, predominated over the artistic. Evidentlv, the Tiahuana­co culture of the Classical and Expansive Periods correspondsto the Aymara peoples.

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'THE ORIGIN OF THE SEVERAL CULTURAL PERfODS OFTIAHUANACO

The civilization is made up of an urban life and a socialorganízation of castes, with hierarchy and a theocratic king.This State Culture originated the Tiahuanaco Civilization.

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The Sun Gaie: in ¡he Norfhwest cerner 01 Ihe Kalasasa!,aI

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We will 110t furnish informaríon here concemíng ehemeans to get to the ruins, for the only organized systemconsists of sorne rail-cars, of little practical value owing totheir time tableo The traveller can also arrive there by caror by one of the trucks which daily journey to the r ort ofGuaqui, leaving from Buenos Aires Avenue in La Paz.

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\ ARRIVAL AT TIAHUANACO

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VISITINC THE RUIN5

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The Sun Gafe: detail o{ its top, slzowing the baswrelief

Having the map in mind (Page S) it will be easy to re­late the series of numbers attached to íe, to our writing.These numbers wíll also serve to indicare the places wevisited.

We belíeve that the traveller wants to see the Sun GatefirSt of all; it can easilv be seen by those that come from themain road and aJso by those coming from the station. WewiII rherefore start our description with it.

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The raUway station stands in a place that is almost míd...way between the two principal groups of ruins, thát of theKalasasava..Acapana and the Pumapuncu. The main roadfrom La Paz runs a few metres to the north síde of the Kala..sasaya and goes on to the village.

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MOtl0lithic pi . ·'ferlnillal·,párt 01 a column io sttpporl ."h7,,~'r.oóf, ¡!ling by lile Sun Gaft,

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The present lo~cationof the Sun Gate is not the original {,:.one: it has been mov~' many times, and in 1904'was moved :"".. ...t ....

for the last time; nothing is known about its priruirivelocarion.Considering its proportions as a whole, we cannot say it isanother think of it as a whole carved stone. It is then thatits monumental characteristic stand s out in full. The openingin the door is rathcr narrow and is not very high, for sornepersons of hígh stature have to stoop if they want to cr05S it.

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1.- The SU1t gate and :the priest . . "We are now before the famous Sun Gate, a monolithíc

block, carved in the hard volcanic stone called andesite, whosefrontispiece is covered with a fine tcxture of bas-reliefs of anenigmatic importo

It líes to-day on the northwest comer of the Kalasasaya.It is only natural that the visitor does not concern himselfwith the endless rows of the Kalasasaya pillars; he J,psi~s .

\ himself with the Sun Gate ,~tfírst, leaving the study of thesepillars for latero .1 J

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. The reliefs in the above rnentioned frieze are the mostnoteworthy; they totally cover the frontispiece of the SunGateo As a whole, they consist of a cenrral figure, wíeh ahuman shape, whose f!}ce stands out and ís crowned wíth rays,Ir is seated on a kind of throne, which prolongs ítselfdownwards and sideways in a series of lines forming a sort ofGrecian fret, with outstandíng condor heads and suns

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Monolifh ,aUed ¡he Priest, SfandingSOlllhwest 01 the Kalasasaya •

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We provide a detail which the visitor will not find inother writingsr in rhe lower part of the opening which atpresent ís covered with sorne cement: this breakage clearlyshows that the Gate has had a threshold, made in the sameblock of stone and that irreverent hands broke it a longtime ago. . J I I • I

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What does this group of figures mean? There are manyinterpretations concerning it and none of them has beensufficiently substantial to convínce the investigators. T osome, it is a monarch and his principal subjects, to others, amilitary monument: there has Leen someone who has said thatit is a monument to "agrículture, commemorating the strugglewith an insect plague. The majority ha ve insisted on theidea of a calendar, but their interpretations have been diverse:either it was a lunar .calendar similar to that of Mesopotamia,or a Mayan calendar, with months of twentv days, or a calen-

•dar verv much like ours, with twelve months of thirty dayseach.· Professor Arfnúi Posnansky' s theory, consistíng of thelatter, is the most organized as far as we know, although wedo not mean by this that it is true or that we personallyaccept it. According to this interpretations the central figurerepresenrs the month of September, with which the indigenousyear starts, and the suns of the Iower part of the frieze, up tothe human figure holding a horn, the followíng> elevenmonths.

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or moonsz) in-between their fissures. 011 both sides of thccentral figure and aboye the fret already menríoned, there arethree rows of human figures Iying as if they were a processiontowards the central one. Those at the top and the bottomhave human faces.iwhereas the middle ones show a-condorhead which is probably a mask. All these figures wield a rodor sceptre: the central figure has two, one in each hand, andin analysing details one can see that it is a sort of fagot ofjavelines or throwing spears, and an «estolica- or propeller,i. 'e. the predecessor of the bow, whích was used in order tohave greater víolence .

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Row of pitlars of the K!lln5Ilsnyn, 01l fhe North Side

There is a Mayan building, in Palenque, which has a gatesimilar to thís although it is not monolithic, and it standsprecisely for what we have mentioned before, the entranceto 'the holy of holies, the uTABLERO DE LA CRUZ".- . .

On the occasion of dealing with the other gates whíchstill stand in Tiahuanaco, all of them monolíthic, we will beable to furnish other comments about this particular gate andventure one about its origínal Iocation.

¡ Erom the Sun Gate, in a direct line to the South, untilI

the farthest extreme, Southwest of the Kalasasava, it is possibleto distinguish a railíng inside whích an important monolithstands.

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- .< - The issue concerníng what this Gate has been ís insepa­rable from the one about its original place. Such a thing isnet known and there are various interpretations. We believethat it could not have been an outside door, in the open air,such as it stands at present, but the inner door of a building,something like the entrance to the holy of holies in the prin­cipal temple. In this case it is likely that it must have stoodon'rop of the pyramid of Acapana, as we shall later on see.-

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To. the East side, in the directíon of the sunrise, almostin the middle between rhe pillars, one finds a big stoneperron, which has often been called «monolirhic», but this 1Swrong, for it is made of several big stones. It is sorne sixmerres long and on account of the destructive work of time,the stairs are already irregularly shaped.

From this position in the perron, and as one mounts itand looks towards the whole of the Kalasasaya building, onecan re-creare it as it was originally, and also appreciate itsdifference with whatever one could see at fírst sight.

Ir makes an immense precinct, 120 metres long and 118metres wide, stretching East to West. AII along its sides theaboye saíd pillars stand, like sentries keeping the secrets ofthe pasto

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It is The Priesr, termed thus on account of a mistakentranslation of an indigenous word which meant «Father Stone­(Piedra Padre). At present it is very deteriorated, almostbroken in two, and held together with an iron ringo It is oneof the most typical monoliths of the Classical Period, accordingto its shape and relíefs, among which the most outstandingare those of the belt, crab...shaped. Its hands hold obiecrs notaltogether identifiable.

\ This monolíth or statue, does not stand either in its ori...ginaI place; it has been moved and nobody knows where itwas when first found.

2.- The Kalasasaya.Once inside this building, we notice that it is surrounded

by quadrangular columns or pillars, whatever denominationone mav choose. Its name means, as a matter of fact, andin Aymara language, -Stones standing in a row».

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From the above mentioned posírion, a sort of courtyardcan be':seen, which stretches from the end of the perron andgoes a little further beyond half the building: to the furthestend, and on both sides stand several mounds, as if forming

".small hills which híde most of the pillars. They form a sortof U surrounding the courtyard, reaching the fIanks of thepillars.

Very few have notíced the existence of the mounds andtheir importance, and yet it is these which provide the origi­na! form of the Kalasasaya, as we willlater see. /

Therc is no such thing as pillars or columns: they arepedestals supporting a continuous wall which has been men­tioned by several chroniclers and which stood in part until1620; there are some remnants of this wall, under the earth,as can be seen in the North side, slightly eastwards fromwhere the SU11 Gate stands. This wall in its time reachedthe height of the bigger pillars and surrounded all the building:the terreplein which at present is found dissembled inside theKalasasaya was a real platform. This platform, írom the outsidereached the height of the wall, which in its stead was simplya retaining wall.

There was another wall inside, of a more modest size,surrounding the courtyard altead y mentioned: there are veryfew remains of this waIl, hardly sufficient: to notice its exis­tence. Thus we see that the Kalasasaya was made of: a bigterreplein, some four me tres high, with an external retainingwall and a smaller one inside which overlooked a courryard.The access to the latter was madc possible by a big perron.We provide the reconstruction with the correspondingdrawing.

The inside courtyard must have had a series of steps,possibly five, which were used ro climb to the higher plat­form, and 011 ir, 011 its West side, it seems that there musthave been a series of quare turrets.

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3.- Tne palace of the Sarcophagi.West of the Kalasasava, a few metres from the end of

the pillars, there are the basements of another building. atpresent greatly deteriorated, which used to be called the PA­LACE OF THE SARCOPHAGI, according to the investigatorswho discovered it in 1903, on account of having found sornesort of stone cases which they interpreted as such.

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To the West, the pillars form something like a projcctionover the aboye mentioned quadrangular set, and besides, theyare bigger and of a harder stone. Sorne invcstigators haveasssumed that it is a latter aggregate, but this version has notbeen sufficiently cleared,

There are still sorne missing data about the Kalasasaya.To its North and East sides, at the foot of the pillars, a threemetre talus can be seen still, with retention groundwork.Therc must be something similar 011 the other sides buteverything is covered wirh the carth accumulated throughthe years. That is to say, that a11 the construction of theKalasasaya is built on a small pyramidal base and pedestal.

.In the site called Kantatayita, which we will consider

in section 6, there is a big carved stone which is, precisely,the maquette of a Tiahuanaco building. Posnanskv believedit was the Palace-of the Sarcophagi, but W. Bennett and our­selves have identified it with the Kalasasaya alreadv consideredbefore. With our description, particularly with the vision weget from the perron, the central courtyard and the U formedby the terreplein, it is possible to realíze the complete identityof our view with the maquette.

Tht Paufheoll or Moo" Gafe sfauditrgat presen! 0'1 a small pyramid.

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Th« maque/te o{ the Kantatayita, which exactly reproducesth e original shape 01 ¡he KRlasIJiaya,

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A view of tht subttrranean «roonl:., more likely n iomb,to the North of /he Kalasasaya.

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It is a building which has been 'forty metres wide. Itsremains show us a double row of foun Iations surrounding acentral courtyard: to the East side there are some orher carvedstones, totally displaced so that at prescnt one cannot appre­ciare its original disposirion: nevertheless it was there thatstood an entrance .and a flight of steps, with a tiled courtyardof which rernain only some few photographs.

The double row of foundations gives us clearly the shapeof thc building. Evidently, these foundations correspond toa construction composed of a series of rooms or halls facingrhe central courtyard. The stones of the inner foundationsgive evidence of big portals, according to the distance betweenthem. I '

The space between the exrernal and internal walls is aIittle more than eight metres. Such a width, to have a roof,evidentlv réquíred something to support it. Our interpreta- •,tion is that there must ha ve been a level roof fonned of bigslabs, which in the middle were supported by stone columnsin the form of pilasters.

Excavations would be needed in order to confirm the•

aboye, but instead, the pílasters existo On both sides of theSun Gate two of them can be clearly seen, beatifullv carved.Tbey are square and end in two enlargements made on thesame stone. Other similar pilasters are found in the present­dav church, in the village, whích in number of eleven havebeen used to support the row of arches of the courtvard atthe entrance. There are SOInethree or four iu the houses ofthe village, serving as seats.

On che West part, within the waIls of the respectivehall, there is an entrance to a subterrancan gallery which likelyis a drainage works. . '.

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