The base of the second pyramid measures about 475 feet square. The sides of both pyramids rose at an angle of about 45 degrees and were in each case interrupted by four terraces. This double application of a quadruple division merits special attention, as it produced besides the four great 4×4 lesser sections, the sacred centre of the terraces, which crowned each structure. Historical tradition relates that the larger pyramid, known as the "Enclosure of the Sun (=Tonatiuh-I-Tzacual)," originally bore on its summit a colossal image of the sun, covered with plates of gold, whilst the other, the "Enclosure of the Moon" exhibited a similar image, covered with silver. The distinguished and reliable historian Orozco y Berra quotes this tradition adding that the soldiers of Cortés despoiled the images of their precious metals and that the Bishop Zumarraga ordered a further destruction of all monuments at Teotihuacan.
The tradition which records the existence of a silver and of a gold image, cannot be dismissed as unfounded, because it meets with a certain amount of corroboration by other data. In the first case the so-called "battered goddess," a mutilated stone image, which was found in the courtyard at the base of the "Pyramid of the Moon," looks as though it may have been the very monument which was once plated with silver. Traces of concentric bands of ornamentation seem to indicate that its round face had originally occupied the centre of a sculptured disc, in which case this must have had a diameter of about twelve feet. In Peru, as already stated, a silver image of the moon, associated with the female sovereign, was the complement to the golden effigy of the sun, associated with the Inca.
Even if data had not already been produced which establishes the existence of two religious cults in ancient Mexico, the respective symbols of which were the sun and the moon, the presence of two pyramids at Teotihuacan would suggest the existence of a division of some sort. The origin of these great and imposing structures is shrouded in mystery, but it is generally conceded that they must have been built long before the comparatively modern inhabitants of the valley of Mexico, the wandering Aztecs, had taken up their abode in the midst of the salt lagoons. The erection of two pyramids, however, proves that their builders had already practised the cult of the middle of heaven and earth, or Above and Below, and of the Four Quarters for so long a time, that there had been a separation of religions and government into two almost independent parts, each complete in itself. In the light of the testimony produced it is safe to infer that for an indefinite time the rival cults developed side by side until dissension and consequent disintegration followed. The Mexican state was the outcome of a later effort to reorganize and rebuild an integral whole on the ancient plan, the knowledge of which had been preserved and handed down. As time went on it was inevitable that the same causes which had caused the more ancient and greater state to crumble away, should be actively at work on the second.