The accompanying drawing (fig. 47) of one of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs, reproduced from Dr. Habel's work, will suffice to establish its resemblance to Padre Oliva's description of the apparition seen by the youthful Inca Yupanqui. After a careful comparison of the text to the sculptured bas-relief, it must be admitted that a more graphic and impressive illustration of the episode can scarcely be imagined. Its lower portion displays a youthful figure, looking upwards and exhibiting a necklace, the circular ear-pieces and royal fringe or llautu of the Incas. From his shoulders hangs the skin of a puma or lion with its head downwards. Molina relates that lion-skins with the heads were specially prepared for the ceremonial when youths were admitted into the ranks of knighthood, the last rite of which was the piercing of their ears and the enlargement of the orifice made.(28)
The youth wears a singular head-dress, or diadem, consisting of what appears to be an eye with conventionally drawn upper lid, surmounted by three pointed rays, behind which some long wavy feathers are visible.(29)
The celestial apparition to which the youthful figure is looking up, likewise exhibits the same necklace, pieces, and royal fringe of the Incas. Indistinctly though some of the details are given, it seems as though intertwined serpents encircled its head and possibly its neck. The head of the vision is surmounted by an enlarged rendering of the conventionally drawn eyelid and three pointed rays which form the diadem of the youthful knight. The face of the vision occupies, however, the place of the eye on the diadem. In this connection it is interesting to note that in the Nahuatl language, which, as (_op. et loc. cit._) proven by Buschmann, was spoken in Guatemala where the bas-relief was found, the word ixtli designates face, whilst ixtololotli signifies eye. Situated between the right elbow of the celestial figure and the diadem of the youth, there is a diminutive reproduction of the eye, eyelid and three rays, with the addition that what appear like two (or three?) drops of water or two eyes descend from it towards a square symbol which resembles the Mexican sign for tlalli=earth, whilst the eye symbol is closely analogous to a well-known Mexican sign which has been interpreted as a star, and has, but not as yet satisfactorily, been identified with the planet Venus. Without pausing to study this sign as it appears in ancient Mexico I point out that the position and mode of representation of the upper figure in the bas-relief sufficiently show that it is an image of a celestial being or vision in the act of receiving the supplication of a youth who is wearing divine insignia. There being a possibility that some of these accessories may be somewhat indistinct in the original bas-relief now preserved at the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Berlin, I do not venture to draw special attention to the possibility of further points of resemblance between the Peruvian tradition and this Guatemalan sculpture.