The story of the last days of the Maya kings, almost two centuries after the Spanish conquest, is based on the account of Father Andres de Avendano y Loyola (Relation of two trips to Peten, made for the conversion of the heathen Ytzaex and Cehaches), who was eyewitness to this extraordinary scene beside the remote jungle lake of Peten in 1695 or 1696. A further fragment of this account came to light in the 1980s, and is quoted in Chapter 21. The true source of Maya gold, as described by Avendano and found by archaeologists in the Well of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza, remains a mystery.
The quote at the beginning of the book is from Josephus, Jewish War VII, 148-62, translated from the Greek by H. St. J. Thackeray (Loeb Edition, Harvard University Press). Old French quoted in Chapter 2 is the actual inscription visible in the lower left-hand corner of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. The Bible quote in Chapter 4 is an abridgement of Exodus 25: 31-40, King James Version. In Chapter 5, the two quotes from King Harald’s Saga, part of the Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson, were translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson (Penguin, 1966). The poetry in Chapter 13 is from Morte d’Arthur by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92). In Chapter 15, the sentence in Old Norse describing Harald’s sea voyage is fictional, but the phrases that make it up are taken verbatim from the thirteenth century Eirik’s Saga, describing the Norse voyages to Vinland. The Old Norse phrase par liggr hann til ragnaroks, “there he lies until the end of the world,” comes from the poetic Edda (Gylfaginning 34) also by the prolific Snorri Sturluson, written down some time in the early thirteenth century.
The two silver coins described in Chapter 15-and one of them in the Prologue-truly exist, and can be seen along with other images from this book at www.davidgibbins.com.
