Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Quiches;

Minneaopolis: Wizards Bookshelf, 1973 (1886). Reprint. Octavo in dark yellow blind-stamped illus & gilt-titles (spine) boards; xvi, 163 p., [18] leaves of b/w plates: p., ill., port.;, 23 cm. Includes index. Very fine; as new. Hardcover.

A quality reprint, well-bound and well-printed. | Augustus Le Plongeon (1826–1908) was a Franco-British antiquarian, photographer, and autodidact archaeologist whose work in the Yucatán helped shape early modern fascination with Maya civilization, even as his interpretive theories veered into the speculative. Trained as a surveyor and skilled in the emerging art of wet-plate photography, he and his wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon produced some of the earliest systematic photographic records of sites such as Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, documenting monuments that have since deteriorated or been altered. While his diffusionist claims—linking the Maya to Atlantis, Egypt, and Old World civilizations—were rejected by professional scholarship, his meticulous visual documentation and on-site recording remain of lasting historical value, situating him at the porous boundary between rigorous fieldwork and nineteenth-century myth-making. And he coud very well prove to be partiall correct! | Maya; Quiche; Freemasons; Masonry; Ancient Egypt; Antiquities, Queen Moo; Ancient Mysteries