The Peruvian Royal Inca, as the Mexican Aztec Empire, almost immediately wiped out by the Conquistadores, had an identifying banner, similar to the Medieval Europe's "coat-of-arms."

It is first mentioned by Garcilaso de la Vega as a small side note. The banner contains two serpents and a rainbow arc. He later identified himself with a formal Europeans coat-of-arms. The right side, (facing the shield,) contains the sun, the quarter moon, an arco iris (the rainbow) with the royal Inca tassel hanging from it. Each end of the rainbow arc contains a hanging serpent. This area is further identified as "Con la Pluma" (with the pen.) while the Spanish component of this badge is marked logically as "Con la Espada" (with the sword).

We do not know if Garcilaso De la Vega intended to defeat the Spaniards with the pen (and mental gymnastics) as his European counterparts in the grip of the Inquisition. His description of the temple room of the rainbow, especially the last two sentences is weird and makes no sense whatsoever. The description is as follows:

"The fourth room was devoted to the rainbow, which they said had descended from the Sun, and which figured on the escutcheon of the Inca Kings. It was entirely covered with gold and the rainbow was painted, in beautiful colors, across the entire surface of one of the walls. They called the rainbow culchu and revered it especially. When it appeared, they immediately put their hands over their mouths through fear, they said, that it might make their teeth decay. I can't say why." (p. 117)

If this part is coded, then there might be a double entendre or double meaning in Quechua (or even in Spanish) to the last two sentences. There does not seem to be any other explanation to this. Bernaré Cobo in his Historia del Nueva Mundo (1653) described the escutcheon of the Inca Kings in more liberal terms:

"This banner was evidently the Inca's royal standard, 'a small, square pennant, ten or twelve palmos in circumference, made of a cotton or wool canvas. It was placed at the end of a long lance, stretched out and stiff so that it did not wave in the breeze. Each king painted his arms and devices on it. They each chose different arms, although the normal symbols of the Inca lineage were the rainbow and two extended snakes."

It is the nature of a rainbow to appear after a rainstorm. However, on the mountain tops (over 4,000 feet), there is more rain activity, destructive wash-outs, and more unexpected appearances of a rainbow. There is also a rainbow-like halo around the moon at night to say rain is expected. So, regardless of what is said about the Inca belief that the Rainbow only comes from the sun, it was also associated with the moon. The story of the Moon princess is that her brother (thunder and lightning) breaks her golden jar of water and creates severe rainstorms. This is a strong myth in Inca lore and confirms the association of rain and storm with the Moon. (de la Vega, p. 81) Natural observation gives the association of the Moon with a rainbow halo.

Izapa monuments are found in Chiapas, Mexico. Stela 67 shows a man in boat with two ankh crosses in hands, rainbow behind (3 bar) appears to have conch at lower sides. (Norman, p. 154.) Conch shells instead of serpents only show us the location of the twin serpents in Lake Texcoco (as Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli). Nevertheless, the ankh crosses in the hands of a person in a boat are very different images, and actually lead us to another land across the ocean at the half-way point. Is this Maya boat coming or going?

En route it stopped at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala before it arrived on the southern continent. The double headed serpent is held up by a human figure with rainbow icons on its body. This is an excellent example of how the Izapan rainbow/conch (birthplace of the twins in the Nuttall Codex) changed its form to a cloud serpent with two heads when it visited Guatemala. It is very probable that the sailor had to expand on his description of the iridescent rainbow-sent meteorite twins that landed in Texcoco. Hence the new imagery.

Are the two ankhs from Izapa in the hands of the sailor simplified serpent forms or just a map form showing where the rainbow god came from: The blazing comet (circle) located in the top segment of the Northern Cross Constellation? Fray Sahagun calls this constellation the Mastelejos, (Sahagun, Bk. III) implying the Gemini constellation (Astilejos) but really indicating a constellation which appears to be like a ship's mast: the Northern Cross. (Larousse, Spanish-English Dictionary)

Australia, on the other hand, is a land of primitives. But in this desolate land, there is a very clear form of the Serpent of the Rainbow, named Ungud, who was said to have emerged from the ocean. It threw a "bumerang" and made the earth emerge from the sea. (Jensen, E., p. 139, excerpt from H. Petri, About Australia). This imagery from Australia, before it got amended by current myth gathers, informs us that the Serpent of the Rainbow came to Australia from a foreign source. The ankh symbols leads us straight to Egypt.

In spite of this icon marker which leads us to Africa, the best description of the rainbow-tailed meteorite fall-out across the Pacific Ocean is found in the Creation of the [Maya] World or the Spanish version La Creación del Mundo [Maya],to be found in La Tienda. This article is a good indication of how iconography of each individual culture relates only to what is visible (or touchable) within that culture. In Hawaii, the stars are very prominent, as well as the iridescent quality of the waters that surround each of the islands.

Weather wise, I do not think there are many rainbows in Egypt. The land is desert land and storms are more likely to be dry, hot Siroccos than heavy wet deluges. Yet, the icons of the serpents in King Tutankhamen's tomb are sometimes designed with lapis lazuli (blue) and carnelian (red) stones (Desroches-Noblecourt, plates I and XXVI.). . are these colors representing a rainbow? There are two possibilities here: one, that the rainbow-creator-serpent is from the land of the conch shell in Mexico and taken westward across the ocean; or two, the information was later carried by ships to Peru which included Egyptian artists but not Egyptian captains.

King Tut's sire, Ahkenaten, brought a new religion to the Egyptians. Tut's official pendant in the form of a boat shows the scarab in blues and reds (rainbow colors with a scarab replacing the bird of the Hawaiians?). These giant beetles (most common in Egypt) are flanked by two serpents which are almost lost because of the weighty design of the scarabs. (Plate XXXVIII.) The boat of Ra, thought only to be the heavenly transport of the god, may well tell us that this new government/religion of two serpents came from across the Ocean sea. Mexico is the only place which records the serpent-mountain birth of Huitzilopochtli and his twin Quetzalcoatl in the form of Tezcatlipochtli from a conch shell.

Even though the double serpent (or dragon) is found in many ancient governments around the world, we do not understand the relationship of the iconography of any given culture or how it might relate to another culture when it has been carried into a new area. Land-based icons might be easily traced overland, but when these same images cross over a sea long believed to be impassible, our fertile imaginations take precedence and supercede any possible connections.

We dream of gentle, super-intelligent extra-terrestrial rulers who hop into their space craft and visit different parts of our small planet, leaving similar elements of their origins everywhere. (Are we tired of wars and famine?) We forget completely about the courage and bravery of mankind and how they love to explore strange places and even cross oceans in small bath-tub sized boats just to say that THEY were the first to try the feat. Maybe humans are not so dumb after all.

Bibliography:

de la Vega, G. (1961). The Incas: The Royal Commentaries of the Inca (Maria Jolas, Trans.). (Intro by Alain Gheerhrant ed.). New York: Avon Books.

de Sahagun, F. B. (1956). Historia General de Las Cosas de Nueva España. Mexico, DF, Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S.A.

Desroches-Noblecourt, C. (1963). Life and Death of a Pharaoh: Tutankhamen. Boston, Massachusetts: New York Graphic Society.

Jensen, A. E. (1975). Míto y Culto Entre Pueblos Primitivos (Carlos Gerhart, Trans.). Mexico D.F., Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Norman, V. G. (1976). Izapa Sculpture: Album (Papers No. #30,). The New World Archeological Foundation, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

Thompson, Gunnar, (1989) Nu Sun: Asian-American Voyages, 500 BC, Fresno, CA: Pioneer Publishing Company.