Dave's Photo World
The Intihuatana Stone
2002-11-07
Better know as the hitching post of the sun. I think the stone is carved in the mountain, but I doubt they would let me dig it up to check. I never was able to get a picture without people present. But that's not a big problem in this case......
The Intihuatana Stone is used to measure the angle of the sun and shows when the solstices and equinoxes occur. It's called the hitching post of the sun because the priests were supposed to hitch the sun to the stone and stop it from swinging too far on either side of light or darkness. Strangely, there is a stone almost identical to this in the Royal Tomb below the Temple of the Sun. One of the guides I overheard this time was strongly questioning the hitching post idea, since there is no way you can measure the sun from back inside the Royal Tomb.
The Intihuatana Stone is one of the two special places for me, and I can't explain why. The Temple of the Sun & Royal Tomb is the other.