At Moundville, mounds were built in a highly orderly arrangement over about 100 years and were surrounded by an immense wall made from tens of thousands of logs, requiring the manpower and allegiance of thousands of people. Native Mississippian political and sacred beliefs were intertwined, and archaeologists conclude that sacred symbols engraved on stone artifacts, shell ornaments, finely made pottery, or embossed on sheet copper linked ruling elites with heavenly powers and supernatural beings believed to control nature, warfare, and access to the afterlife. People believed that obedience to rulers' demands for goods and labor would be rewarded with good fortune in this life and the afterlife. An important religious image at Moundville was the Hand and Eye motif, best known from Moundville's Rattlesnake Disk, with variations appearing on pottery, copper, stone, and shell artifacts. Stories passed down among various tribes tell of the dead entering the afterlife through an opening marked by a great warrior's hand in the sky, sometimes described as the constellation Orion with its belt as the wrist, its fingers pointing downward, and a faint cluster of stars in the palm serving as a portal to the Path of Souls or the land of the dead. Researchers speculate that the Hand and Eye represents this constellation. After the mounds were completed, the number of people living at Moundville declined while the number buried there increased dramatically, suggesting that rulers may have persuaded people that burial at Moundville was the proper way to enter the portal to the Path of Souls, strengthening the power of the ruling elites.