The second example is a common noun, the name of a serpent tecuhtlacozauhqui (Fig. 7). It is also read from right to left; the head with the peculiar band and frontal ornament is that of one of the noble class, tecuhtli; at the base of the left figure is a familiar sign for tla, and represents two teeth, tlantli; they are surmounted by a jar, comitl with the value co; and this in turn is pierced by a lancet, which here has only its alphabetic value z. The remainder of the word was not expressed in the writing, the above signs being deemed sufficient to convey the idea to the reader.
In presenting these examples I do not bring forward anything new. They are from an essay which has been in print nearly forty years.[[207]] Many other examples are to be seen in the great work of Lord Kingsborough, and later in publications in the city of Mexico. The learned Ramirez undertook a dictionary of Nahuatl hieroglyphics which has in part been published; Orozco y Berra in his “History of Ancient Mexico” gathered a great many facts illustrative of the phonetic character of the Mexican script; and within a year Dr. Peñafiel has issued a quarto of considerable size giving ancient local Mexican names with their phonetic representations.[[208]]
With these aids at command, why has not our progress in the interpretation of the ancient records on stone and paper been more rapid? Why do we stand now almost at the same point as in 1850?
There can be but one answer, and that will immediately suggest itself from the nature of the phoneticism in the Mexican writing. What I have called the ikonomatic system of writing can be elucidated only by one who has a wide command of the vocabulary of the language. Consider, for a moment, the difficulty which we experience, with all our knowledge of our native tongue, in solving one of the rebuses which appear in the puzzle columns of periodicals for children; or in interpreting the canting arms in armorial bearings. Not only must we recall the various names of the objects represented, and select from them such as the sense of the context requires, but we must make allowance for extensive omissions, as in one of the examples above quoted (Fig. 7), and for mere similarities of sound, often quite remote, as well as for the abbreviations and conventionalisms of practiced scribes, familiar with their subject and with this method of writing the sounds of their language.
Such difficulties as these can only be overcome by long-continued application to the tongues themselves, and by acquainting one’s self intimately with the forms, the methods, and the variations of this truly puzzling graphic system. Every identification is solving an enigma; but once solved, each illustrates the method, confirms its accuracy, and facilitates the learner’s progress, and at the same time stimulates him with the joyous sense of difficulties conquered, and with the vision of discovered truth illuminating his onward path.
Although, as I have stated, the general principles of this method were pointed out forty years ago, the prevailing ignorance of the Nahuatl language has prevented any one from successfully deciphering the Mexican script. This ignorance has had even a worse effect. Men who did not know a dozen words of Nahuatl, who were unable to construe a single sentence in the language, have taken upon themselves to condemn Aubin’s explanations as visionary and untrue, and to deny wholly the phonetic elements of the Mexican writing. Lacking the essential condition of testing the accuracy of the statement, they have presumed blankly to condemn it!
THE IKONOMATIC METHOD OF PHONETIC WRITING.[[209]]
All methods of recording ideas have been divided into two classes, Thought Writing and Sound Writing.
The first, simplest and oldest is Thought Writing. This in turn is subdivided into two forms, Ikonographic and Symbolic Writing. The former is also known as Imitative, Representative or Picture Writing. The object to be held in memory is represented by its picture, drawn with such skill, or lack of skill, as the writer may possess. In Symbolic Writing, a single characteristic part or trait serves to represent the whole object; thus, the track of an animal will stand for the animal itself; a representation of the peculiar round impression of the wolf’s foot, or the three-lined track of the wild turkey, being amply sufficient to designate these creatures. Even the rudest savages practice both these forms of writing, and make use of them to scratch on rocks, and paint on bark and hides, the record of their deeds.
It will be observed that Thought Writing has no reference to spoken language; neither the picture of a wolf, nor the representation of his footprint, conveys the slightest notion of the sound of the word wolf. How was the enormous leap made from the thought to the sound—in other words, from an ideographic to a phonetic method of writing?