Fig. 3.—Itzmiquilpan.
In one respect I believe the ikonomatic writing of the Mexicans is peculiar; that is, in the phonetic value which it assigns to colors. Like the Egyptian, it is polychromatic, but, so far as I know, the Egyptian polychromes never had a phonetic value; they were, in a general way, used by that people as determinatives, from some supposed similarity of hue; thus green indicates a vegetable substance or bronze, yellow, certain woods and some animals, and so on. In heraldry the colors are very important and have well-defined significations, but very seldom, if ever, phonetic ones. Quite the contrary is the case with the Mexican script. It presents abundant instances where the color of the object as portrayed is an integral phonetic element of the sound designed to be conveyed.
To quote examples, the Nahuatl word for yellow is cuztic or coztic, and when the hieroglyphics express phonetically such proper names as Acozpa, Cozamaloapan, Cozhuipilcan, etc., the monosyllable coz is expressed solely by the yellow color which the scribe lays upon his picture. Again, the name Xiuhuacan, “the place of grass,” is represented by a circle colored pale blue, xiuhtic. The name of this tint supplies the phonetic desired. The name of the village Tlapan is conveyed by a circle, whose interior is painted red, tlapalli, containing the mark of a human foot-print. Such examples are sufficient to prove that in undertaking to decipher the Mexican writing we must regard the color as well as the figure, and be prepared to allow to each a definite phonetic value.
Fig. 4.—Acozpa. (A yellow center surrounded by water drops, atl, a.)
Fig. 5.—Tlamapa.
It must not be understood that all the Aztec writing is made up of phonetic symbols. This is far from being the case. We discover among the hundreds of curious figures which it presents, determinatives, as in the Egyptian inscriptions, and numerous ideograms. Sometimes the ideogram is associated with the phonetic symbol, acting as a sort of determinative to the latter. An interesting example of this is given at the beginning of the “Manuscrito Hieratico,” recently published by the Spanish government.[[213]] It is the more valuable as an example, as the picture writing is translated into Nahuatl and written in Spanish characters. The date of the document, 1526, leaves no doubt that it is in the same style as the ancient Codices. The page is headed with the picture of a church edifice; underneath is the outline of a human arm, and the legend in Nahuatl is:
In Altepetl y Santa Cruz Tlamapa.