These words mean, “the town of Santa Cruz Tlamapa.” The name “tlamapa” means “on the hill-side,” and doubtless originally referred to the position in which the village was situated. But the prefix “tlama” usually signifies, “to do something with the arms or hands,” derived from maitl, hand or arm. Hence, the figure of the extended arm gives this disyllable, tlama, which was sufficient to recall the name of the town.
The Aztecs by no means confined the ikonomatic system to proper names. They composed in it words, sentences, and treatises on various subjects. In proportion as it is applied to these connected and lengthy compositions, its processes become more recondite, curious and difficult of interpretation. Without a knowledge of the spoken language considerably more than rudimentary, it would be hopeless for the student to attempt to solve the enigmas which he meets at every step. Yet every well-directed effort will convince him that he is on the right track, and he will constantly be cheered and stimulated to further endeavor by the victories he will win day by day.
The analogy which is presented in so many particulars between Mexican and Maya civilization would lead us to infer that the Maya writing, of which we have a number of examples well preserved, should be unlocked by the same key which has been successfully applied to the Aztec Codices. The latest writers on the Maya manuscripts, while agreeing that they are in part, at least, in phonetic characters, consider them mostly ideographic. But it is to be noted that not one of these writers had any practical acquaintance with the sounds of the Maya language, and scarcely any with its vocabulary. From this it is evident that even were these codices in ikonomatic writing, such investigators could make very little progress in deciphering them, and might readily come to the conclusion that the figures are not phonetic in any sense. Precisely the same position was taken by a number of students of Egyptian antiquity long after the announcement of the discovery of Champollion; and even within a few years works have been printed denying all phoneticism to the Nilotic inscriptions.
What induces me to believe that much of the Maya script is of the nature of the Mexican is the endeavor, undertaken for a very different purpose, of Professor Valentini to explain the origin of the so-called Maya alphabet, preserved by Bishop Landa, and printed in the editions of his celebrated “Description of Yucatan.”[[214]] Professor Valentini shows by arguments and illustrations, which I think are in the main correct, that when the natives were asked to represent the sounds of the Spanish letters in their method of writing, they selected objects to depict, whose names, or initial sounds, or first syllables, were the same, or akin, to the sounds of the Spanish vowel or consonant heard by them. Sometimes they would give several words, with their corresponding pictures, for the same sound; just as I have shown was the custom of the ancient Egyptians. Thus, for the sound b they drew a foot-print, which in their tongue was called be; for the sound a an obsidian knife, in Maya, ach, etc. Valentini thinks also that the letter e was delineated by black spots, in Maya eek, meaning black, which, if proved by further research, would show that the Mayas, like the Mexicans, attributed phonetic values to the colors they employed in their painted scrolls.
Outside of the two nations mentioned, the natives of the American continent made little advance toward a phonetic system. We have no positive evidence that even the cultivated Tarascas and Zapotecs had anything better than ikonographs; and of the Quiches and Cakchiquels, both near relatives of the Mayas, we only know that they had a written literature of considerable extent, but of the plan by which it was preserved we have only obscure hints. Next to these we should probably place the Chipeway pictography, as preserved on their meda sticks, bark records, and adjidjiatig or grave-posts. I have examined a number of specimens of these, but have failed to find any evidence that the characters refer to sounds in the language; however, I might not consider it improbable that further researches might disclose some germs of the ikonomatic method of writing even in these primitive examples of the desire of the human intellect to perpetuate its acquisitions, and hand them down to generations yet unborn.
THE WRITING AND RECORDS OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS.[[215]]
1.—Introductory.
One of the ablest living ethnologists has classified the means of recording knowledge under two general headings—Thought-writing and Sound-writing.[[216]] The former is again divided into two forms, the first and earliest of which is by pictures, the second by picture-writing.
The superiority of picture-writing over the mere depicting of an occurrence is that it analyzes the thought and expresses separately its component parts, whereas the picture presents it as a whole. The representations familiar among the North American Indians are usually only pictures, while most of the records of the Aztec communities are in picture-writing.
The genealogical development of Sound-writing begins by the substitution of the sign of one idea for that of another whose sound is nearly or quite the same. Such was the early graphic system of Egypt, and such substantially to-day is that of the Chinese. Above stands syllabic writing, this as that of the Japanese, and the semi-syllabic signs of the old Semitic alphabet; while, as the perfected result of these various attempts, we reach at last the invention of a true alphabet, in which a definite figure corresponds to a definite elementary sound.