(d) The Phonetic Stage.—The ancient Mexican script supplies examples of the change from the pictographic to the phonetic stage. The name of one of the kings was Itzcoatl, or "Knife-Snake." In the manuscript known as the Le Tellier Codex this king's name (Fig. 34) is represented by a serpent (coatl) with stone knives (itzli) upon its back. This is mere picture-writing, but in the Vergara Codex we find the rebus form (Fig. 35). "The first syllable, itz, is represented by a weapon armed with blades of obsidian, itz (tli), but the rest of the word, coatl, though it means snake, is written, not by a picture of a snake, but by an earthen pot, co (mitl), and above it the sign of water, a (tl). Here we have real phonetic writing, for the name is not to be read, according to sense, 'knife-kettle-water,' but only according to the sound of the Aztec words, Itz-co-atl." Dr. Tylor adds that there is no sufficient reason to make us doubt that this purely phonetic writing was of native Mexican origin, and that after the Spanish Conquest it was turned to account in a new and curious way. The Spanish missionaries, when embarrassed by the difficulty of getting the converts to remember their Ave Marias and Paternosters, seeing that the words were, of course, mere nonsense to them, were helped out by the Indians themselves, who substituted Aztec words as near in sound as might be to the Latin, and wrote down the pictured equivalents for these words, which enabled them to remember the required formulas. Torquemada and Las Casas have recorded two instances of this device.
Fig. 35.—Rebus
of Itzcoatl
Pater noster was written by a flag (pantli) and a prickly pear (nochtli), while the sign of water, a (tl) combined with that of aloe, me (tl), made a compound word, ametl, which would mean "water-aloe," but in sound made a very tolerable substitute for Amen. M. Aubin found the beginning of a Paternoster of this kind in the metropolitan library of Mexico (Fig. 36), made with a flag, pan (tli), a stone, te (tl), a prickly pear, noch (tli), and again a stone, te (tl), which would read Pa-te-noch-te, or perhaps Pa-tetl-noch-tetl. After the conquest, when the Spaniards were hard at work introducing their own religion and civilisation among the conquered Mexicans, they found it convenient to allow the old picture-writing still to be used, even in legal documents. It disappeared in time, of course, being superseded in the long run by the alphabet, and it is to this transition period that we owe many, perhaps most, of the picture documents still preserved. "One of the picture-writings in the museum at Mexico is very probably the same that was sent up to Vera Cruz, to Montezuma, with figures of newly-arrived white men, their ships and horses, and their cannon with fire and smoke issuing from their mouths." (Tylor, Anahuac, p. 232.) In the general history of the development of writing, the Mexican script therefore supplies us only with an example of approximation to the phonetic system, its advance to the final alphabetic stage being probably arrested by the subjugation of the Mayas to an intellectually inferior conqueror, who, borrowing much, and contributing nothing of advantage, himself yielded to the superior force of Spain.
Fig. 36.—Paternoster Rebus