Many of the Aztec symbols are of clearly representative origin, as foot-prints, symbols of traveling; tongues, of speech; a man sitting on the ground, of an earthquake; painted drops, of water; and other signs for day, night, air, movement, etc., which are more or less clear. But of others, as the serpent, symbol of time, the origin is not affirmed. To define the extent to which the symbolic writing prevailed is very difficult, because many of the characters which were, originally at least, representative, would appear to the uninitiated purely arbitrary; and it is not improbable that many signs may have had a double meaning according to the connection in which they were employed. The system is capable of indefinite expansion in the hands of the priesthood for purposes of religious mystification; and the fact that the religious and astrologic documents seem to contain but few of the representative and phonetic signs by which other paintings are interpreted, lends some probability to the theory that the priests had a partially distinct symbolic system of their own. The Abbé Brasseur goes so far as to say that all the historical documents had a double meaning, one for the initiated, another for the masses. The use of symbols doubtless accounts for the difficulty experienced in the interpretation of the picture-writings which have been preserved, and for the variety of extravagant theories that have been founded on them.

The intermediate method already mentioned as coming between the purely representative and the symbolic, was very extensively employed by the Aztecs in writing the names of places and persons, nearly all of which were derived from natural objects. Examples of this method are: Itzcoatl, 'stone (or obsidian) serpent;' Chapultepec, 'hill of the grasshopper;' Tzompanco, 'place of skulls;' Chimalpopoca, 'smoking shield;' Acamapitzin, 'hand holding reeds;' Macuilxochitl, 'five flowers;' Quauhtinchan, 'house of the eagle;' all written by the simple pictures of the objects named. The picture expressing a person's name was attached by a fine line to his head.

AZTEC PHONETIC WRITING.

The use of the phonetic element by the Aztecs was first noticed by the early missionaries in their efforts to teach Church forms. The natives, eager or obliged to learn the words so essential to their salvation but so new to their ear, aided their memory by writing phonetically in a rude way the strange words. Amen was expressed by the symbol of water, atl, joined to a maguey, metl, forming the sounds atl-metl or a-mĕ, sufficiently accurate for their purpose. Pater noster was likewise written with a flag, pantli, and a prickly pear, nochtli; or sometimes a stone, tetl, was introduced before and after the prickly pear, the whole reading pa(ntli)-te(tl)-noch(tli)-te(tl). Here it will be observed that the sound only of the objects employed is considered, with no reference to their meaning. The name Teocaltitlan is an excellent specimen of the syllabic-phonetic writing. It is written in one of the manuscripts of the Boturini collection by a pictured pair of lips, tentli, for the syllable te; footsteps, symbolic of a road, otli, for o; a house, calli, for cal; and teeth, tlantli, for tlan, ti being a common connective syllable. The termination coatl is a very frequent one in Aztec words, and is often written phonetically by a 'pot,' comitl, surmounted by the symbol of water, atl, co-atl; but coatl means 'serpent' and is also written representatively by a simple picture of that reptile. Matlatlan 'net-place,' is written by pictured teeth, tlantli, phonetic, and a net, matla, representative. Mixcoatl, 'cloudy serpent,' is expressed by the representative sign of a cloud, mixtli, and by the word coatl phonetically written as before explained. These examples suffice to illustrate the system. There is no evidence that the Aztecs ever reached the highest or alphabetic stage of hieroglyphics, and so far as is known they only used the syllabic method in writing names, and foreign words after the coming of the Spaniards. Still there is some reason to suspect that the phonetic element was much more in use than has been supposed, and that many characters which, hitherto considered by students as representative and symbolic signs, have yielded no meaning, may yet prove to be phonetic, and may throw much light on a complex and mysterious subject.[659]

RECORD OF AN AZTEC MIGRATION.

On the two following pages is a copy of the painting already referred to as having been published by Gemelli Careri, Humboldt, Kingsborough, Prescott, and others, and which I take from the work of Ramirez as being probably the most reliable source.[660] This painting, preserved in the National Museum, is about twenty by twenty-seven inches, on maguey paper of the finest quality, now mounted on linen. I do not propose to attempt in this chapter any interpretation of the painting, to discuss the interpretations of others, or to investigate its historical importance. I simply present the document as an illustration of the Aztec picture-writing, with interpretations of some of the figures as given by Señor Ramirez, leaving to another volume all consideration of the old absurd theory that a part of the painting (fig. 1-6) pictures the flood, the preservation of Coxcox, the Aztec Noah, and the confusion of tongues.

The Aztec Migration.
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