o ll m
u e a
s v r
M. de Rosny has shown that the statement of Landa and the fact that the human faces shown in the hieroglyphs look toward the left, indicate that the signs should be read from left to right.[616] In rare cases this order is reversed, as is seen on a couple of leaves of the Codex Peresianus. There are, no doubt, numerous instances in which the signs are arranged in perpendicular columns, and the order in which such columns are to be read is not the same in all manuscripts. In the Maya inscriptions and manuscripts, the “illustrations” or pictorial figures are interwoven with the alphabetic signs forming an important part of the writing. In many cases a page of MS. (as shown in Rosny’s plates) is divided into sections or squares, in which the hieroglyphics are inseparably connected with grotesque figures which accompany them and form a part of the writing. M. de Rosny has undertaken the classification and interpretation of all these figures which are found in the existing Maya MSS. This doubtless will prove an important auxiliary to the table of signs already alluded to. We may reasonably expect that since M. de Rosny has shown the extensive character of the Maya phonetic and symbolic alphabet, he will furnish us examples of its application in the practical interpretation of the hieroglyphics, in the latter part of his work. Recently Dr. Ph. Valentini has pronounced the Landa alphabet a Spanish fabrication, of later date than the conquest. See Proceedings of Amer. Antiquarian Soc. for April, 1880.
We do not deem it necessary to assure the reader that while the Aztec picture-writing was not as far advanced in the scale of graphic development as the system employed by the Mayas, still it was an accurate means of communication and of recording events. The “scribes” of the Mexicans were an educated class of men, who with strictest accuracy painted in hieroglyphic symbols the record of national, historic and traditional affairs, as well as the tribute rolls, the calendar with its feast days, the stated services of the gods, the genealogical tables of noble and royal personages, and even the customs of the humble classes. No doubt many educated persons who did not belong to the priestly and lettered class, were acquainted with the system employed, and many others understood it sufficiently to recognize calendar and feast signs. The Aztec books were painted mostly on cotton cloth, prepared skins and maguey paper, and when not rolled were folded fan-like and bound with thin wooden covers, like the Maya books. The priests who accompanied the conquerors and immediately followed them, mistook the pictured figures painted in these books to be representations of heathen deities, and consequently inaugurated a system of wholesale destruction of all the picture-writing. Las Casas informs us that they were actuated by the fear that in matters of religion the existence of these books would be injurious. The infamous crime committed against the cause of knowledge and the irreparable injury done to the natives, their successors, and to students of history for all time, by the destruction of those valuable MSS., must ever remain an unerasable blot upon the name of the early church in Mexico, and must be ranked with the worst deeds of Goths and Vandals. Juan de Zumárraga, the chief of these sacrilegious destroyers who committed the annals of the Mexican States publicly to the flames in his tour of the principal cities of the country, will ever be remembered with proper contempt. Fortunately, many of the MSS. were hidden by their owners and have since come to light; the greater number of these, however, were tribute rolls, which, down to the last century, played an important part in the Mexican courts of justice. Prescott informs us that “until late in the last century, there was a professor in the University of Mexico especially devoted to the study of the national picture-writing. But as this was with a view to legal proceedings, his information probably was limited to deciphering titles.” In the course of time the priests became acquainted with the harmless nature of the hieroglyphics, through their use by the natives in their making confessions and in recording the Lord’s prayer. Many documents written since the conquest were provided by their authors with a Spanish translation or with an explanation in Aztec written with Spanish letters. Many of these are in existence, and with a few authentic documents, written previous to the conquest, are preserved in public and private libraries of Europe and this country, the finest collection of which is that of the National Museum of the University of Mexico. The reader is no doubt already familiar with the splendid fac-similes of several Mexican MSS. published in Lord Kingsborough’s work. Mr. Bancroft has concisely narrated the events and vicissitudes which have attended the transmission of some of these documents through the hands of successive owners to their present depositories.[617] Several writers on hieroglyphic systems, and the above author among them, have classified the progressive steps of picture-writing into representative, symbolic, and phonetic. Of these, the first is by far the simplest, and has invariably preceded the others in the development of the graphic art. It was natural for the savage to represent an object by a picture, in which that object was surrounded with certain conditions; at first the entire object was pictured, but subsequently only a portion of the object, as in the case of a bird, the head or foot or wing in the more advanced stages of art, would be substituted for the object itself. In symbolic picture-writing, we find an attempt at representing abstract ideas and actions. Some quality or attribute of a person is portrayed by means of the representative process, by symbols which would naturally seem to suggest the distinguishing characteristic of the person or occasion. A certain Aztec festival might be symbolized by the conventional calendar sign, an altar, a flint knife held by a human hand, and a smoking human heart. Phonetic picture-writing is, of course, dependent upon the sounds of the language for which it is designed. Its province is to represent those sounds by pictures of objects in whose names the sounds occur. Words, syllables and elementary sounds which are represented by alphabets, are thus gradually evolved in the progression which follows. Mr. Bancroft, by a most ingenious example, has illustrated this principle as applied to our own language. “According to this system,” he says, “the
signifies successively the word ‘hand,’ the syllable ‘hand’ in handsome, the sound ‘ha’ in happy, the aspiration ‘h’ in head, and finally, by simplifying its form or writing it rapidly, the
becomes
and then the ‘h’ of the alphabet.”[618] The Aztecs never reached the last stage of phonetic development, namely, the alphabet. They, however, employed the system in the syllabic formation of words to a very considerable extent. The priests soon found the natives applying their art of writing to the record of the standard expressions employed in teaching the new faith. Amen was expressed by the sign of water, atl associated with a maguey plant, metl which united gave the word atl-metl, or after the ever present Aztec termination tl is stricken off, we have a-me, an approximation to our word Amen. Mr. Bancroft gives also the following example of the manner in which the name Teocaltitlan was expressed by this 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 tlanti, being a common connective syllable.” We think the reader will find a clearer illustration in the word Chapultepec, which literally means “hill of the grasshopper.” By reference to the Aztec migration map which has been published by several authors[619] (the most correct copy accessible to the general reader is that by Bancroft).[620] A hill surmounted by a grasshopper will be observed among the figures. The same representation in different form will be seen in Boturini’s picture-map of the migration. Chapultepec is well known as the royal hill, a short distance west of the city of Mexico, celebrated as the country residence of Montezuma. Numerous similar examples might be selected from the migration maps of this combination of the three methods employed. Proper names were always expressed in a similar manner. An example of the representative and symbolic stages of the picture-writing of the Aztecs has been given by Mr. Bancroft from the Codex Mendoza in Kingsborough.[621] We here reproduce the plate used in the Native Races. It describes four steps or periods in the education of children; each period is supposed to refer to a particular year. In the upper left-hand group we see a father (fig. 3) punishing his son by holding him over the fumes of burning chile (fig. 5); in the right-hand group the mother threatens her daughter with similar punishment. In the second group (figs. 12–13), a father punishes his son by exposing him bound hand and foot on the damp ground. A bad boy twelve years of age, according to Aztec custom was always punished in this way, and his punishment lasted during an entire day. A disobedient girl of the same age was obliged to rise in the night and sweep the whole house, as is shown in the right-hand group, or, as no tear is seen in her eye, she may be learning. At the age of eight years children were only shown the instrument of punishment; at ten they were pricked with maguey thorns, or if still unruly, were whipped. The above groups show the methods employed during the eleventh and twelfth years, after which age a child was supposed to be pretty well disciplined. In the third group a father directs his boys (fig. 21) how to transport wood, both upon the back and in the canoe, while the mother teaches the daughter (fig. 23) to make tortillas and use the mealing stone and other utensils (figs. 25, 26, 28); the tortillas are also represented (fig. 27). In the fourth group the son learns the use of the fish-net and the daughter that of the loom. The allowance of tortillas apportioned to the children at the ages represented are shown in figs. 2, 8, 11, 16, 20, 24, 30 and 34. The remaining figures are not representative, but symbolic. The small circles (figs. 1, 10, 19, 29) are numerals indicating that the child was successively eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age. A circle or dot was always used for a unit. The comma-like figure issuing from the mouth of the parent is the symbol of speech. The tears in the children’s eyes need no explanation. The singular figure (17) above the girl in the second group is said to be symbolical of night, and to indicate that the sweeping was required in the night.
