How Ancient America Wrote. 221 



IMexican culture hero, collected iu the book of the sun (Tonalomatl) 

 their historical records, traditions, laws and astrological fancies. 



The Aztecs, successors and heirs to the arts and learning of the 

 founders of Tula, inherited also their method of writing. Confined 

 at first only to the priests, it was under the rule of the MontezAimas 

 taught in the academies and promulgated amongst the masses. Thus 

 it came into constant use in the daily transactions of life, the figures 

 being painted on slates of soft stone, from which they could be readily 

 erased with wet sponges or cloth. The vases and monuments, the 

 columns and walls of the temples and palaces, were adorned with pic- 

 torial inscriptions and the archives stored with painted volumes. A 

 coarse, thick paper (mazatl), like the Egyptian papyrus, was manu- 

 factured from the leaves of the maguay and ikzoil, or pieces of silk or 

 cotton, covered with rosin for writing purposes. These sheets, from 12 

 to 15 inches wide and 50 to 60 feet long, were folded in a zigzag man- 

 ner, and the outer leaves fastened to wooden tablets, giving them the 

 appearance of a quarto volume, called in the Aztec tongue, amatl.-^ 



Surpassed only by the fanaticism of the Moors, who burnt the 

 Egyptian papyrus rolls to kindle their camp-fires, the christianizing 

 zeal of the Conquistadores has nearly destroyed all these precious doc- 

 uments. There are, however, a sufficient number preserved (now in 

 the libraries of Berlin, Dresden, the Escurial, Vienna, Velletri, Rome, 

 Bologna and Mexico), to give us an insight into the pictorial art and 

 the dexterity of the Mexican scribes. 



In minutely examining these manuscripts, we discover large figures, 

 either single or in groups, and small colored delineations, together 

 with fantastic signs, the latter both inclosed in rectangles. The mystic 

 signs either surround the large figures, not unlike marginal annota- 

 tions, or are interposed between the smaller delineations, or placed side 

 by side iu regular rows. 



The shape of the figures, whether representing living or lifeless ob- 

 jects, is mostly bizarre, hard and angular, without the least regard to 

 elegance or correctness, though more expressive than in the picto- 

 graphs of the northern tribes. The essential parts are monstrously 

 exaggerated, not unlike those in our carricatures, the heads thick and 

 overgrown, the noses unnaturally long, the bodies dwarfish and mis- 

 shapen, and the faces in profile, with the eyes in the center, showing 

 conclusively that they were subservient to some other purpose than 

 mere delineation. I\Iauy of the figures can be readily recognized as 

 imitations of natural objects, while others appear arbitrary and ob- 



- Brinton, '• Myths," p. 10, etc. H. Wuttke, " Gntfteljung bcr Sc^rift," p. 198, etc. 



