THE PICTURE WRITING OF THE AZTECS 



WORDS ARE REBUSES MADE UP OF CONVENTIONALIZED 

 PICTURES AS SYLLABLES 



By Herbert J. Spinden 



THE Aztecs of Mexico City wrote books upon durable paper made 

 from the matted fiber of the maguey afterwards covered with a 

 coating of fine lime. These books, commonly called codices, con- 

 sist of long strips folded screen-wise and usually have writing on both sides. 

 Among the Maya of Yucatan, book-making probably reached a higher 

 plane than among the Aztecs but the interpretation of symbols is much 

 more difficult. In both regions, the Spanish priests were instrumental in 

 destroying large quantities of the native documents in their attempts to 

 stamp out pagan beliefs. 



In the valley of Mexico however, the art of writing was able to maintain 

 itself for some time after the conquest. There are a number of Aztec books 

 or codices which contain European writing in explanation of the Mexican 

 figures and these have been of great value in the study of other documents. 

 The list of pre-Cortesian manuscripts is small, but there are many which 

 date from soon after the coming of the Spaniards and these preserve in 

 greater or lesser purity the original style of writing. 



As regards the subject matter, codices contain historical and religious 

 information of several sorts, which is imparted in a system fundamentally 

 different from ours. The Mexicans did not have an alphabet or even a 

 formal syllabary. Their method of writing is in part pictographic and in 

 part hieroglyphic. 



Aztec writing can best be compared to the so-called "rebus puzzles" 

 which consist largely of pictured puns upon whole or partial words. The 

 hieroglyphs are practically limited to place names, personal names, month 

 and day names, numbers and principal objects of commerce. There are no 

 word pictures for adverbs, adjectives or conjunctions, and no representa- 

 tions of abstract ideas. Such hieroglyphs for example as the Chinese 

 symbol for " danger, " which represents a child standing on the edge of a cliff, 

 are unknown. Some of the signs are in no degree realistic and have a 

 definite meaning by common consent alone, while others are abbreviated 

 and conventionalized pictures of objects. Thus the head of a god or of an 

 animal frequently appears as the sign of the whole. But the most important 

 and interesting word signs are, as before remarked, rebuses in which separate 

 syllables or groups of syllables are represented by more or less conventiona- 

 lized pictures. The whole word picture is then made up of syllable pictures 

 which indicate phonetically the word as a whole but which may have no 

 definite relationship to the meaning of the word. 



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