VALUE OF ANCIENT MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS—TOZZER. 499 
great ability possessed by the natives of Mexico to read by means of 
pictures. They took advantage of this in several ways in order to 
disseminate the teachings of the Roman religion. The entire cate- 
chism was shown by means of pictures. No question of sound entered 
into this sort of picture writing. These pictures were painted upon 
great cloths and hung up before the people. A page of Velades,! a 
Latin account of the activities of the priesthood, dated 1579, shows 
some of the ways taken by the priests to introduce the new religion 
into Mexico. * * * Torqumada (1723)? and other early writers 
describe these charts or ‘“‘lienzos.”” I know of none of these charts 
still in existence, but there are several manuscripts which contain 
the same class of pictures. Leon (i900) illustrates and describes 
this kind of document. The Peabody Museum has a manuscript 
which is slightly more elaborate in its figures than that pictured by 
Leon, but in all essential particulars they are identical. Both may 
be considered copies of earlier charts. * * * 
In all these illustrations we have seen pure “thought writing,’’? 
ideas expressed by pictures, conventionalized pictures, symbols, or 
conventionalized symbols. Up to this time there has been no sug- 
gestion of the name, or, more exactly, the sound of the name. Ideas 
have been expressed, but ideas regardless of the sounds which the 
‘names would signify. 
The next step to be illustrated by Mexican examples is where 
sound comes in for the first time as a factor. It is not the object 
now that is the desired thing, but the name of the object. This 
marks an intermediate stage between picture writing on the one 
hand and phonetic writing on the other. It employs the well-known 
principle of the rebus. It is this step which is illustrated with 
special clearness in the Nahua manuscripts, perhaps better than in 
the writing of any other people. ; 
Much has been written in various places on this phase of the writing 
of the Mexicans. The phonetic character of the greater part of the 
various pictures has been known for some time.‘ Brinton (1886 
and 1886, a) has discussed this method of writing and gives it the 
term ‘“ikonomatic,” the ‘‘name of the figure or image,” referring to 
the sound of the name rather than to any objective significance as a 
1 Velades, 1579, chap. xxviii, gives a pictorial alphabet which is of no importance. Valentine, 1880, p. 
74, gives a reproduction of it. 
2 Book xv, chap. xxv, “‘Tuvieron estos Benitos Padres, un modo de Predicar, no menos trabajoso, que 
artificioso, y mui provechoso, para estos Indios, por ser conforme al uso, que ellos tenian, de tratar todas 
lascosas por Pinturas, y era desta manera. Hacian Pintar en un Liengo, los Articulos de la Fé, y en otro, 
los diez Mandamientos de Dios, y en otro, los siete Sacramentos, y lo demas que querian, de la Doctrina 
Christiana; y quando el Predicador, queria Predicar de los Mandamientos colgavan junto, de donde se 
ponia & Predicar el Liengo de los Mandamientos en distancia que podia, con una Vara sefialar Ja parte del 
Lienco, quequeria. * * * ” For further references to this custom, see Leon, 1900. 
3 Scler, 1888, uses the term ‘‘Gedankenrebus”’ for this kind of writing. 
4 Pefiafiel, 1885, gives an atlas of the place-names found in the tribute lists in the Codex Mendocino. 
