VALUE OF ANCIENT MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS—TOZZER. 505 
of the Mexicans has not been found. Various elaborate attempts 
to read the Maya hieroglyphics phonetically have met with failure. 
Mr. Bowditch (1910, pp. 254-255) sums up the whole question when 
he writes: 
While I subscribe in general to these words (that the wrting is chiefly ideographic) 
of the eminent Americanist (Dr. Brinton), I do not think that the Aztec picture 
writing is on the same plane as that of the Mayas. As far as I am aware, the use of 
this kind of writing was confined, among the Aztecs, to the names of persons and 
places, while the Mayas, if they used the rebus form at all, used it also for expressing 
common nouns and possibly abstract ideas. The Mayas surely used picture writing 
and the ideographic system, but I feel confident that a large part of their hieroglyphs 
will be found to be made up of rebus forms and that the true line of research will be 
found to lie in this direction. If this is a correct view of the case, it is very important, 
indispensable indeed, that the student of the Maya hieroglyphs should become a 
thorough Maya linguist. I am also of the opinion that the consonantal sound of a 
syllable was of far greater importance than the vowel sound, so that a form could be 
used to represent a syllable, even if the vowel and consonant sounds were reversed. 
A further discussion of the hieroglyphic writing of the Mayas 
would lead us too far away from our subject. 
I have not attempted to elucidate any new problems or to add to 
the knowledge of the writing of the Mexicans, but to coordinate and 
systematize the various forms and employ them as examples of the 
general development of writing. There is 
found in Mexico, perhaps to a greater 
degree than in any other one place in the SLs QW 
world, examples of all the different kinds st HE bs 
of writing, as we have seen, starting with a 
preliminary stage of reminders and passing to pure pictures which are 
used simply in their objective sense as pictures, thence to the more 
or less conventionalized and symbolic pictures or ideographs and 
finally to characters expressing sounds as well as ideas, and the 
beginning of a syllabary, the first step in the development of a phonetic 
writing, and a step beyond which the Nahuas did not go. The 
Spanish priests made the last advance toward the goal, the forma- 
tion of an alphabet, by selecting a few syllabic characters which 
they used to express the initial sounds. The first credit belongs, 
however, to the ancient Nahuas, who arrived, quite independently, 
at the idea of the possibility of a phonetic writing, and it is not 
difficult to imagine a further development into a true alphabet had 
they been left to develop their culture in their own way. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
BoTuURINI BENADUCI, LORENZO. 1746, Idea de una nueva historia general de la América Septentrional. 
Madrid. 
BowpitcH, CHARLES P. 1910, The numeration, calendar systems and astronomical knowledge of the 
Mayas. Cambridge. P 
BRINTON, DANIEL G. 1886, The phonetic elements in the graphic systems of the Mayas and Mexicans. 
Tn American Antiquarian, vol. 8, pp. 347-357; also in Essays ofan Americanist, 1 pe piesa } 
—_— 1886 a, The Ikonomatic method of phonetic writing. In Proceedings of the American Philosophical 
Society, vol. 23, No. 123, pp. 503-514; also in Essays of an Americanist, pp. 213-229. 
