ws 
ETRURIA CAPTA. 149 
writing of the two peoples should also coincide. It is easier to trace 
the resemblance between the Corean characters and those of the 
Mound Builders than to show the relation of the latter to the Aztec 
hieroglyphics. I say Aztec rather than Mexican, for with the 
inscriptions of Yucatan and Guatemala we have nothing to do. Yet 
Iam convinced that the Mound Builder characters are the cursive 
form of the Aztec hieroglyphics. Thus, starting from hieroglyphics, 
I ended at the same, embracing the only two hieroglyphic systems, 
excepting the Egyptian, in existence. On close examination I found 
that the hieroglyphics of Mexico stand in a very definite and intimate 
relation to those of Syria, spite of the wide interval between them in 
Space and time.’ As the phonetic syllabic values of the Aztec 
characters are well known, I gained in them the actual key to the old 
Turanian syllabary. The values of the Aztec hieroglyphics I found 
to correspond in almost every case with those which, on the authority 
of the Cypriote and the Corean alphabets, I had affixed to the 
characters, Etruscan and otherwise, most resembling them. Thus, for 
example, the Cypriote shield-like character having the power mo, and 
the Corean parallelogram possessing the same value, coincide with 
the square or circle, which in Aztec denotes the number 10, matlactlt, 
and which in composition is read ma. 
Passing now westward from Corea, a vast written area appears in 
Siberia. M. V1. Youferoff, of the Imperial Society of Geography at 
St. Petersburg, spared himself no trouble to furnish me with the 
principal inscriptions found in the Yenisei country. These, with 
variations, set forth the same Turanian syllabary, rather of the 
Corean and Cypriote order than of the Aztec and Hittite.” Never- 
theless, a few hieroglyphic forms, common to Hittite and Aztec, pro- 
minent among which is the fish, appear in these intensely interesting 
monuments. They also claim kindred with those of the American 
Mound Builders, as much by the correspondence of written characters 
as by the rude representations of animals and human figures which 
they contain. Several of them deal with the reign of Sekata, the 
Sheketang of the Chinese historians, who virtually headed the 
Khitan dynasty of China." Searching for traces of the writers of 
9 See plate. 
10 The Hittite and Aztec are hieroglyphic; the Cypriote and Corean, cursive or alphabetical 
or syllabic in form. 
ll The Khitan dynasty of China, coming from the west, took possession of Leaotong in the 
north east in 907, and extended their sway over the northern part of the empire. From the 
