VALUE OF ANCIENT MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS — TOZZER. 505 



of the Mexicans lias 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 aa j rj^( 



degree than in any other one place in the 

 world, examples of all the different kinds 

 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. 



Botueini Benaduci, Lobenzo. 1746, Idea de una nueva historia general de la America Septentrional. 



Madrid. 

 Bowditch, Charles P. 1910, The numeration, calendar systems and astronomical knowledge of the 



Mayas. Cambridge. 

 Brinton, Daniel G. 1886, The phonetic elements in the graphic systems of the Mayas and Mexicans. 



In American Antiquarian, vol. 8, pp. 347-357; also in Essays of an Americanist, pp. 195-212. 

 1886 a, The Bionomatic 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. 



