INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS 



29 



sonal pronoun I. Again, fhe picture of a bee does not represent the 

 idea of that insect, but stands for the sound of its name, which 

 used with a leaf indicates the sound "beeleaf/' or in other words, 

 "believe." ^ 



It has long been known that the Aztec employed ikonomatic char- 

 acters in their writing to express the names of persons and places, 

 though this practice does not seem to have been extended by them 

 to the representation of abstract words. The Aztec codices contain 

 many glyphs which are to be interpreted ikonomatically, that is, like 

 our own rebus writing. For example in figure 15, a, is shown the 

 Aztec hieroglyph for the town of Toltitlan, a name which means 

 ''near the place of the rushes." The word tollin means "place of 

 the rushes," but only its first syllable tol appeai-s in the word Toltitlan. 

 This syllable is represented in a by several rushes. The word tetlan 



Fig. 14. A rebus. Aztec, and probably Maya, personal and place names were written in a corresponding 



manner. 



means "near sometliing" audits second syllable tlan is found also 

 in the word tla7itli, meaning "teeth." In a therefore, the addition 

 of the teeth to the rushes gives the word Toltitlan. Another example 

 of this land of writing is given in figure 15, h, where the hieroglyph for 

 the town of Acatzinco is shown. This word means "the little reed 

 grass," the diminutive being represented by the syllable tzinco. 

 The reed grass (acatl) is shown by the pointed leaves or spears which 

 emerge from the lower part of a human figure. This part of the 

 body was called by the Aztecs tzinco, and as used here expresses merely 

 the sound tzinco in the diminutive acatzinco, "the little reed grass," 

 the letter I of acatl being lost in composition. 



The presence of undoubted phonetic elements in these Aztec glyphs 

 expressing personal names and place names would seem to indicate 

 that some similar usage probably prevailed among the Maya. 



' Thus the whole rebus in iigure 14 reads: " Eye bee leaf ant rosecan well bearawlfourewe." These words 

 may be replaced by their homophones as follows: "I believe Aunt Rose can well bear all for you." 



Rebus writing depends on the principle of homophones; that is, words or characters which sound alike 

 but have different meanings. 



