PICTURE-WRITING AND WORD-WRITING. 



95 



n 



(± 



m 



a. 



rig. 10. 



of tlie Aztec words, Itz-co-atl. Again, in Fig. 

 10, in tlie name of Teocaltitlan, which, means 

 " tlie place of tlie god^s house," the different 

 syllables (with the exception of the ti, which 

 is only put in for euphony) are written by ih) 

 lips, (c) a path (with footmarks on it), (a) a 

 house, id) teeth. What this combination of 

 pictures means is only explained by knowing that lips, path, 

 house, teeth, are called in Aztec te (ntli), o (tli), cal (li) tlan 

 (tli), and thus come to stand for the word Te-o-cal-(ti)-tlan. 

 The device is perfectly familiar to us in what is called a 

 " rebus," as where Prior Burton's name is sculptured in St. 

 Saviour's Church as a cask with a thistle on it, " burr-tun." 

 Indeed, the puzzles of this kind in children's books keep alive 

 to our own day the great transition stage from picture-writing 

 to word- writing, the highest intellectual effort of one period in 

 our histoiy coming down, as so often happens, to be the child's 

 play of a later time. 



M. Aubin may be considered as the discoverer of these pho- 

 netic signs in the Mexican pictures, or at least he is the first 

 who has worked them out systematically and published a list 

 of them.^ But the ancient written interpretations have been 

 standing for centuries to prove their existence. Thus, in the 

 Mendoza Codex, the name of a place pictured as 

 in Fig. 11 by a fishing-net and teeth, is interpre- 

 tated Matlatlan, that is "Net-Place." Now, 

 matla (tl) means a net, and so far the name is 

 a picture, but the teeth, tlan (tli), are used, not 

 pictorially but phonetically, for tlan, place. 

 Other more complicated names, such as Acolma, 

 Quauhpanoayan, etc., are written in like manner in phonetic 

 symbols in the same document:^ 



There is no sufficient reason to make us doubt that this 



Fiff. 11. 



' Aubin, ill ' Eevue Orientale et Americaine,' vols, iii.-v. Brasseur, Hist, des 

 Nat. Civ. du Mexique et de TAmerique Ceutrale ; Paris, 1857-9, vol. i. An 

 attempt to prove the existence of something more nearly approaching alphabetic 

 signs (Eev., vol. iv. p. 276-7 ; Brasseur, p. Ixviii.) requires much clearer evidence. 



^ Kingsborough, vol. i., and Expl. in vol. vi. 



