THE TRIBUTE EOLL OF MONTEZDTMA. 55 



effort of the human mhid to seek a way out of the cumbrous fetters of thought- 

 writing into a freer air, by having the sign no longer refer to the thing or the thought 

 but to the sound, the spoken word. 



These general remarks are not out of place in this connection ; they are in fact 

 necessary, for the method of writing developed by the ancient Mexicans, in the stage 

 in which it existed at the time of their subjection by the Baropeans, embodied, curi- 

 ously enough, every one of these elements, pictures, symbols, ideograms and phonetic 

 signs ; and it is only by keeping this fact constantly in mind, and by seeking to ren- 

 der each according to the special system which it represents, can we hope ever to 

 untangle the labyrinth of the Aztec codices. 



It is because this essential fact has been overlooked that the syllabaries and lists 

 of Mexican hieroglyphs hitherto published have proved almost worthless for the 

 decipherment of the manuscripts which have been preserved. It must also be ob- 

 served that the same sign may have a phonetic value in one place, and a purely ideo- 

 graphic in another ; and it would be obviously absurd for any scholar to attempt the 

 construction of such a sjdlabary unless he is familiar with the sounds of the Nahaatl 

 as a spoken tongue. Otherwise the phonetic elements would escape him. 



The presence of all these various methods of writing in the same document can 

 readily be demonstrated. IS^o one will question that in the tribute rolls, such as the 

 Codex Mendoza, published in Lord Kingborough's collection, the picture of a 

 feathered coat, or some such definite object, followed by the well-known signs of 

 the numerals, means that a certain number of such articles were due from a certain 

 district. Here the coat is in picture writing, while the numerals are ideograms. 

 Again, where in the year signs, the rabbit, tochtU, is represented by his head only, 

 we have a symbol. 



There has been no dispute among students of Mexican hieroglyphs that signs of 

 these several characters occur; but when it corner to the alleged presence of purely 

 phonetic elements, the divergence of opinion has been considerable. Some writers 

 have claimed that a large proportion of the figures refer to sounds rather than 

 thoughts, while others have gone so far as to deny all evidence of phoneticism in the 

 codices. 



Much of this discrepancy has arisen from the tendency of students of the latter 

 class to look in the Mexican writing for an alphabet, like that to which we are accus- 

 tomed. ISTothing of this kind existed, or could exist in the stage to which the 

 Aztecs had developed their plan of recording thought. The material out of which 

 an alphabet might have evolved was indeed present, but it was submerged in much 

 extraneous and traditional rubbish. 



