159 



preted or explained like the sculptures on the 

 Trajan column ; but we find only a very small 

 number of characters susceptible of being 1 read. 

 The Azteck people had real simple hierogly- 

 phics for water, earth, air, wind, day, night, the 

 middle of the night, speech, motion : they had 

 also for numbers, for the days and the months of 

 the solar year. These signs, added to the paint- 

 ing of an event, marked in a very ingenious man- 

 ner, whether the action passed during the day or 

 the night ; the age of the persons they wished to 

 represent ; whether they had been conversing, 

 and who among them had spoken most. We 

 even find among the Mexicans vestiges of that 

 kind of hieroglyphics, which is called phonetic, 

 and which indicates relations, not with things, 

 but with the language spoken. Among semi-bar- 

 barous nations, the names of individuals, of cities, 

 and mountains, have generally some allusion to 

 objects that strike the senses, such as the form of 

 plants and animals, fire, air, or earth. This cir- 

 cumstance has given the Azteck people the 

 means of being able to write the names of cities, 

 and those of their sovereigns. The verbal 

 translation of Axajacatl, is face of water; that of 

 Ilhuicamina, arrow which pierces the sky ; thus 

 to represent the kings Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina 

 and Axajacatl, the painter united the hierogly- 

 phics of water and the sky to the figure of a 

 head and of an arrow. The names of the cities 



