222 NOTES. 



After speaking of the Mexican hieroglyphics, P. Gar- 

 cia adds ; " At the beginning of the conquest, the In- 

 dians of Peru made their confessions by paintings and 

 characters, which indicated the ten commandments, 

 and the sins committed against these commandments." 

 Hence we may conclude, that the Peruvians made use 

 of symbolical paintings ; but that these were more gro- 

 tesque than the hieroglyphics of the Mexicans, and 

 that the people generally made use of knots, or quip- 

 pus. See also Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las 

 Indias, book 5, chap. 8, p. 267. 



Page 276. The word atl, or atel, is met with in 

 the east of Europe. According to the observation of 

 Mr. Frederick Schlegel, the country inhabited by the 

 Madjares, before the conquest of Hungary, bore the 

 name of atelkusu. Under this denomination were com- 

 prised Moldavia, Bessarabia, and Walachia, three 

 provinces bordering on the mouths of the Danube ; 

 which, like the Wolga, bore the name of the great 

 water, atel. (See vol. xiii, p. 349). The Mexican 

 hieroglyphic of water, atl, indicated, by the undula- 

 tion of several parallel lines, the motion of the waves ; 

 and recalls to mind the Phenician character of water, 

 mem, which has passed into the Greek alphabet, and 

 by degrees into that of all the western nations. See 

 the ingenious work of Mr. Hug, on the Invention of 

 Letters, 1801, p. 30. 



The Chevalier Boturini has transmitted to us the 

 names of the twenty days of a Tolteck month, from 

 the calendar of the inhabitants of Chiapa and Soconus- 

 co. The following are the signs, with those corres- 

 ponding to them in the Azteck Calendar. 



Mox. Cipactli. I Voltan. Colli. 



Igh. Ehecatl. ' Ghanan. Cuetzpalin. 



