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pfeted or explained like the sculptures on the 
Trajan column ; but we find only a very small 
number of characters susceptible of being read. 
The Azteck people had real simple hierogly- 
phics for watei% earthy 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 /ace 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 
