Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/103

Rh of great scientific interest in the history of writing. This is a well-defined system of phonetic characters, which Clavigero and Humboldt do not seem to have been aware of, as it does not appear in their descriptions of the art. Humboldt indeed speaks of vestiges of phonetic hieroglyphics among the Aztecs, but the examples he gives are only names in which meaning, rather than mere sound, is represented, as in the pictures of a face and water for Axayacatl, or "Water-Face," five dots and a flower for Macuilxochitl, or "Five-Flowers." So Clavigero gives in his list the name of King Itzcoatl, or "Knife-Snake," as represented by a picture of a snake with stone knives upon its back, a more genuine drawing of which is given here (Fig. 8), from the Le Tellier Codex. This is mere picture-writing, but the way in which the same king's name is written in the Vergara Codex, as shown in Fig. 9, is something very different. Here the first syllable, itz, is indeed represented by a weapon armed with blades of obsidian, itz(tli); but the rest of the word, coatl, though it means snake, is written, not by a picture of a snake, but by an earthen pot, co(mitl), and above it the sign of water, a(tl). Here we have real phonetic writing, for the name is not to be read, according to sense, "knife-kettle-water," but only according to the sound of the Aztec words, Itz-co-atl. Again, in Fig. 10, in the name of Teocaltitlan, which means "the place of the god's house," the different syllables (with the exception of the ti, which is only put in for euphony) are written by (b) lips, (c) a path (with footmarks on it), (a) a house, (d) teeth. What this combination of pictures means is only explained by knowing that lips, path, house, teeth, are called in Aztec, ten(tli), 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