Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/106

96 The most thoroughly native thing in the whole is a figure referring to an ancestor of Justa's, and connected with his name by a line of footprints to show how the line is to he followed, in true Aztec fashion. The figure itself is a head drawn in native style, with the eye in full front, though the face is in profile, in much the same way as an Egyptian would have drawn it, and it is set in a house as a symbol of dignity, having written over against it the high title of Ompamozcaltitotzaqualtzinco, which, if I may trust the imperfect dictionary of Molina, and my own weak knowledge of Aztec, means "His excellency our twice skilful gaoler."

The importance of this Mexican phonetic system in the History of the Art of Writing may he perhaps made clearer by a comparison of the Aztec pictures with the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions consist of figures of objects, animate and inanimate, men and animals, and parts of them, plants, the heavenly bodies, and an immense number of different weapons, tools, and articles of the most miscellaneous character. These figures are arranged in upright columns or horizontal bands, and are to be read in succession, but they are not all intended to act upon the mind in the same way. When an ordinary inscription is taken to pieces, it is found that the figures composing it fall into two great classes. Part of them are to be read and understood as pictures, a drawing of a horse for "horse," a branch for "wood," etc., upon the same principle as in any savage picture-writing. The other part of the figures are phonetic. How they came to be so, seems plain from cases where we find the same picture sometimes used to stand for the object it represents, and sometimes for the sound of that object's name, after the manner just described of the rebus. Thus the picture of a star may represent a star, called in Egyptian sba, and the picture of a kid may stand for a kid, called in Egyptian ab; but these pictures may also be brought in to help in the spelling of the words sba, "door," and ab, "thirst," so that here they have passed into phonetic signs. It is not always possible to distinguish whether a hieroglyph is used as a syllable or a letter.