PICTOGRAPHY. In the history of writing a very large number of conventional marks are demonstrably reductions from still older forms, which have often developed out of pictographs. Pictography has left its traces in all parts of the world, but was most widely developed in the New World as a system lasting down to modern times.
Very simple pictures are drawn upon birch bark, indicating by their order the subjects in a series of song-chants with sufficient precision to enable the singer to recall the theme of each in his recitation. An account can be kept of sales or purchases by representing in perpendicular strokes the number of items, and adding at the end of each series a picture of the animal or object to which the particular series refers. Thus three strokes followed by the picture of a deer indicate that the hunter has brought three deer for sale. A conventional symbol (a circle with a line across it) is used to indicate a dollar, a cross represents ten cents, and an upright stroke one cent, so that the price can be quite clearly set forth. This practice is followed in many other parts of the world. In clay tablets discovered by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, in Crete, a somewhat similar method of enumeration is followed; while at Athens conventional symbols were used to distinguish drachmae and obols upon the revenue records.
In comparatively recent times the Dakota Indians invented a chronological table, or winter count, wherein each year is recorded by a picture of some important event which befell during that year. In these pictures a considerable amount of symbolism was necessary. A black upright stroke indicates that a Dakota Indian was killed, a rough outline of the head and body spotted with blotches indicates that in the year thus indicated the tribe suffered from smallpox. Sometimes, in referring to persons, the symbol is of the nature of a rebus. Thus, Red Jacket, an Indian chief, was killed in the winter of 1807-8; this fact is recorded by a red coat with two arrows piercing it and blood dripping. There is, however,
nothing of the nature of a play upon words intended. Here the Mexicans proceeded a stage further, as in the often quoted case of the name of Itz-coatl, literally knife-snake, which is ordinarily represented by a reptile (coati) with a number of knives (itz) projecting from its back. It is, however, also found divided into three words, itz-co-atl—knife-pot-water--and represented by a different picture accordingly. The Mexicans, moreover, to indi cate that the picture was a proper name, drew the upper part of the human figure below the symbol, and joined them by a line, a practice adopted also amongst their northern neighbours when, as in names like Little-Ring, the representation would hardly be sufficiently definite. Simple abstract notions could also be ex pressed in this picture-writing. Starvation or famine was graph ically represented by a human figure, with the ribs showing prominently. A noose amongst the Mexicans was the symbol for robbery, though more logically belonging to its punishment. In a Californian rock-painting sorrow is represented by a figure from whose eyes drop tears. This could be abbreviated to an eye with tears falling from it, a form recorded by Schoolcraft as existing amongst the Ojibwa Indians. The symbol is so obvious that it is found with the same value among Egyptian hieroglyphics.
To the more elaborate civilizations of the Old World, the development of writing from pictography can be ascribed—the Assyrians (see CUNEIFORM), Egyptians (see EGYPT) and Chinese (see CHINA). Here more complex notions had to be expressed. The development of the system can be traced through many centuries, and shows a tendency to conventionalize the pictorial symbols employed. Out of conventionalized forms develop (a) syllabaries, (b) alphabets. As regards the latter the historical evolution is traced in the article ALPHABET. The account given under CHINA (language) gives a good idea of the development of a syllabary from pictographic writing.