Besides the Egyptian hieroglyphics there are those of the Aztecs or Mexican, which were a kind of pure picture-writing, the names of monarchs, towns, and other things being painted by the objects which corresponded to their names. While in their his torical writings the events themselves were portrayed, the number of the years of the reign of the king was indicated by placing in a line en potence in the picture the symbols of the years of the Aztec cycle, which were named after plants and animals. The Mexican hieroglyphs, in fact, consisted of conventional pictures, and they had no means of expressing grammatical form or any structural parts of a language. This mode of pure picture-writing prevailed not only in Mexico, but amongst the nations of Central America. The knowledge of these symbols has unfortunately been almost lost since the Spanish conquest, the meaning of only a few having been rescued from oblivion in the 16th c., when the greater part of the Aztec MSS. was destroyed by the Spanish ecclesiastics. It has indeed been asserted that the monks used these symbols, according to their sounds, to write the Lord's prayer and other formulas; thus a flag, pronounced pantti, was used for the syllable pa; a stone, tetl, for the two expressing pater; et cactus-fruit, nochtli, for noch; and a stone, as above, for te : these four groups expressing pate(n. nochte, or nosier; and so forth. This seems to show the development of a pho
netic system, but it was never extensively used on account of the abhorrence entertained of the Aztec idolatry,—The term hieroglyphic was also used by the writers of emble mata or devices, symOolizing gnomic sentences taken from the Greek and Latin poets. and having no relation to Egyptian hieroglyphs.—In recent times, too, the astrological almanacs have had their symbolical representations and supposed prognostics of future events, which they called hieroglyphs.—Zoega, De Origine Obeliseorum (fo. Romte, 1797): Young. Archmotogia (1817, vol. xvii. p. 60); Encyclop. Dritannica (8th ed.); Champollion, Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphigue (1824); Gram2naire Egyptienne (1841-61); Dictionnaire (1841); Lepsins, in the Ann,. del' lnstituto Arch. (1828); Birch, introduction to the Study of the Hieroglyphics (1857); 13rugsch, Grammaire Mmotique (Berl. 1855), Worterbuch (1867 68), Grammatik (1872); De Rouge, Etude d'une Stile Egyptienne (1858); Chabas, Papyrus 11Iagique d'Harris (1861); Zeitsehrift. f. tigypt. Sprache (1863-74); Bunsen, Egypt's Place (vol. v. 1867).