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male or female; but, to confess my ignorance, I could never discover it; although I have observed all the pictures of the several reigns recorded by this curious piece of history, with every possible attention.

To the picture of each reign, a second picture was invariably attached, which indicated the other actions of the sovereign as a politician, and the other events that had distinguished his government. The whole account given by Purchas is curious, and highly amusing.

In recording the tribute, or taxes, which each town had to pay, as it was paid in kind, it seems that the Mexicans had adopted the plan of drawing the figure of the object. Thus, to represent a basket of cacao-meal, or of any other sort of corn, they drew the figure of a basket containing the ears of corn, or the meal extracted from the fruit of that tree, or plant. To represent suits of military clothing, armor, or shields, they exhibited their respective figures; the different sorts of mantles, whether of feathers or of other materials, were signified by their respective figures, differently colored. The number of each article was expressed either by circles, each of which signified ten, or by a kind of pine-apple, which meant five, painted at the top of the basket, or by the side of each individual article; and if their quantity was so great as to amount to a burthen, or a load, this was expressed by another mark, which had the same signification. The like must be said of their paper, their cups, pots of honey, cochineal, wood, planks, beams, timber, loaves of salt, hatchets, lumps of copal, refined and unrefined, shells, wool, stones, canes to make darts, eagles, skins of animals; in short, of every thing which each town had to pay, for the maintenance of the state.

It would be impossible for me to give a minute account of their civil and religious institutions, which form the third, and by far the largest department, in this most extraordinary picture. Every trade, every office, every employment, is differently delineated. The rites attending the several ceremonies of burial, marriage, and baptism (for they certainly had some sort of baptism), are minutely set down. But, above all,

it seems that the education of children, from their infancy to manhood, had attracted the greatest attention of their legislature. The quantity of food, the quality of labor, the different pursuits attached to each distinct age, the various punishments decreed for the different faults, are stated with a precision and clearness which is quite astonishing. The age of the child can always be made out from the number of circles placed above its head. The figure of the mother, and indeed of any woman, by her kneeling posture, and sitting on her legs; while the figure of the father, the priest, the teacher, and indeed of all men, besides the different attributes, which designate the employment, is always represented either standing, or sitting on a low stool, with his knees to his breast."

Spineto here introduces as a specimen, a table, which represents all the following ceremonies of a marriage.

“This [the marriage] was generally brought about by an old woman whom they call Amantesa, that is, a marriage broker, who was to carry the bride on her back to the house of the bridegroom, at the beginning of the night, accompanied by four women bearing torches of pine tree. When arrived at the house, the bride and the bridegroom were seated near to the fire, on a mat, the woman, as usual, sitting on her legs, the man on a stool. There they were tied together by the corner of their garments, after which they offered to their gods a perfume of copal; two old women, and two old men, being present as witnesses. This ceremony over, they were allowed to dine, upon two different sorts of meat, and some pulse. Thus, not only the dishes to be used were marked, but also the cup out of which they were to drink. The witnesses were allowed to dine after the newly married couple, which circumstance is expressed by their being seated at the four corners of the mat, which served for a dining table. The sign which is added to the mouth of these four witnesses, signifies, that before they retired, they had the right to give, and in fact they gave, to the married folks, good counsel, how to behave themselves, that they might live in peace and happiness. The position of one of the women, holding up her

right hand, means that the portly matron is already making use of the privilege allowed, to give a little exercise to her tongue; while the folded arms of the remaining witnesses prove that they are waiting for their turn.

In the punishment of their children, the Mexicans seem to have been ingeniously cruel. Most of the chastisements I find marked down, consist in unmerciful castigations; in driving into the hands, and arms, and legs, and into the body of the culprit, thorns and prickles. Sometimes they singed his head with fire, at other times they tied him down to a board, and threw him into a bog; and occasionally they held the head and nose of the unfortunate child upon the smoke of a particular wood, which they called axi.

The crimes, for which they inflicted punishments so severe and so cruel, are the same with those which are condemned by the laws of the most civilized nations of Europe, and cannot but inspire us with a very favorable, nay, exalted opinion, of the moral notions of the Mexicans. They seem even to have gone beyond us, for the sake of preserving proper habits of industry and morality among the people; for they not only punished drunkenness with death, but also idleness; for if drunkenness, said they, renders a man capable of committing a crime, idleness exposes him to drinking and to bad company. This law, however, lost its power with men and women as soon as they reached the age of seventy; they were then allowed to pass their lives in idleness, and to get drunk, both in public and in private. The reason assigned for this extraordinary regulation is, that as they could no longer work, and had but a short time to live, the law indulged them with the enjoyment of what seems to have been considered by the Mexicans, as one of the greatest pleasures of life.

Such is the short account that I can give of this most singular mode of expressing ideas by pictures, which is, I think, an exemplification of the first mode of writing by hieroglyphics. It is, besides, one of the most interesting monuments by which we can arrive at the knowledge of the history of Mexico. For it is evident, that, from the wisdom of their regulations, from the quantity of taxes which, as is recorded

in these pictures, were levied upon the different towns and nations, from the minuteness of the details, and from the pictures themselves, which show some knowledge of perspective and drawing, the Mexicans had made no inconsiderable progress in knowledge, in civilization, and in the cultivation of the arts."

[The whole of the above symbols much more resemble the anaglyphs of the Egyptians, than they do the common hieroglyphics, figurative or tropical. That they are totally diverse from phonetic hieroglyphics, need not be said. The combination of so many symbols, some of which have no resemblance but a merely conventional or imaginary one, is a trait altogether of a nature similar to the predominating quality of the anaglyphs.

There is some special interest attached to the subject now before us. In connection with what has been before said, it shows that three of the most distinguished nations, of three different continents, viz. the Chinese in Asia, the Egyptians in Africa, and the Mexicans in America, have all hit on the like expedients to transmit their ideas to posterity. In all these facts, too, we may see the infancy of alphabetic writing, the germ from which this tree sprung, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. M. S.]

[ J. p. 43. ]

In regard to the peculiar class of symbolic signs referred to by M. Greppo, Spineto has the following remarks (p. 258). "It is from this third mode of writing, and from the custom of expressing the qualities of things by the picture of visible objects, that scholars have experienced the greatest, if not the whole difficulty of understanding hieroglyphics; and this

difficulty is not wholly removed by the recent discoveries; for, indeed, we are not yet sufficiently acquainted with the natural history of ancient Egypt, or with the prejudices and notions of the people, to be able to ascertain how they could find any similarity between two objects, in which we find none. Thus, for instance, he who had borne his misfortunes with courage, and had at last surmounted them, was signified by the picture of a hyena, because the skin of that animal was supposed to make the wearer fearless and invulnerable.”

The symbolical images enumerated by Horapollo in his Hieroglyphica, confirmed as many of them are by the testimony of inscriptions, have given to this writer a peculiar authority in whatever concerns the meaning of recluse hieroglyphics. The particular period in which he wrote, is not known; but his work, which is written in Greek, is in itself a very curious and entertaining book, and I have translated from it indiscriminately a few pieces, which may probably afford some gratification to the inquisitive reader. They are as follows:

How the Egyptians signify eternity.

To signify eternity, they paint the sun and moon, because they are eternal elements. But when they wish to express eternity after another manner, they paint a serpent, whose tail is folded and concealed under a part of his body. The Egyptians call him in their language Uræus, but the Greeks call him Basilisk. They [the Egyptians] place a golden image of this same serpent, about the images of the gods. They say that this animal signifies eternity for the following reason; because since there are three species of serpents, this species only is immortal, the rest are mortal; inasmuch as this serpent kills all other animals merely by its breath, and without even stinging them. Hence, since it possessed the power of life and death, it was deservedly placed upon the heads of the gods.

How they signify knowledge.

To indicate knowledge, they paint the heavens shedding

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