CHAPTER IV—MEXICO: WRITINGS, PRIESTHOOD, MEDICINE AND BURIAL
SO many of the manuscripts have a religious or calendrical significance, that it may be as well to say here a few words about the Mexican system of writing. The Indians of the North American plains had evolved a sign-language, by means of which, under limitations, a silent conversation could be carried on; further, they were in the habit of recording events by painting figures and scenes on hide, or weaving them in their wampum belts. The Mexican system was a little more advanced; though events were expressed by the actual depiction of the scenes, yet many of the details were purely symbolical, and names were expressed by a figure or combination of figures which constitute a rebus. Thus the name of the king, Itzcoatl, was written as a snake (coatl) bristling with obsidian knives (itztli); the town of Tochtepec, by a rabbit (tochtli) on a mountain (tepetl); that of Tenochtitlan, by a stone (tetl), on which grows a cactus plant (nochtli), the syllable tlan being a place-termination.
To express numbers, as far as the calendar was concerned, since no figure higher than 13 occurred ordinarily, a dot was put for each unit. There was also a special period-sign meaning a year (Fig. 86, /; p. 356, usually combined with the day-sign from which that particular year took its name), and another for the period of 52 years, called xiuhmolpilli, or "sheaf of years." As, however, there was no subsidiary sign by which one xiuhmolpilli could be differentiated from another, the reader is obliged to infer from the con-
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