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Updated: June 25, 2025
Lord Kingsborough's great work contains fac-similes of several Mexican manuscripts, and in Humboldt's Vues des Cordillères some of the most remarkable are figured and described. One of the most curious of the Aztec picture-writings is in the Bodleian Library, and in fac-simile in Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico.
He drew their attention to an inscription almost weathered away, and looking more like the native picture-writings than the signature of a Spanish gentleman. He read: "They passed on the 23d of March of 1832 years to the avenging of the death of Father Letrado." It was signed simply "Lujan."
A remarkable peculiarity in the Aztec picture-writings is that the personages represented often have one or more figures of tongues suspended in mid-air near their mouths, indicating that they are speaking, or that they are persons in authority. Such tongues are to be seen on the Yucatan sculptures.
One of the picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived white men, their ships and horses, and their cannons with fire and smoke issuing from their mouths. Another shows a white man being sacrificed, of course one of the Spanish prisoners.
A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and Tezcuco.
There was a celebrated Aztec king who was called Axayacatl; and his name is indicated in the picture-writings by a drawing of a man's face covered with water. The eggs themselves are sold in cakes in the market, pounded and cooked, and also in lumps au naturel, forming a substance like the roe of a fish. This is known by the characteristic name of "ahuauhtli", that is "water-wheat."
When I examined eagerly this fresh treasure I found that it was a disk of gold, about the size and thickness of a Mexican silver dollar, on which a curious figure was rudely engraved. The engraving obviously represented an Aztec name-device, the like of which, in the ancient picture-writings, distinguish one from another the several generations of a line of kings.
In the picture-writings of the Aztecs, the men sit doubled up, with their chins almost touching their knees; while the women have their legs tucked under them, and their feet sticking out on the left side. On the other hand, this attitude is quite characteristic of the Yucatan sculptures.
This name-device was strange to me; but, as I have said, I had not at that time studied carefully the Aztec picture-writings, and there were many names of kings which I would not then have recognized. But that the gold disk was the token concerning the meaning of which the dying Cacique had given so strange a hint, I felt assured.
After a while we enter a beautiful canyon coming down from the east, and by noon reach a spring, where we halt for refreshment. The poor little donkeys are thoroughly wearied, but our own animals have had a long rest and have been well fed and are all fresh and active. On the rocks of this canyon picture-writings are etched, and I try to get some account of them from the Indians, but fail.
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