The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

208 HISTORY OF INITIATION
which had been pointed out, and, finding the prescribed
tokens, they built the city of Mexico on an island in the
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midst of the water furnished ;
it with a pyramidal
temple, 69 and soon became a populous and flourishing
nation.
Their knowledge was wrapped up in hieroglyphical
symbols ;
70 and they were acquainted with a most complete
system of picture writing, 71 the "use of which
they perpetuated their history, as well as their philo
sophy. Like all other early nations, they bore a particular
affection for amulets, which were considered the habita-
68 Purch. Pilgr., b. viii.. c. 10.
by
69 Ibid. b. ix., c. 9. Humb. Res., vol. i., p. 81.
70 The Mexican temples were covered over with hieroglyphics sculptured
in relief. Thus to express the rapid progress of time, they
introduced a serpent; for suffering innocence, a rabbit was the sj'mbol.
Drawings of feet denoted a public road. A living man was represented
by a human figure with small tongues painted near his mouth a dead
;
man had none of those appendages. To live is to speak, say they;
and hence a volcano was symbolized by a cone with tongues over its
summit, to denote the mountain that speaks, &c. (Vid. Humb. Res.,
vol. i., p. 140. Warb. Div. Leg., vol. ii., p. 67.)
71 The first method of recording public events, used by this people,
was by knots or quippus (Marm. Incas., vol. i., p. 32) ; but the imperfection
of this system caused it soon to be abandoned, and hieroglyphics
were introduced; and at the conquest of Cortes they formed an
exclusive profession in which thousands of persons were employed.
Their books were rolled in a zigzag form, and the paintings were
executed on the folds. They had ''real simple hieroglyphics for
water, earth, air, wind, day, night, the middle of the night, speech,
motion ; they had also for numbers, for the days and the months of
the solar year. These signs, added to the painting of an event,
marked, in a very ingenious manner, whether the action passed during
the day or night ; the age of the persons they wished to represent ;
whether they had been conversing, and who among them had spoken
most. We even find among them vestiges of that kind of hieroglyphics
which is called phonetic, and which indicates relations, not with
things, but with the language spoken. Among semi-barbarous nations,
the names of individuals, of cities and mountains, have generally some
allusion to objects that strike the senses, such as the form of plants
and animals, fire, air, or earth. This circumstance has given the
Azteck people the means of being able to write the names of cities
and those of their sovereigns. The verbal translation of Axajacatl is,
face of water; that of Ilhuicamina, arrow which pierces the sky; thus
to represent the kings Monteuczoma Ilhuicamina and Axajacatl, the
painter united the hieroglyphics of water and the sky to the figure of
a head and of an arrow. In this manner the union of several simple
hieroglyphics indicated compound names, and by signs which spoke
at the same time to the eye and to the ear." (Humb. Res., vol. i.,
p. 159.)