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Aztec writing uses simplified images of recognisable things to produce a kind of rough approximation of Aztec words - it does not spell out actual words and is not considered to be a complete writing system.

Although some people describe the Aztec system as "hieroglyphic", it certainly does not work like Egyptian hieroglyphs, which are a complete and effective method of accurately writing language.

Aztec scribes could each decide how they wanted to write the words in their text, often using pictures of things that only sounded similar to the word they wanted to express, or puns on other words. For example the picture of a mountain (tepetlin Aztec) could be used for tepe in words that have nothing to do with mountains. The place-name Coatzinco (pace of little snake) was written with the sign for snake (coatl) and the picture representing buttocks (tzintli), since this sounded similar to the word -tzin, meaning little (the place name ending -co was not written at all).

It is perhaps better to call such a system "glyphs" rather than hieroglyphs.

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13y ago

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