y
totems to the eyes of the chief, and these indicate that all of the
subtribes feel the same way about the matter and view it alike,--the
sentiment is unanimous. From the chief totem run out two lines, one going
to the picture of the desired object, while the other goes to the
President, conveying the petition. Thus pictography, a method of writing
that belongs to the childhood of races, may be made to communicate ideas
of a strikingly complex nature.

The ancient and modern inscriptions of Asia, from the Red Sea to China,
present many significant stages in the development of picture-writing. In
earliest ages the men of Asia made actual drawings of particular objects,
such as the sun, trees, and human figures; subsequently these became
conventionalized to a certain degree, but even as late as 3000 B.C. the
Akkadian script was still largely pictographic. From it originated the
knife-point writing of Babylonian and Chaldean clay tablets, while among
the peoples of Eastern Asia, who continued to draw their symbols, the
transition to conventionalized pictures such as those made by the Chinaman
was slower and less drastic.

In another line of evolution, the hieroglyphics of Egyptian tombs and
monuments illustrate a most interesting intermediate condition of
development. These inscriptions have been deciphered only since the
discovery of the famous Rosetta stone-fragment, which bears portions of
three identical texts written in hieroglyphics, in Greek, and in another
series of symbols. The Egyptian used more or less formalized characters to
represent certain sounds, while in addition to the group of such
characters combined to make a word, the scribe drew a supplementary
picture of the thing or act signified. For instance, _xeftu_ means
enemies, but the Egyptian graver added a picture of a kneeling bowman to
avoid any possible misapprehension as to his meaning. The symbols denoting
"to walk" are followed by a pair of legs; the setting sun is described not
only by a word but also by its outline as it lies on the horizon. Here
again one is struck by the similarity between a stage in the historic
development of racial characteristics and a method employed at the present
time to teach the immature minds of children that certain letters
represent a particular object; in a kindergarten primer the sentence "see
the rat and the cat" is accompanied by pictures of the animals specified,
in true hieroglyphic simplicity.

Just as the