Aztec pictograms

Aztec
Type	Pictographic and glyphs
Languages	Nahuatl
Time period	Most extant manuscripts from the 16th century
Sister systems	Mixtec
Unicode range	U+15C00 to U+15FFF (tentative)[1]

Aztec or Nahuatl writing is a pictographic and ideographic pre-Columbian writing system with a significant number of logograms and syllabic signs which was used in central Mexico by the Nahua people. The majority of the Aztec codices were burned either by Aztec tlatoani (emperors) for ideological reasons, or by Spanish clergy following the conquest of Mesoamerica. Remaining Aztec codices such as Codex Mendoza, Codex Borbonicus, and Codex Osuna were written on deer hide and plant fiber.

The Aztec writing system is adopted from writing systems used in Central Mexico, such as Zapotec writing. Mixtec writing is also thought to descend from the Zapotec. The first Oaxacan inscriptions are thought to encode Zapotec, partially because of numerical suffixes characteristic of the Zapotec languages.

Aztec was pictographic and ideographic proto-writing, augmented by phonetic rebuses. It also contained syllabic signs and logograms. There was no alphabet, but puns also contributed to recording sounds of the Aztec language. While some scholars have understood the system to not be considered a complete writing system, this is a changing topic. The existence of logograms and syllabic signs are being documented and a phonetic aspect of the writing system has emerged, even though many of the syllabic characters have been documented since at least 1888 by Nuttall. There are conventional signs for syllables and logograms which act as word signs or for their rebus content. Logosyllabic writing appears on both painted and carved artifacts, such as the Tizoc Stone. However, instances of phonetic characters often appear within a significant artistic and pictorial context. In native manuscripts, the sequence of historical events are indicted by a line of footprints leading from one place or scene to another.