In the phonetic hieroglyphics pictures were used to express the sound of the objects which they respectively represented; and, in time, certain of the hieroglyphics both expressed and stood for other objects; and certain of the phonetics came to have syllabic value. Afterwards, in the order of development, ideas were communicated, not by pictures but by symbols for pictures, or by characters that represented and stood for definite ideas:--A star, thus, came to express the idea of God, and a succession of herons in a row the idea of "glorified souls."[40] Similar is the archæological witness from ancient Mexico. Prescott says: "A Mexican manuscript looks like a collection of pictures, each one forming the subject of a special study. The Aztecs had various emblems for expressing such things as from their nature could not be directly represented by the painter. A 'tongue,' for example, denoted speaking; a 'footprint,' traveling; a 'man on the ground,' an earthquake. These symbols were often very arbitrary, varying with the caprice of the writer; and it required wise discrimination to interpret them, as a slight change in the form or position of the figure intimated a very different meaning. They also employed phonetic signs, though these were chiefly confined to the names of persons and places. Lastly, the pictures were colored in gaudy contrasts, so as to produce the most vivid impression, for even colors speak in the Aztec hieroglyphics."[41] Both the ideographic and the phonetic hieroglyphics are referred to in the following from Professor Hutson: "The ideographs were first pictures pure and simple of actual objects. A large number of them became ultimately symbolic, representing any one of a large group of ideas, and needing its nearest group of phonetics to give it definiteness. The phonetics expressed the sounds of syllables, not of letters, as in the case with our alphabets. Some of these phonetics even came to be used eventually as representatives of letters."[42] Thus in the phonetic writing the scribe finally expressed sounds independent of pictures or symbols and so created "words" through which ideas were recorded, perpetuated, and disseminated. There were about two thousand of the hieroglyphic signs.