Symbolic images are: In the visual order, written words, ideographic signs, etc.
"Essay on the Creative Imagination"
Th. Ribot
The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially differentiated into the kuriological or imitative, and the tropical or symbolic; which were, however, used together in the same record.
"Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I"
Herbert Spencer
These were ornamented with ideographic devices of a historical and religious character.
"The Log School-House on the Columbia"
Hezekiah Butterworth