Adulte, lel^|^^°j:jp.^^ad„,.e^J

Sur les pieds, à droite et a gauche, sont deux personnages accroupis devant une outre attachée à un poteau; devant celui de droite: A >^ "CCl- Enfin, deux chacals couchés sur un édicule sont nommés (1 .

Boîte du sarcophage. Une ligne d'hiéroglyphes court en bordure horizontale à la partie supérieure. Elle commence au pied droit :

'^'^ ZWWAA

Côté droit. Texte disposé en colonnes verticales et commençant au pied. Cette inscription reproduit une partie du chapitre cxliv du Todtenbuch avec quelques variantes :

(tic)

f^kEii.ri±îifikkvLi™î2:-

Dans rintérieur du sarcophage est peinte Timage de 8^^^-^^^ ûûfVr-,- Elle est recouverte de bitume, ainsi qu'une ligne d'hiéroglyphes qui suit le bord supérieur du sarcophage.

G. Legrain.

THE DECIPHERMEiNT OF THE HITTITE INSCRIPTIONS

BY

A.-H. Sayce

In a récent number of the Recueil (t. XIV, p. 43-53), I liave endeavoured to indicate the conclusions which the decipherer of the Hittite inscriptions may draw, from the new materials discovered by Mssrs. Ramsay, Hogarth and Headlam, and hâve at the same time given a suramary of iny latest views in regard to the interprétation of the Hittite texts. Since the article was printed I hâve, I believe, mado some important steps in advance in the decipherment of the inscriptions, thanks to the Hght thrown upon them by the new materials. The blank wall which so long defied my efforts to pass beypnd it has at last been scaled, and I think I can now, not only describe the principles upon which the graphie system of the Hittites was based, but also translate to a certain extent the inscriptions of Hamath and Carchemish. The reader must judge from the foUowing pages whether my belief is justified.

The Ashmolean Muséum at Oxford has lately acquired what may be called a new bilingual inscription. It is upon a small cylinder of haîmatite which was found in Cilicia. The cylinder is very beautifully engraved; indeed, from an artistic point of view, it is one of the finest objects of the sort I hâve ever seen. A maie figure, in the Hittite costume, with a conical cap, and a long ribbon floating behind his back, is represented upon it in the act of worshipping a female deity, whose robe descends to her feet and who wears a rounded hat with a broad brim. Behind this are two horns, perhaps the horns of the crescent moon. There are three Unes of cuneiform characters which hâve Babylonian forms, hke those on the tablet« of Tel el-Amarna, and read : '* IndiUmma, the son of Serdamu, the worshipper of the goddess Iskhara. " Bcsides thèse three lines of cuneiform there are four Hittite characters, consisting of a goat's head, a character which I cannot identify with certainty, a sort of crux ansata, and a triangle. The two latter characters are found on a seal from Cilicia, now in the Ashmolean Muséum, where I hâve tried to show they must represent the name of a divinity {Journal ofthe Archœological Institute, 1889).

In the my thological tablets of Assyria and Babylonia, Iskhara is stated to be a name of the goddess Istar. The name, however, is not Assyro-Babylonian, nor does it seem to be Sumerian. The cuneiform lexical tablets contain words from varions languages, and the mythological tablets are particularly full of such foreign terms. Three years ago, in the Zeitschrijl JUr Assyriologie (t. IV, p. 1386), I pointed out one word of the kind which I thought might be Hittite. This is Kharankal, which is interpreted a " fortress ", Assyrian birtu, Kharankal is not Sumerian, but, on the other hand, it corresponds exactly with the name of Harankal which, according to the Egyptian monuments, was that of a great fortress in the Hittite district. In Kharankal, therefore, I proposed to see a Hittite word, the Harankal of the Egyptian monuments, perhaps the place called Birtu by the Assyrians^ now Birejik on the Euphrates.

If Kharankal could be Hittite, Iskhara might be Hittite also. Now M. Bouriant has published for the fîrst time, in the Recueil (t. XHI, p. 153 sqq,), the concluding, and, in some respects, the most important, portions of tUe Treaty between Ramses II and the Hittites. Hère, according to his copy, mention is made of the Hittite goddess *' Shashkhir the régent of the mountains ". Last winter I examined the passage on the wall at Karnak, and found that the first character in the name is not r-rm but \ — ^ d. Consequently the name will read Ashkhir, which in cuneiform characters would be Iskhara. I hâve no hésitation, therefore, in identifying the Iskhara of the seal, the Iskhar or Iskhara of the mythological tablet«, with the Hittite goddess Ashkhir, " the ruler of the momitains ".

When we turn to the Hittite inscription upon the seal, we fînd that it vérifies in a most satisfactory way my attempts at the decipherment of the Hittite texts. Thèse attempts, itmust be remembered, logically follow from my interprétation of the inscription on the bilingual *' boss " of Tarkondêmos, and with the correctness of that interprétation they stand or fall. If they stand, my interprétation of the boss is proved to be correct.

Now my method of decipherment had already led to the conclusion that a divine name was denoted by the corabination of two characters, one of which represented the Hittite form of the crux ansata or girdle, and the other represented a triangle. The new bilingual text has shown that this conclusion was right. In my article in the Recueil, furthermore, I pointed out that the goat's head (tarkus) must signify '* a ruler ". It is, therefore, satisfactory to me to find that the name of Iskhara, '* the ruler of the mountains ", is introduced by the character in question. The character which follows it, unfortunately, I am not able to identify. It may be intended to represent a mountain; if so, it has not been met with previously in a Hittite inscription. But I am rather disposed to identify it with the arm holding a dagger. In this case, it will signify '' powerful ".

The confirmation of my method of decipherment afforded by the new '' bilingual " has encouraged me to renew my attempts to penetrate themysteries of the Hittite texts, and I offer the results of thèse attempts with a confidence which I did not possess before.

The conclusions to wliich our new materials lead us, and which hâve been explained in détail in my last article in the Recueil, hâve given us a due to the meaning of the inscriptions of Hamath and Carchemish. They hâve shown that the group X (see the list of characters) signifies a *' temple " or '' shrine ", that the character Y has a similar signification, and that the word kuwes, with or withoutthe determinative of a face at the top of apole (Z), dénotes '' an image ". It has further foUowed that the column (A) must mcan *" to make " or '' build ", and that the mason's angle (B), foUowed by the determinative of action (an arm holding a dagger E), must signify much the same thing. A comparison of a new inscription lately found at Malatiyeh with those of Hamath and Carchemish proves that the knife (C) signifies " to carve ".

The fresh materials that hâve come from Asia Minor hâve also made it clear that the curions character D must mean * ' a god " (see my article in the Recueil, t. XIII, p. 53). We hâve, consequently, two characters expressive of the idea of divinity, the determinative which is prefixed to the name of a deity , and the character which dénotes a deity when

no name is specified. The use of thèse two characters is parallel to what we find in the Elgyptian hieroglyphs \ In J. ii, 2 and 4,6: the character which dénotes * * what is above " interchanges with the character D, the numéral ** nine " and the arm holding a dagger (E) foUowing, in the second case, while the numéral " nine '' alone foUows in the first case. The meaning of the phrase is therefore perfectly clear. In the first case it is *' the divine nine ", " the nine of heaven ", in the second case (4 and 6) it must be '' the nine mighty gods ". That E really has the signification assigned to it is proved by J. ir, 4, 8, where it is preceded by the determinative of personality and foUowed by the phonetic complément -kuwekus; showing that it is a title of the prince, and will therefore signify *' great " or " powerful ". The picture of the arm indicates that we should translate the Word by " powerful " rather than by '* great '\

to make '