The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

Then came the discovery of Nineveh and the first essays at the interpretation of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. Layard himself made an expedition to Armenia, and besides recopying Schulz’s texts and correcting certain inaccuracies in them, added considerably to the collection. Dr. Hincks, with his usual genius for decipherment, perceived that the syllabary in which they were written was the same as that used at Nineveh, and utilized them for determining the values of some of the Assyrian characters. He succeeded in reading most of the proper names, in assigning the inscriptions to a group of kings whose order he was able to fix, and in pointing out that many of them contain an account of military campaigns and of the amount of booty which had been carried off. But it was also clear that the inscriptions were not in a Semitic language, and as the nominative and accusative of the noun seemed to terminate in -s and -n, while the patronymic was expressed by the suffix -khinis, the decipherer assumed that the language was Indo-European. The most important texts had been found in or near Van, which had apparently been the capital of the kings by whose orders they had been engraved, and the name of Vannic, accordingly, was given to both texts and language.

It was soon recognized that Dr. Hincks had been in error in suggesting that the Vannic language was Indo-European. It was, it is true, inflectional, but with this any resemblance to the languages of the Indo-European family ceased. Nor was there any other language or group of languages to which it appeared to be related, and all attempts failed to advance the decipherment much beyond the point at which it had been left by Hincks. Thanks to the “determinatives,” which indicate proper names and the like, and the ideographs, which are fairly plentiful, the general sense of many of the inscriptions could be made out; but beyond that it seemed impossible to go. Lenormant, indeed, following Hincks, showed that the suffix -bi denoted the first person singular of the verb, and indicated Georgian as possibly a related language; but in the hands of other would-be decipherers, like Robert and Mordtmann, there was retrogression instead of advance.

THE GARDENS AND HILL OF DHUSPAS OR VAN.

So matters remained until 1882, when Stanislas Guyard pointed out the parallelism between a formula which occurs at the end of many Vannic inscriptions and the imprecatory formula of the Assyrian texts. I had already been struck by the same fact, and was at the time preparing a Memoir on the decipherment and translation of the inscriptions, which shortly afterwards appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. In this I had made use of Layard’s copies, which had never been published; other copies also, including photographs, squeezes and casts, had been placed at my disposal, and in 1882 I was able to lay before cuneiform scholars a grammar and vocabulary of the Vannic language, together with translations and analyses of all the known texts.[133] These have been subsequently corrected and extended by other Assyriologists—Guyard, D. H. Müller, Nikolsky, Scheil, Belck and Lehmann, as well as by myself. An ordinary Vannic text can now be translated with nearly as much completeness and certainty as an Assyrian text, and the number of them known to us has been greatly enlarged by the archæological explorations of Belck and Lehmann.

In the decipherment of the Vannic inscriptions the ideographs and determinatives which are scattered through them took the place for me of a bilingual text. The determinatives told me what was the nature of the words which followed or preceded them, and so explained the general sense of the passages in which they occurred, while from time to time a phonetically-written word would be replaced in a parallel passage by an ideograph the signification of which was known. I soon found, moreover, that the cuneiform syllabary must have been brought from Nineveh to Van in the age of Assur-natsir-pal II. (B.C. 884–859), and that the actual phrases met with in the inscriptions of that monarch are sometimes reproduced in a Vannic dress. The Vannic language, however, still remains isolated, though the majority of those who have studied it incline to Lenormant’s view that its nearest living representative is Georgian. Not being a Georgian scholar myself, this is a point upon which I can express no opinion.

Instead of “Vannic,” it has been proposed to call the language “Khaldian.” The chief god of the people who spoke the language was Khaldis, and in the inscriptions we find the people themselves described as “the children of Khaldis.” Derivatives from the name are found employed in a geographical sense northward of the region to which the inscriptions belong. Thus the Khaldi “in the neighbourhood of Colchis” are said to have been also called Khaldæi;[134] “Khaldees” are frequently referred to by Armenian writers as living between Trapezont and Batûm, and a Turkish inscription at Sumela shows that as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century Lazistân was still known as Khaldia. That the name was ever applied, however, to the kingdom which had its chief seat at Van is not proved, and it is therefore best to adhere to the term “Vannic,” which commits those who use it to no theory.[135]

The decipherment of the Vannic texts has not only led to the discovery of a new language, it has also thrown a flood of light on the early history, geography and religion of the Armenian plateau. The military campaigns of the Assyrian kings had brought it into contact with Assyrian civilization, and in the ninth century before our era a dynasty arose which adopted the literary culture and art of Assyria, and founded a powerful kingdom which extended its sway from Urumia on the east to Malatia on the west, and from the slopes of Ararat and the shores of Lake Erivan to the northern frontiers of Assyria.

The main fact which has thus been disclosed is that the Armenians of history—the Aryan tribes, that is to say, who spoke an Indo-European language—did not enter the country and establish themselves in the place of its older rulers before the end of the seventh century before our era. The fall of the Vannic monarchy seems to have coincided with the fall of the Assyrian Empire, with which it had once contended on almost equal terms, and in each case the invasion of the so-called Scythian hordes from the plains of Eastern Europe had much to do with the result. The founders of Armenian civilization and of the cities of the Armenian plateau had no connection with the Indo-European family. Their type of language corresponded with that which distinguishes most of the actual languages of the Caucasus, though no genetic relationship is traceable between them. The break with the past, however, occasioned by the irruption of the Indo-European invaders, was so great that not only did the older language become extinct and forgotten, but even the tradition of the older civilization was also lost. Like the recovery of the Sumerian language and the culture it represented, the recovery of the Vannic language and culture is the revelation of a new world.

At the head of the pantheon was a trinity consisting of Khaldis, the supreme god of the race; Teisbas, the god of the air; and the Sun-god Ardinis. Temples were erected in their honour, and shields and spears dedicated to their service. The vine, which grows wild in Armenia, was the sacred tree of the people, and there are inscriptions which commemorate its planting and consecration, and describe the endowments that were set apart for its maintenance. Wine was naturally offered to the gods along with the domestic animals and prisoners of war. Dr. Belck has discovered burial-places which go back to the neolithic age, but the majority of the monuments scattered over the Vannic area belong to the bronze age, and testify to a native adaptation of Assyrian art and culture. Iron also makes its appearance, but scantily. The pottery of the age of the inscriptions is related on the one side to the Assyrian pottery of the same period, and on the other to the pottery of Asia Minor. The polished red ware more especially points to the west.[136]