[554] Brugsch, ii. chap. xiv. As a rule, slingers were the least esteemed of fighting men.
[555] The Rev. William Wright, missionary at Damascus, first suggested that the Hamath inscriptions were Hittite. The study was begun in 1872 by the late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann at Constantinople, where is the original of the silver Hittite dish represented in the British Museum.
[556] Trans. Soc. Biblical Archæol. vol. iv. pt. 2, 1876.
[557] Described by M. Clermont-Ganneau in the Revue Archéologique, Dec. 1879; and figured in the Palestine Exploration Fund, July 1881.
[558] In Egypt the king rests his feet upon war-captives; and making a foot-stool of the enemy is a Biblical phrase (Psalm cx. 1) which had a literal signification.
[559] For the two-headed eagle in Moslem heraldry (a.d. 1190 and 1217), see p. 108 of Rogers Bey’s valuable paper before quoted (chap. vii.).
[560] His chief argument for their Northern origin seems to be founded upon their boots; he forgets, however, that the Arabs of Mahommed’s day wore ‘Khuff;’ and that legal ablutions were modified to suit them. It is the cothurnus calceatus of Pliny (vii. 19) which, as we see on statues and vases, covered the foot and ankle to the calf. The Assyriologist Prof. P. Schrader, followed by Prof. G. Ebers, considers the Khita to be Aramæans.
[561] And Carchemish. ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. Soc. Bibl. Archæol. vol. i. pt. 1, 1876, and vii. 298–443, on Tarrik-timmun.
[562] Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published in the Journ. Anthrop. Instit. May 1880. The figures at Ibríz having suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and found three Aramæan suffixes, t-na, t-kun, and t-hun. These gave an immense probability that he had hit upon the t, n, k, and h. Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our ‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the silver boss of Tarkodemos as a point de départ, suggested to him that the stirrup-shape (
