HITTITE INSCRIPTION.--M. Menant has communicated to the Acad. des Inscr. (Aug. 7, 1891,) a new Hittite inscription, noted during the preceding summer, in the pass of Bulgar-Maden, in Asia Minor. It is in perfect preservation and of unusual length, and is therefore of great value for the study of the Hittite language. M. Menant sees at the beginning the genealogy and titles of a prince, some other of whose inscriptions have already been found; then an invocation to the patron divinities of his kingdom; then the main body of the inscription, which will doubtless be the most difficult to decipher; and at the close a re-enumeration of the divinities already invoked.--Revue Critique, 1891, No. 35-6.
THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE HITTITE INSCRIPTIONS.--Prof. Sayce writes: "I have, I believe, at last succeeded in breaking through the blank wall of the Hittite decipherment. Twelve years ago, with the help of the bilingual text of Tarkondêmos, I advanced a little way, but want of material prevented me from going further. At length, however, the want has been supplied, and new materials have come to hand, chiefly through the discoveries of Messrs. Ramsay, Hogarth, and Headlam in Asia Minor. The conclusions to be derived from the latter are stated in an article of mine which has just been published in the last number of the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philogie et à l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. Since that article was written, I have once more gone through the Hittite texts in the light of our newly-acquired facts, and have, I believe, succeeded in making out the larger part of them.
As in the languages of Van, of Mitanni, and of Arzana, the Hittite noun possessed a nominative in -s, an accusative in -n, and an oblique case which terminated in a vowel, while the adjective followed the substantive, the same suffixes being attached to it as to the substantive with which it agreed. The character which I first conjectured to have the value of se, and afterwards of me, really has the value of ne.
The inscriptions of Hamath, like the first and third inscriptions of Jerablûs, are records of buildings, the second inscription of Jerablûs is little more than a list of royal or rather high-priestly titles, in which the king "of Eri and Khata" is called "the beloved of the god (Sutekh), the mighty, who is under the protection of the god Sarus, the regent of the earth, and the divine Nine; to whom the god (Sutekh) has given the people of Hittites... the powerful (prince), the prophet of the Nine great gods, beloved of the Nine and of ..., son of the god." The first inscription of Jerablûs states that "the high priest and his god have erected "images" to Sarus- * -erwes and his son." Who the latter were is not mentioned, nor is the name of the son given. Those who have read what I have written formerly on the Hittite inscriptions will notice that I was wrong in supposing that Sarus- * -erwes and his father were the father and grandfather of the Carchemish king to whom the monument belongs.-Academy, May 21, 1892.
One of the most curious facts that result from my decipherment of the texts--supposing it to be correct--is the close similarity that exists between the titles assumed by the Hittite princes and those of the Egyptian Pharaohs of the XVIII and XIX dynasties. The fact has an important bearing on which the monuments of Hamath and Carchemish must be assigned. The similarity extends beyond the titles, the Hittite system of writing presenting in many respects a startling parallelism to that of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thus, "word" or "order" is denoted by a head, a phonetic character, and the ideograph of "speaking," the whole being a fairly exact counterpart of the Egyptian tep-ro, an "oral communication." It would seem as if the inventer of the Hittite hieroglyphs had seen those of Egypt, just as Doalu, the inventor of the Sei syllabary, is known to have seen European writing. This likeness between the graphic systems of the Hittites and Egyptians has been a surprise to me, since I had hitherto believed that, as the Hittite hieroglyphs are so purely native in origin, the graphic system to which they belong must also be purely native.--Academy, May 21.
ARAMΕΑΝ COINS OF CAPPADOCIA.--M. Six, enumerating all the coins bearing the names of Datames, mentions only those of the ordinary type of Sinope, with a Greek inscription. M. Babelon finds coins of Datames in Cilicia as well, and reads this name in the Aramean inscriptions which M. Six interprets Tarcamos. The name of Datames is historic, but the reading of M. Six has not come down to us. The coins in question bear a striking likeness to those of Pharnabazus, their types being identical. We know that Datames succeeded Pharnabazus in the command of the Persian armies, their coins then must have been struck under the same circumstances and in the same mints, that is, in the ports of Cilicia where preparations were made for the expedition against Egypt. Later, Datames was charged with subduing the rebellious Sinope, here we have an explanation of the coins of Sinopean type bearing the name of Datames. Why may not this man be the same whom Diodorus designates satrap of Cappadocia?
2. There are two similar drachmas, one in possession of the Cabinet des Medailles, the other in the Waddington collection; they are Cappadocian coins of the type of Sinope, like those of Datames. The Aramean inscription on the back of these coins has been given a variety of interpretations which appear to be equally possible. M. Babelon, after careful study, fixes upon Abrocomou, the only reading in which we can recognize an historic personage. Abrocomas was one of the principal lieutenants of Artaxerxes II and was a colleague of Pharnabazus in the Egyptian campaign. If we accept this reading of the drachma's inscription we must infer that Abrocomas became satrap of Cappadocia, he was in all probability successor to Datames, his coins plainly of later date; their weight and their style show that they belong to the older coinage of Sinope and they are no less certainly anterior to those of Arianthes, which they somewhat resemble.
3. Arianthes must have been the immediate successor of Abrocomas, the identity of style, of types and of material in these coins point to this conclusion. M. Six places two governors of Cappadocia between Datames and Arianthes, whose names he finds on certain coins. M. Babelon shows that the drachma which bears one of these names, is a manifest imitation of the drachmas of Datames; he also points out that the inscription itself is plainly an alteration of the Aramean name of Datames. The other name he proves to be a deformation of Abrocomas and states his belief that neither of these supposed governors of Cappadocia ever existed and cites other instances of the imitation of coins and the alteration of inscriptions.--Revue Numismatique, III S. tom. 10. II trim., 1892, p. 168.
HITTITE LETTER OF DUSRATTA.--Among the 300 letters from Tell-el-Amarna is one written to Amenophis III by Dusratta, king of Mitani, the region immediately east of the Euphrates. The letter which was written on both sides of a clay tablet in cuneiform characters begins with an introduction of seven lines in Assyrian, but the remaining 605 lines are in the native language of Dusratta.
The content refers to an embassy sent from Egypt to ask for the hand of his daughter and to recognition of his conquests in Phœnicia. The most important parts are those relating to his religion and to the affairs of state. We find that the religion of the Hittites, Armenians and Akkadians was probably the same as well as their language, which was more nearly akin to pure Turkish than to any other branch of Mongol speech. Dusratta was a Minyan and his power seems to have been the chief in Armenia at this time.