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164
THE ALPHABET of the second millennium s.c. It is a milestone in the annals of epigraphy and linguistics."
Académie des Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. Le 27 Septembre, 1946. Seconde communication de M. Edouard Dhorme, Professeur au Collège de France, sur le "déchiffrement des inscriptions pseudo-hieroglyphiques de Byblos."
"In continuation of his communication of and August, in which he announced that he had achieved the decipherment of the pseudohieroglyphic inscriptions of Byblos, couched in a hitherto unknown script and language." According to Professor Dhorme, this Phoenician system of writing of the middle of the second millennium B.C. made use of over a hundred signs based on foreign syllabaries to represent their Semitic tongue. Professor Dhorme then translated a text of 40 lines engraved on a bronze tablet, made by the smelters and engravers of the temple of Byblos. Egyptian influence on Byblos, attested by the ancient legen
ends of
2-YA AXA h-1324 by y- JA OPAH MAT 9. W
k- X GTB - 279 9. 4W
m-a 8 8 8 - 5 4 Y a w- 02PT>n 20 cm [z-F 8 2 5,60 z
to † y tn 9 Fig. 87-The pseudo-hieroglyphic syllabary of Byblos
according to Professor Dhorme. Osiris and by the archæological discoveries, can now, according to Professor Dhorme, be confirmed by this inscription and by the other one, translated and explained in the previous communication.
Finally, I am extremely glad to be able to publish the following note which the decipherer himself has kindly sent me, and for which I express to him my deepest gratitude:
(1) I think (writes Professor Dhorme) that the pseudo-hieroglyphic texts of Byblos date from the period of Amenophis IV (that is to say, ca. 1375 B.C.-D.D.).
(2) I am in disagreement with Dunand on the problem of the origin of the Alphabet.
(3) I have completely deciphered the tablets c and d (Fig. 82, 1 and 2.D. D.). I will publish these texts and the others in Syria with a nearly complete syllabary. (See, now, E. Dhorme, Déchiffrem. d. inscript. pseudohiérogl. de Byblos, "SYRIA", 1946-1948, pp. 1-35, and our Fig. 87).
(4) The syllabary is "plethoric," that is to say, as in Accadian, there are sometimes many different signs to represent the same syllable. The tablet d (here, Fig. 82, 1) 1ses numerous matres lectionis.
