________________
SEPTEMBER, 1878.]
I must frankly tell you that these inscriptions have been copied, recopied, and commented on from the days of Walpole, Leake, &c., and, as I now find, put under critical solution in Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus. I am glad to say that I was altogether unaware of this last excur sus, or perhaps I should not have undertaken a new and independent examination of these archaic writings. Nor do I wish now to controvert other people's readings, but to suggest the exercise of free thought to which end I shall be prepared to submit to your readers the full text of some ten or eleven inscriptions with the derivation and associate adaptation of other forms of the old Phoenician alphabets. In the mean time, perhaps, you will allow me to give a general outline of the results I have arrived at. These inscriptions are written in an early form of Greek character very little removed from the archaic type of the Phoenician alphabet on the stèle of Mesha of Moab (B.C. 896), and are arranged, in the boustrophédon form, reading from right to left and from left to right. The alphabet when compared with the full scheme of the Greek series of 25 letters is found to be deficient in the letters e, x, and w; the seems to have been a subsequent incorporation, and the indeterminate use of the , &, and indicates a
very imperfect appreciation of the true value of the
adopted letters. One very significant sign of the adaptation of the Semitic alphabet to its new requirements is seen in the simple elaboration of the ordinary E into H by the convenient addition of a fourth side-stroke. The E is the Latin E, distinguished from the F, for which it might otherwise be mistaken, by the retention of the down-stroke of the latter in a directly perpendicular line, as opposed to the slope given to the down-strokes of the E and E. This peculiarity is preserved in the formation of the contrasted F and E of the Etruscan alphabets.
The F (vau) of the Semitic series seems to have held an anomalous position in its new place, having to do duty for f, v, p, ph, as well as sometimes serving as an accent, and being occasionally employed also as a means of separating Vowels, as in the Carian tongue, where vowels were so persistently severed and isolated, as opposed to ordinary Greek rules.
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
W. Hamilton, Egyptiaca, London, 1809. Chandler's Asia Minor, 1817, p. 272.
Travels in the East, edited by R. Walpole (London, 1820), p. 207.
Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, by W. M. Leake (London, 1824), p. 21.
Keppel's Journey, 1831, vol. ii. p. 117. Cramer's Asia Minor, 1832, vol. ii. p. 5.
Grotefend, Transactions R. As. Soc. (1885), vol. iii. p. 328.
Ancient Monuments with Inscriptions still existing in Lydia and Phrygia, by J. R. Steuart: London, 1842. C. Texier, L'Asie Mineure, Paris, 1849, vol. i. p. 210.
229
But the main point for consideration for Aryan scholars is the curious predominance of Latin forms and inflexions in the texts themselves, which, as affecting the affiliation of languages, is of the highest importance in the present state of our philological knowledge. The alphabet in like manner abounds in many of the early identities which were retained intact in the Etruscan and other Italian alphabets.
The texts themselves, as I read them, result in the preservation of the names of several of the old kings of Phrygia, endorsed on the tombs or rock-cut surfaces wherein their ashes may have been enshrined, or in secret places around. The names appear in the following order :
a. Manes (in the Latin form of BABA MEMEFALE).*
b. A second king called B a b a Manes, discri minated by a different title.
c. Atys.
d. Midas, and
e. EPEKYN, or preferentially FPEKYN (pekuv?). But by far the most important contribution to ancient archæology which these epigraphs permit me to cite are the dates, which have been hitherto consistently ignored or misunderstood. We have in the first place a distinct record of a life AAVIT,
lapsit (), ending at the age of 23 (FA). Next
we meet with a specific date in the form of AT 301, which is appended to the name of a certain Chersonesian, outside the rock-cut face of the earliest temple front, which bears on its frieze the name and titles of FPEKYN.
The date itself will not therefore apply to the epoch of any given king, but it may be freely accepted as a record made subsequent to the execution of the possibly votive sculpture, and thus indicates the priority, recent or remote, of the ornamental device within whose pattern the leading designation is engraved. The inquiry may now be raised as to what era these latter figures refer. To my understanding there can be but one system of reckoning at all applicable to the circumstances in the race which made its mark and held its continuity from father to son for 505 years, as Herodotus tells us was the case with the proximate Phrygian Heraclidæ,
Asia Minor, Pontus, &c., by W. J. Hamilton (London, 1842), vol. I. p. 459.
Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, &c., by W. F. Ainsworth (London, 1843), vol. ii. p. 59.
The History of Herodotus, by G. Rawlinson (London, 1858), vol. i. note p. 666.
Manual of Oriental History, by F. Lenormant (Lon. don, 1870), vol. ii. p. 73.
"Kavvaías Cave-ne-eas," Cicero De Div. ii. 40.
The Latin text given by Cory from the Armenian version, with variations from the old Latin version of Hieronymus, uses Mames' as the equivalent of the Greek Mins. See also Eusebius, p. 95.
