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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
whose dynasty was finally extinguished on the accession of Gyges, in 716 B.C.
The dates, therefore, arrange themselves thus: 716505 1221 B.C. for the accession to power of the Lydo-Phrygian kings. The recorded date of 505301 204 amounts to 204 +716 = 920 B.C., or so much before the anomalous reckoning by the Olympiads of 776 B.C., or the local era of the foundation of Rome, A.U.C., which dates only from 754 B.C.
There is one possible objection to the reception in full faith of the initial date of the Heraclidae as the determining epoch of the period to which we are to assign the execution of these monumentsthat is, the highly advanced stage of the alphabetical characters, as opposed to the retarded progress, in that direction, of the Greeks of the islands.
I am not disturbed at all upon this point. If the Egyptians recognized the Phrygians as older than themselves, there must have been some very civilized focus in the latitude in which these rock-cut frontages are preserved to the present day. Mr. Fergusson, as the latest commentator from the architectural point of view, pronounces them to be the very earliest examples of quasiwooden designs extant!"
In regard to the more matured forms of the alphabetical characters at Doganlu, it is to be remarked that, although they are obviously very much in advance of the Greek of the Homeric development, there is nothing inconsistent with an earlier local civilization, and a more direct land intercourse with the nations who used Phoenician writing as their ordinary method of literary communication. In this respect we may continue the comparison with the Phoenician record on the stèle of Mesha. This document is now generally conceded to belong to the close of the 9th century B.C., and to exhibit the alphabet in an advanced stage of maturity. But with the exception of a natural advance upon the special exigencies of a Semitic language, and a mechanical re-adaptation of the outlines of the normal forms, there is nothing in the Phrygian alphabet that is inconsistent with the immediate improvements necessitated by the larger requirements of Aryan speech. Those who care to compare a parallel rate of progress may find identities in the development and adaptation of the Baktrian Semitic alphabet of Asoka's inscrip
Herodotus i. 7. See also i. 14, 85,94; iv. 45; viii. 138. History of Architecture, vol. I. p. 224:-They may have been dated as far back as 1000, and most probably 700 years, at least, before the Christian era."
F. Lenormant, L'Alphabet Phénicien, Paris, 1872, tom. I. p. 128.
Prinsep's Essays, vol. i. p. 144; Numismatic Chronicle, 1868, p. 295.
Gesenius (1887), p. 30, speaking of the Phoenician
[SEPTEMBER, 1878.
tions, and see how readily an Aryan tongue improved upon its Semitic teachings, and advanced towards a more perfect, though utterly inconsistent and unsuitable alphabet, in respect to the configuration of the outlines of its letters.
I need not say that this subject is likely to attract much attention among the critical classic authorities of the present day, who may be disposed to agree with Max Müller, who seeks to reduce Greek literature to as comparatively low a level as he assigns to Vedic writing and Indian alphabets.
Indeed, signs of opposition have already manifested themselves, but I have been, strange to say, greatly strengthened in my leading argument by one of the primary objections, which took this form-"How do you know that the letter was the recognized letter equivalent of 300 in these early times P" It is confessed freely that the later Greek numeral stands, in figures throughout, for 300, and has never meant anything else in their arithmetic; but how, it is added, can I establish so primitive an application of the use of the letter for the purposes of dates? My reply is, simply, that the Phrygian dates-in their double entries-were clearly wellunderstood records, where letter figures sufficed for all purposes of identification without further definition.
As regards the doubt about the r and its value then and afterwards as 300, a most curious and instructive piece of consecutive evidence crops up.
The learned world who rely upon Greek priority have long ago admitted that the drop or loss of the F, or digamma, amid the early numbers of the Greek numeral system, afforded conclusive evidence of derivation from the consecutive order of the Phoenician alphabet.
That is clearly so, but a new proof of the antiquity of the Phrygian epigraphs may probably be established from the contested T.
Perhaps your readers are not in possession of all the data which I hope to submit to them, but I may prepare the way by saying that in the Moabite stone and in the Phrygian inscriptions, with which we are more immediately concerned, there is no such letter as the Hebrew , teth, or the corresponding Greek e, and the same remark holds good in regard to most of the Aramaan alphabets.
teth, remarks, Ante tria lustra hujus litteræ figura Palæographis ita ignotus erat.
M. de Laynes (Prinsep, pl. ix a), has only one teth, that under Sidon, from Sargon to the epoch of the Romans 145 B.C.
Madden, Coins of the Jews, 1864, finds no such letter in the "Assyrian Laon weights," nor in the "old Hebrew from Coins." M. de Vogüé, Mélanges, 1868, has none in his Phénicien Archaique, but plenty in the Egyptian Alphabeta.
