Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/129

 SEMITIC.] tion on an altar found by M. Mariette in the Serapeura, in characters which resemble those of the Aramaean papyri of Ptolemaic Egypt. The alphabet of the latter, however, is still more closely represented by certain funereal monuments found in Egypt with Aramaean inscriptions, the best known of which is the inscription of Carpentras, which records the death of a priestess of Osiris. Starting from the 1st century B.C., the ruins of Palmyra and Taiba have furnished us with a large number of inscrip tions in the Aramaic dialect of the locality. MM. de Vogu6 and Waddington alone have discovered more than a hundred of them. Most of them are written in what may be termed uncial characters, but there are a few in a cursive hand. Among the persons mentioned in them is Odeinath (Odenatus), the husband of Zenobia. Palmyrene inscrip tions have been met with in Africa and Rome, and a bilingual one (in Palmyrene and Latin) has lately been found at South Shields. Professor Sachau has recently discovered two inscriptions in Old Syriac characters, one at Zebed, near Palmyra, accompanied by Greek and archaic Arabic transcripts, and the other among the early Christian tombs of Edessa. 1 Passing over an Aramaic legend found by M. de Saulcy on a sarcophagus of the tombs of the kings at Jerusalem, and the coins of the kings of Edessa, we may notice the Mendaite inscription of twenty lines discovered in a tomb at Abu-Shadr in southern Babylonia, and first explained by Dietrich. It probably belongs to the 4th or 5th century. Inscriptions in Western Aramaic have been found in the Hauran. Among these is one on a tomb at Sueydeh, raised by Odeinath to his wife Hamrath in the time of Herod the Great, accompanied by a Greek transcript. Six other inscriptions of the same period come from the temple of Siali ; one of them is dedicated to the god Katsiu, the Zeus Kasios of the Greeks. The Hauran, more particularly the neighbourhood of Bozra, has also yielded a number of Nabathean inscriptions, written in a sort of Aramaic running hand. Nabathean inscriptions have further been found at Umm er-Russas in Moab, and at Petra, as well as on the coins of Aretas and other Nabathean princes. But they are specially numerous on the rocks of Sinai, where they were scratched by pilgrims in the 3d and 4th centuries of our era, and were first deciphered by Beer. They consist for the most part of proper names, preceded or followed by the word shdlom, &quot;peace.&quot; The Aramaic dialect of these inscriptions is tinctured by Arabisms, among which may be mentioned the use of the article el. Two Nabathean inscriptions have been discovered at Pozzuoli, where, as we learn from the Acts, there was a Jewish colony. The Nestorian Syrians carried their language and letters as far even as China. The celebrated inscription of Si- gan-fu is written in good Estrangelo of the 8th century. A Hebrew inscription has also been found at Khai-fong-fu. Ancient Hebrew epigraphy is poorly represented. The earliest Hebrew inscriptions are three from Siloam, one of which is addressed to &quot; Baal of the temple,&quot; a fragment found in the streets of Jerusalem by M. Vernes, and a boundary stone discovered by M. Ganneau near Gezer. The royal names on the pottery found near the foundations of Solomon s temple are not Hebrew, but Phoenician. The Maccabean period has left us several inscribed monuments and coins. The oldest are the epitaph of eight members of the priestly family of Hezir (1 Chr. xxiv. 15) on the Doric tomb of St James at Jerusalem, the beginning of an 1 The inscription at Zebed was first noticed by Dr Bischoff. The letters seem to be derived from an Aramaic alphabet. Some of them resemble the enigmatical characters on gems from Diarbekir and the neighbouring district, published by DrMordtmann in the Z. D. M. G., xxxi. 4 (1877). 117 inscription on a monument to the north-west of Jerusalem, and an inscription on the sarcophagus found by De Saulcy in the tomb of the kings, which probably belongs to a female relative of Helen, queen of Adiabene, in the 1st century of our era. Other early inscriptions have been copied in Galilee, especially iu the synagogues of Kefr- Bereim as well as in the Jewish catacombs on the Via Portuensis at Rome. From the 10th century onwards the Jewish cemeteries in Spain, Italy, the south of France, Turkey, and Egypt enable us to trace the history of Hebrew writing up to the close of the Middle Ages ; and Professor Ascoli has lately drawn attention to the inscrip tions in the Jewish cemetery of Venosa, which enable us to fill up the gap that had previously existed between the memorials of the 10th century and those of the 4th. We must not forget also the exorcisms, written in a dialect allied to that of the Mishna on bronze bowls found at Babylon by Sir A. H. Layard, or the sepulchral inscriptions collected by Firkowitz in a Karaite cemetery of the Crimea, dated sometimes from the creation, sometimes from the capture of Samaria. The latter belong to the 9th and following centuries, though the discoverer falsified the dates of many of them in order to assign them to an earlier period (see Strack in the Z. D. M. G., xxxiv. 1, 1880). Hebrew inscriptions in ancient characters have further been met with from Tiflis to Derbend. Arabic epigraphy begins with the rise of Islam. . Two systems of writing were used concomitantly, the Cufic of uncial, and the Neski or running hand, neither of which, however, can be derived from the other. The earliest inscriptions yet known are two sepulchral ones, the first of which has been published by Wetzstein, Waddington, and De Vogue 1, while the other has lately been discovered by Sachau at Zebed. A Cufic inscription, dated 693 A.D., has been copied by De Vogue&quot;, at Jerusalem, and the old cemetery near Assuan contains a large number of similar inscriptions, some of which, as deciphered by Count Amari, contain the names of the companions of the prophet. Unfortunately this cemetery has never been thoroughly examined. Mention may also be made of Cufic inscrip tions at Bozra, in Sicily, and elsewhere. Inscriptions in Greek and Neski Arabic have been found at Damascus, Tiberias, and other places, one of which is dated 696 A.D., while others are even older. Passing to the north, we find the rocks of the desert of Safa (south-east of Damascus) covered with graffiti written in peculiar characters which long defied decipherment. About six hundred and eighty of them have been copied. M. Hal6vy, however, has now succeeded in reading them (see Journal Asiatique, Jan. -Feb., 1877, and Z. D. M. G., xxxii. 1, 1878), and showing that they are mostly the productions of Thamudite soldiers in the Roman army. The alphabet turns out to be intermediate between the Phoenician and the Himyaritic. The Himyaritic is the name usually given to the form of the Phoenician alphabet used in southern Arabia. Here a considerable number of pre-Islamitic inscriptions have been found, belonging partly to the kingdom of Saba, partly to that of Ma n or the Mineans, where a dialect allied to that of Hadramaut was spoken. Many of them contain the names of kings, while most make us acquainted with various deities, among others Athtar, the equivalent of Ashtoreth. The Him yaritic alphabet was carried to Abyssinia, where it became the Ghe ez or Ethiopic syllabary. The earliest specimens of Ethiopic writing are two inscriptions of King Tazena copied by Riippell on the monuments of Axum, which belong to the 5th century. Inscriptions in still undeciphered characters, some of which resemble those of the Himyaritic alphabet, though the larger number is more closely related to the demotic