Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/320

 304 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. by Semitic methods, whilst a certain proportion are easily traceable to Aryan roots. 1 In the seventh century B.C. the Lydian language was written with an alphabet of from thirty-three to thirty-five letters. 2 Of these the vast majority was derived, through the intermediary of the Doric syllabary, from Phoenician characters, whilst the remaining signs had their origin in one or other of those. older systems we have called Asianic alphabets, and which, by way of reduction and abbreviation, came out of Hittite hieroglyphs, so as to express sounds proper to Carian. 3 Caria, up to the present hour, has yielded but one inscription written with the syllabary under notice, so that our knowledge of it is chiefly derived from Egyptian graffiti (Fig. 212).* The texts are all _^0. "g very short, and, as a rule, consist almost entirely ^& ** ^ of proper names ; nevertheless there are a few ^ nominal and verbal forms which seem susceptible % of being inflected and conjugated as the nouns and verbs of the Indo-Germanic languages. FIG. 212. Carian in- ,. . scnption. Zagazig, We know next to nothing of the religion of i.fifo. ui! Ce ' the Carians ; at least, what we know is taken from documents relating to an age when the Carians used Greek as their speaking language. It is generally acknowledged that the Carian religion admitted of orgiac and bloody rites, of the nature of those enacted in honour of Cybele and Atys; 5 that, as in Lydia and Phrygia, the plaintive, soul-moving melodies of the flute likewise obtained here. 6 From such indica- tions as these we surmise a people addicted to the worship of the great goddess of nature, whom the Greeks of Asia Minor designated in places as Cybele, whilst elsewhere they confounded her with Artemis ; * but the cult which more than any other left traces 1 DE LAGARDE, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp. 267-270; SAYCE, The Karian Language, pp. 5-9. 2 See Plate I. Sayce's memoir, in which all the characters, with their certain or probable values, are duly set forth. 8 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. p. 95 ; torn. v. p. 218. 4 Professor Sayce's memoir, dated 1887, has a complete collection of all the inscriptions which may reasonably be regarded as Carian, and three plates containing fac-simile reproductions and transcriptions, including explanatory notes of the texts. 8 Herodotus, ii. 61. 6 Eustathius, commentary to verse 791 of Denys Periegetes. 7 The Hecates of Lagina, near Stratonice, where she had a temple, was perhaps no more than a Greek form of the Asiatic deity (TACITUS, Annals, iii. 62). Jn regard to the public rites of which she was the object, consult the inscriptions