Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/30

 14 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. M.A., Fellow of Queen's, Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philo- logy of All Souls, Oxford, stands in the foremost rank among the progressive men of our time. To the wide range of inquiry which recent discoveries have added to the domain of science, he brings a mind singularly receptive, and of Attic rather than Anglo-Saxon vivacity. The origin and decipherment of the inscribed characters in Northern Syria and Asia Minor seem to have had peculiar fascination for him. For nearly a decade, he has done more, with his ready pen, than any other man, to. substantiate and popularize the theory which identifies the Kheta (Hittites), with these ideographs. Their name is of as frequent occurrence in the epic of the Theban poet, Pentaur, as Ramses, the hero he celebrates : the beloved of Ammon, whose fabulous courage and invincibility far outweigh those of the Homeric champion.^ author of a work on Siemitic philology ; and at one time ran a pretty close race on the study of Assyriology with our lamented Stanislas Guyard. At first, he was solely concerned in trying to decipher the obscure language represented by the cuneiform inscriptions. He soon enlarged the circle of his researches at Van, in Armenia, but during his frequent visits to the East, whither he was obliged to repair for the sake of his health, he has followed with keen interest all the explorations that have been made during the last fifteen years in Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor, Argolid, and other localities in Greecei The results of his investigations have appeared in numerous articles published by learned societies and leading English reviews. The chief of his pubhcations are: "A Forgotten Empire in Asia Minor" (Frase/s Magazine* August, 1888); ''The Monuments of the Hittites," with capital map, plates, and figures {Bibl. and Archct. Soc, vol. vii. pp. 248-293); "The Bilingual Hittite and Cuneiform Inscription of Tarkondemos," with plate, loc. cit., pp. 294-308. The Proceedings of the Biblical and Archceological Society contain sundry notes from his pen, brimful of facts and ideas, which, eVen When we cannot endorse them, are always suggestive. The result of his journeys and researches were published in 1883, under the title, The Ancient Empires of the East. Herodotus /, III., with notes, introductions, and appendices, in 8°, London, Macmillan. In his introduction, he seems to us to do scant justice to the father of history ; the best part of the work, however, is an appendix, which, besides chronological tables, contains a substantial and brilliant resume of the history of Eastern empires brought up to date. ^ Long extracts from Pentaur's poem will be found in MM. Maspero and Lenormant's Ancient Histories. In this part of our work we have adopted M. Maspero's transcriptions of names of peoples and cities. Literal translations of Pentaur's poem may be seen in Records of the Past, ii. 61; and in Brugsch's, Egypt under the Pharaohs, ii. 56* no such paper during that year. — Editor.
 * Eraser's Magazine ceased to exist in 1888, and its successor, Longman's, has