Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/46

 .^o A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. fl Fig. 261. in the Kheta language and hieroglyphs, since it contained the enumeration of Hittite gods, male and female, whose names and attributes no Egyptian was likely to know. This stela, albeit much defaced, allowed us to read the following words : " The central figure of this silver tablet represents the image of the god Sutekh embracing the image of the great king of the land of Kheta," with an inscription Stela bearing arouud the figure : '' This is the [figure] of the god reay. g^^^j^j^^ ^j^^ j^jj^^ ^£ heaveu and [earth]." What a piece of luck for the learned world were Egyptian explorers some day to light upon this silver tablet, which in that dry soil would doubtless have preserved images and text intact. Dif- ferences would only exist in the formulas relating to the deities of the two nations, but these, with the evidence at our disposal, would be easily distinguished, whilst the actual treaty being pre- cisely the same in the twin documents — like the Rosetta stone — would constitute a bilingual text, and furnish us with the key to the deci- pherment of all the other Hittite monuments. If this may seem too much to ex- pect, even in an age that has seen so many wonders, we may point to Assyria, where, in the palace of Sar- gon, gold and silver leaf, recording a dedication in fine characters, was found by M. Place, and is now in the Louvre.^ If Egypt should have another such surprise in store for us, bare justice would require that Professor Sayce should be the fortunate discoverer, for no one so fully deserves to be the Champollion of the Kheta language. A bilingual inscription has already opened the way ; but, unfor- tunately, it is too short to allow of much progress being made. The history of this remarkable object is briefly as follows : Some twenty-seven years ago, the British Museum was offered a convex silver plate, something like the skin of half a small orange (F'ig. 262).^ The concave surface was occupied by a figure repre- senting a warrior standing erect in the middle, holding a spear in ^ Ninive et PAssyrie, torn. iii. pp. 303-306, and torn. iii. Plate LXXVII. ^ Its diameter is o m. 045 c. Fig. 262. — Silver Boss of Tarkondemos Wright, The Enipire^ p. 65.