Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/47

 V The Writing of the Hittites. 31 his left hand, with symbols on each side of it, which one could see were unlike any characters hitherto known. A border, with letters similarly incised, surrounded the boss. The singular appearance of these hieroglyphs roused suspicions of the genuine- ness of the piece, and caused it to be refused ; not before, however, M. Ready had taken an impression by electrotype. This copy lay forgotten in a drawer of the museum, when Professor Sayce happened to read an article, bearing on this very plate, by the late Dr. Mordtmann, who was inclined to identify the lettering of the border with the Vannic cuneiform inscriptions. What specially struck Professor Sayce was the curious fact that the '' obelisks " on the plate were stated to resemble the peculiar shafts of rock which are seen in the volcanic district of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, whilst the central figure was characteristic of Hittite art. The professor could not rest until he had procured a copy of this interesting silver boss, which seemed to come to him as the realization of his long-cherished hopes, confirming what had been mere guess-work. In a letter to the Academy, he asked if any of its readers were acquainted with the localization of the original. Replies soon came, first from Mr. B. V. Head, of the British Museum, informing him that an electrotype fac- simile had been in the Museum for the last twenty years, enclosing at the same time a cast of it. This was followed by M. Fr. Lenormant, who also sent a fac-simile of the one he had taken from the original in i860, when he had found it in the possession of M. Alexander lovanoff, the well-known numismatist at Constantinople, who had obtained it at Smyrna. The collection of M. lovanoff has been dispersed, but the impressions we have agree in every particular, and for the purposes of science are as good as the original itself. The disappearance of these *' curios " from public investigation has been adduced in proof of the spuriousness of the silver tablet; but, to our mind, the suspicion is hardly justified. To have created the type of the figure and the ideographs about it in i860, i,e. long before the Hamath inscriptions had been transliterated and Hittite hieroglyphs were known to exist, we must suppose the forger to have been endowed with supernatural power, a theory too absurd to be discussed. Professor Sayce being satisfied with the perfect agreement of the casts he had obtained, found no difficulty in reading the legend : " Tarik-timme [or dimmej, king of the country of Erme." The