Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/48

 32 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. existence of this king was unsuspected, but not the name, which is mentioned as that of a leading man of CiUcia who lived at the beginning of our era. In its subject form, Ta/o/coz^Se/xo? is met with on numerous coins, as well as in Plutarch ; and we read of a Ta/o/coSt/xaro?, Bishop of ^gae in Cilicia/ The frequent occurrence of this name in a province which was so thoroughly Greek at the time we are treating, may have been due to ancestral reminiscence ; perhaps of a benevolent prince, whose graciousness lingered in the place that had witnessed his good deeds. However this may be, Erm4 the country over which Tarik-timme is supposed to have ruled, has been identified with Arima of the Greek geographers. Assyriologists are at one with Professor Sayce in the rendering of the legend around the border, and in referring the characters to the age of S argon. ^ The first question that arises, when we try to decipher the inner hieroglyphs with the aid of the cuneiform inscription, is whether they are the exact reproduction one of the other. In the present state of our knowledge, it would be rash to give a categorical answer ; but to judge from other bilingual inscriptions, such a correspondence between the two legends, if not certain, is at least probable. The relative number of hieroglyphs in the twin legends tends to confirm this view ; for if there are nine cuneiform letters, and only six in the other, this is easily explained from the fact that the Hittite writing was not so far advanced in phonetic values as the cuneiform ; a whole word, or group of words, being expressed by a single character, such as Tarik-timme ; whereas in the Assyrian hieroglyphs we should find the name divided into syllables : Tar- rik-tim-me-sar-mat-Er-me-e, the long e being noted by extra cuneiform lettering. As to the words sar, " king," mat, "■ country," they are figured by an almost identical ideograph in all systems akin to that under discussion. If similarity between the Assyrian and Hittite text be admitted, we have six characters at least of which the values cannot be con- tested. For the rest, we shall not follow the ingenious line of argument by which Professor Sayce tries to establish the values of ^ Theodoret, Hist. Ecdesiastique, P- 539- ^ See Sayce's, The Bilingual Hittite and. Cuneiform Inscription of Tarkondemos. M. Theo. Pinches proposes a different interpretation for Erme (Wright, The Empire, p. 220), whilst concurring with Professor Sayce in the reading of the proper name and kingly title.