Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/771

* CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS. 663 CTTNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS. SuMEKiAX Clxeiform Inscuu'TIONS. There are five chief forms of cuneiform alphabets — iSuiuerian or ,cca<lian, Assyro-l{at)yliinian, Xew Susiaii, OliI Persi;in, and Armenian. Of tliese l)y far the ohlest is the Sumcrian, also called the hieratic, which was employed by the pre-Seniitic inhabitants of ilesopotamia. This alphabet is ideographic in character, that is, the signs ex- press not syllables, but concepts, and arc, conse- quently, frctjuently pictorial in origin, as in the case of w ^ < The numerical system, as in all the cuueiform heaven, god, which later became ggcr, later ,for alphabets, consists of simple wedges, jr units, and angles, ^ , for tens. After sixty, which, like the first digit, is represented by the simple vertical wedge, the system becomes sexa- gesimal. AssYRo-B.^BTLONiAN. The second alphabet, which is at once the most important and the most complicated of all, is the Assyro-Babylo- nian. This is the system, moreover, which had by far the longest use and the widest extent. Not only was it the medium of communication for the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon, which for centuries controlled Jlcsopotamia, but it was employed by the kings in their messages to Egypt, as is shown by the rich discovery in 1887 of three hundred and twenty bricks inscribed with these characters at Tel-el- Amarna, which lies on the east bank of the Nile about one hun- dred and eighty miles south of ]Iemphis. The ■^riting is syllabic in character, and with the homo])hones, or difl'erent signs for the same sound, polyphones, or signs with various values, and ideograms, or pictorial representations, num- bers some five hundred characters. The read- ing of these signs has been rendered possible by the discoveiy at Babylon of the so-called sj'l- labaries. This class of tablets contains in the centre the phonogram, which is explained syl- labically on one side and ideographic.ally on the other. The reading of the Assyro-Babylonian in- scriptions is further simplified by determina- tives, which are found also in all the other cunei- form systems except Old Persian, as well as in Eg;('ptian hieroglyphics. By these signs, which precede the word they determine, the noun is shown to denote' a country, deity, or the like. Tlius, in the Sumerian alphabet, one vertical wedge is the determinative for a man, three lon- gitudinal wedges for a country, while in Assyro- Babylonian the sign for god, above noted, is tlie determinative for the name of <a deity, and two vertical 'edges indicate the dual number. The substances on which these insci'iptions were cut were numerous. Not only clay bricks, as in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, but also seals, stone obelisks, statues of bulls and lions, and the walls of the palaces were favorite places for texts to be inscribed. The writing is often exceedinglv minute, some tablets having six lines to the inch, so that the complex characters must be read with the help of a magnifying glass. It is probable that the letters were cut with such assistance, as lenses of cojisiderable power have been found among the ruins of the Mesopotamian cities. In writing on sculpture the details of the carving were often entirely neglected, so that the lines of text are frequently carried over representations of portraiture or drapery. The clay tablets are of various sizes, S(]me being as large as nine by six inches, while others are little more than an inch square. The character of the writing nat- urally varies, and there is of course a sliglil l)ut cunst^int cliange, so that the later .ssyro-Baby- lonian cuneiform letters are distinctly diller- ent from the earlier. It would not be easy to overestimate the imjiortance of the solution of the literature of Babylonia and Assyria. Not only in its e(mtribution to our knowledge of the East, which had been almost a sealed book, is it of value. Almost more momentous still is the light which it lias cast on the creation and deluge legends of Genesis, and its resultant value for Old Testament students. New Su.si. . The third variety of the cunei- form inscriptions, while ultimately derived from the Assyro-Babylonian system, is very much simpler. The name which should be assigned to it is somewhat doubtful. It has been called by no less than ten names — Median, Proto-Median. Medo-Scythian, Scythian, Elamitie, New Elam- itic, Susian, Amardian, Anzanian, and New Susian. It is also termed the 'language of the second form,' in allusion to the fact that the only monument of it which has yet been discov- ered is the .second of the three versions of the inscriptions of the Persian Achirmenians. The name which seems preferable and is ado])ted by the majority of scholars at present is New Susian. This system contains ninety-six .syllabic signs, which at times, however, show a distinct. approach to alphabetic values. Like the other cuneiform alphabets, the New Svisian possesses ideograms and determinatives, having sixteen of the former and five of the hatter. It is note- worthy that each ideogram, excepting for ziin- kiik, king, which already has one determinative, is followed by the determinative T^_, id. The readings of the New Susian cluiracters are in general fairly clear, although there is uncer- tainty about many words. The Old and Jliddle Susian inscriptions are still little known. Their study, should it prove successful, may help to solve some of the dilliculties which still beset our knowledge of New Susian. Abjieni. . The cuneiform inscriptions which are found in Armenia, ehiefiy in the neighbor- hood of Van. and number over fifty, are written in n language which is related to the modern Georgian dialects. The inscrijitions, which are probably to be dated from the ninth to the eighth century B.C.. were first noted b}- Saint-JIartin in 1823. and studied by Schulz, who was nuir- dcred by the Kurds in 1820, before his researches were completed. Despite the erroneoiis view held by one of the eaiMy investigators that the language of these texts was Armenian, while an- other more naturally tried to read them as Assyrian, researches into them were at last suc- cessful. The alphabet of the Armenian cunei- form inscriptions is an ol)vious modification of the AssjTO-Babvlonian characters. It is rela- tively extremely simple, since polyphones are di.scarded, and the number of signs is but one hundred and fifty-eight, including fifty-one idee-
 * "*7-, or -Xips-, J^iggf^r, later '^>^-