Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/128

116 INS R I r T IONS [SEMITIC, have been found written in cuneiform, and if M. Oppert s identification is correct, a deed of sale, now in the Zurich museum, and written in cuneiform characters, is dated in the fifth year of Pacorus, the contemporary of Domitian. The Assyrian syllabary was borrowed by the Armenians and Minnians of Lake Van in the reign of a certain king named Lutipri in the 9th century B.C. The characters both in form and use are identical with those of Nineveh, except that the Armenians rejected the polyphony of the Assyrian syllabary, and with one or two exceptions used each sign with one phonetic value only. After the occupation of Armenia by the Aryans, the use of the cuneiform character seems to have been discontinued, and no " Vannic " or Armenian cuneiform inscriptions are known to exist of later date than the 7th century B.C. The example set by the Armenians seems to have been soon followed by their Turanian neighbours in Media. The earliest specimens of the so-called Protomedic (or A.mardian) syllabary are to be found in the inscriptions of Mai-Amir and Sherif Khan. The syllabary of Nineveh appears to have been again the source from which the new script was borrowed. As among the Armenians, polyphony was rejected, a few ideographs only were used, and a selected number of characters employed. The Protomedic tran scripts of the Persian inscriptions are written in this syllabary. In Susiania or Elam the archaic Babylonian form of cuneiform continued in use up to the last. It was reserved for the Aryans of Persia to discover the ultimate capabilities of the cuneiform system of writing by reducing its characters to an alphabet of forty letters. These were divided into two classes, those with an inherent vowel a, and those which were followed by u and i. At the same time all superfluous wedges were thrown away, and the forms of the characters thus simplified as much as their pronunciation. Dr Oppert has pointed out the prin ciple upon which the formation of this new alphabet was carried out. Some one meaning was selected among those a character might bear when used as an ideograph, and this was rendered by its Persian equivalent. The initial sound of the latter was the alphabetic value henceforth represented by the character. Thus *->^-T^, " time of life," Zaya in Persian, was contracted into ~T^ and made to represent 2 (a, n). A few ideographs were retained along with the alphabetic characters. The Persian cuneiform alphabet, called "Assyrian letters" by Herodotus, seems to have been invented in the early part of the reign of Darius, and, being confined to monumental purposes, soon fell into disuse. Possibly the reduction of the cuneiform syllabary into an alphabet was suggested by a previous acquaintance with alphabetic writing. In the Persian inscriptions the words are divided from one another by an oblique wedge, A similar division of words is found in one or two Assyrian inscriptions. See Menant, Le Syllalaire Assyricn, 1861-73 ; Sayce, Lectures upon the Assyrian Language and Syllabary, 1877. (A. H, S.) II. SEMITIC. An account has already been given (see ALPHABET) of the derivation of the Phoenician alphabet from the hieratic alphabet of the Egyptian papyri of the middle empire. No early monuments written in it have as yet been found; the first known examples belong to a time when the alphabet had been widely spread and a literature had long existed. At this time we find the alphabet divided into two branches, the Phoenician and the Aramaean, the first being again subdivided into archaic and Siclonian. The last two are chiefly distinguished by the form of the {?, which is angular in the first and rounded in the second. The earliest inscription in the Phoenician alphabet known to us is the stele of Mesha, king of Moab, found at Dhiban and belonging to the 9th century B.C. In this Mesha relates that after the death of Ahab his god Chemosh enabled him to shake off the yoke of. Israel, to drive the Gadites out of Ataroth, and to fortify Kir-hareseth, Aroer, Horonaim, Dibon, and other places. The language of the inscription differs only dialectically from Hebrew. To the same form of the alphabet belong most of the Phoenician inscriptions on the engraved gems brought of late years from Assyria and Babylonia, among which may be mentioned a cone with the image of a " golden calf " and the names Shemaiah and Azariah (imiy p wyDtJ^V The Aramaic legends on the bilingual lion-weights of Nimrud, which date from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser II. (745-727 B.C.) downwards, also belong to the same form of the alphabet. With these inscriptions may be classed the Phoenician inscription on a bowl lately restored by M. Clermont Ganneau, which mentions a King Hiram, and had been brought with other merchandise from Phoenicia to Cyprus, where it was found. Of later date are the graffiti scratched on the legs of the colossi at Abu-Simbel in Nubh by Phoenician travellers or mercenaries. The most important monument of the Sidonian period of the Phoenician alphabet is the sarcophagus of Eshmun azar, son of Tabnith (? Tennes), " king of the Sidonians," which is probably of the Gth century B.C. It may, however, be later. The inscription upon it states that Eshmun azar had restored the ruined temples of Sidon, and prays the gods to preserve to that city the possession of " Dor, Joppa, and the rich cornlands in the plain of Sharon." Other note worthy monuments of the same period are the so-called " Second Sidonian Inscription," which records the installa tion of a subordinate " king of Sidon " by a " king of the Sidonians " of Phoenicia ; the inscriptions from Citium in Cyprus of King Pumyathon and his father Melecyathon in the 4th century B.C., as well as the bilingual Phoenician- Greek and Phoenician-Cypriote inscriptions from the same island, the Phoenician-Cypriote inscription of Melecyathon having furnished Mr George Smith with the key to the Cy priote syllabary; together with six inscriptions from Athens and two from Malta; and the three inscriptions found by M. Ilenan at Umm -el-Awumid on the Phoenician coast. The numerous dedicatory inscriptions found on the site of Carthage are written in what is termed the Punic development of the Sidonian alphabet ; all apparently belong to the Greek period. The most important Punic inscription is the tariff of sacrifices found at Marseilles in 1845, an abridged edition of which was discovered on the site of Carthage by Mr Davis in 18GO. The regulations contained in it have a striking analogy to many of those of Leviticus. Its date, however, cannot be very early, since it makes no mention of human sacrifices. The Punic alphabet was the source of those of Numidia and Boeticu, where inscriptions have been found. The series of Arama?an inscriptions begins with the dockets on Assyrian contract -tablets of the age of Tiglath- Pileser II. and his successors, when Nineveh and Carchemiah became the chief centres of trade in western Asia. To the same period may be assigned an interesting gern from Babylonia inscribed mHTtf fQ ntPpuS as well as the cylinder of the eunuch Achadban, son of Gebrod, from Babylonia, and the cone of Hadrakia, son of Hurbad, from Nineveh. As already observed, the inscriptions on the Assyrian lion-weights, though in the archaic Phoenician form of the alphabet, are Aramaic in language. Passing over the engraved stories of the Achsemenian epoch, we may notice the famous bronze lion of Abydos, belonging probably to the 5th century B.C., on which an Aramaic legend is written. Of considerably later date is the inscrip-