Note 562 — Chapter IX · THE SWORD IN KHITA-LAND, PALESTINE AND CANAAN; PHŒNICIA AND CARTHAGE; JEWRY, CYPRUS, TROY, AND ETRURIA.

Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published in the Journ. Anthrop. Instit. May 1880. The figures at Ibríz having suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and found three Aramæan suffixes, t-na, t-kun, and t-hun. These gave an immense probability that he had hit upon the t, n, k, and h. Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our ‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the silver boss of Tarkodemos as a point de départ, suggested to him that the stirrup-shape () marks the nom. sing. of proper names, and this in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments ends in s. He assumes that adjectives agree with their substantives, which they follow by taking the same suffixes. He was at first disposed to make the broken k ( or ), which curiously resembles an old Egyptian sign, signify ‘and’ (cop. conjunct.); but the incised inscription found by Mr. Ramsey at Bór (old Tyana) proved it the determinative of an individual. The goat’s head seems from the bilingual boss to have the phonetic value ‘tarku,’ and is interchanged with (ku), (s), , and . The two spear-heads with the stirrup () appear to represent a patronymic—Kus. The second sign (= ku), which seems to be the first pers. sing. of the Aor., can be followed in the same group of characters by ; whence Mr. Sayce inferred the latter to be an adjectival participial affix = u. Similarly = e, the acc. plur.; thus = ue. The bilingual boss also shows or = mi, the third pers. sing. present tense, and we find indifferently and . The gen. plur. is , but the pronunciation is not determined. The same is the case with the sock or low boot (), suggested to be the third pers. plur. of the Aorist. Lastly, the ideograph of plurality attached to nouns and verbs is .