thought it must have served as the knob of a staff or dagger. The measurements, he adds, are 163 "English lines" in diameter, 4 "lines" in height, and very thin. The outer surface was divided into two fields, the inner and larger of which had the figure of a warrior standing erect in the centre, holding a spear in the left hand, and pressing the right against his breast. He was enclosed in a tunic, over which a fringed cloak was thrown; a close-fitting cap was on his head, boots with turned-up ends on the feet, a dirk, or dagger in the belt, and the legs bare; on each side of the figure was a series of "symbols." Dr. Mordtmann then describes the symbols, and, with other explanations, mentions that the obelisks are a close copy of the curious shafts of rock which rise from the ground in the volcanic district west of Cæsarea and Kappadocia.

Mr. Sayce, having come across this description, and recognized the Hittite character of the object, with some difficulty found the periodical in which the copy of it appeared, but his doubts as to its authenticity were not satisfied until he had compared Mordtmann's plate with a cast taken at Constantinople twenty years ago by M. F. Lenormant, from the original boss, and another from the electrotype in the British Museum. This comparison at once satisfied him that the copy we possess is as good as the original itself. The cuneiform legend he read as follows:

Mr. Sayce was of opinion that the forms of the characters must be referred to the age of Sargon. The last character having, for instance, the archaising form similar to that found on the stele of that monarch discovered in Kypros; the ideograph used to denote king belongs to the same period; and the third character which ought to be has been slightly changed in form. This date, he was of opinion, would well agree with historical probabilities. It was in the time of Sargon that Assyrian culture first gained a permanent footing in the west, while the overthrow of Carchemish and the last relics of Hittite power in B.C. 717 would, he thought, naturally lead to the disuse of the Hittite mode of writing and the spread of the cuneiform characters employed by the Assyrian conquerors.

The name of the king was compared by Dr. Mordtmann with that of the Kilikian King Tapkovdiμotos and his son of the same name. This name is found on coins, and also mentioned by various ancient authors. Mr. Sayce, after having discussed the probable area of country ruled over by Tarkondemos, in his analysis of the Hittite characters which surround the figure in the centre of the boss, explained them thus:-The inscription is in accordance with the usual boustrophedon manner of writing, commencing at the top on the right side, between the spear and the shoulder of the figure; the obelisk-like character between the spear and the lower part of the figure coming next, and then re-commencing outside the spear from the bottom of the boss the artist worked upwards from below, consequently the four vertical lines, as Mordtmann called them, will be the last character in the legend. We should further expect that the royal name would be included in the space between the spear and shoulder, where the characters come as it were out of the mouth of the figure, while the character enclosed between the legs and the lower part of the spear would denote Kingly title in this case; what Mordtmann terms "an obelisk," would be the ideograph for King; the double obelisk signifying country. This assignment of characters agreed, in the opinion of Mr. Sayce, with similar ones to be found on the inscriptions from Jerablus and Hamath. Taking the identification of the above two characters as correct, the remaining ones presented little difficulty. The two hieroglyphs which precede the ideograph of King must contain the royal name read from top to botto, consequently the animal's head is Tarku, or Tarrik, the next character timme, the character which follows the double obelisk being er, and the two sets of two slightly inclined lines me. The side stroke following the last of these characters, also found in other inscriptions, Mr. Sayce thought appeared to denote the end of a sentence or paragraph. Much interesting and valuable information with comparisons was added on the various hieroglyphics, and also the position of the Hittites in the ancient world.

Thomas Tyler, M.A., read a paper on "The Inscription of Tarkutimme, and the Monuments from Jerablus, in the British Museum."

With regard to the Assyrian part of the inscription of Tarkutimme, Mr. Tyler called attention to the unusual form of some of the

characters, and gave as the probably true rendering, "Tarkutimme, King of the country of Zume."

The inner inscription he thought might, at least provisionally, be called Hittite. The characters on the left side of the King afforded the surest guidance in decipherment, on account of the greater space, and the division made by the king's arm and spear. The two characters above the arm denoted the name "Tarkutimme," and the tall cone immediately beneath signified "king." In accordance with the boustrophedon manner of writing followed in the Hittite inscriptions, the remaining characters would have to be read from below upwards; and thus the character to be taken immediately after the tall cone or "king" would be the double cone, which, in Mr. Tyler's view, meant, not "country," but "men" or "people." The character next above the double cone he regarded as an ideograph of the country Zume, the three projections denoting mountains. The two last characters (both in the same line) were the numerals 2 () and 100 (H), the latter, with its phonetic value, me, being borrowed from the Assyrian. The two numerals, taken phonetically (not as numbers) would be read Zu-me, the name of the country represented by the ideograph beneath. The Hittite inscription was, in fact, in the main, ideographic, the phonetic element being supplementary.

Of the two inscriptions from Jerablus, in the British Museum, the longer was regarded as the more ancient. The probable meaning of several symbols was illustrated; and a group in the second line of the inscription was taken as denoting the surrender of spoils to a Hittite monarch. Attention was called to symbols formed by the legs of deer strangely contorted, and also to the frequency with which, variously modified, the apparatus used in the East for raising water is depicted. The probable symbol of Carchemish, or the ancient city on the site of Jerablus, was pointed out.

Passing to the second or statue inscription from Jerablus, Mr. Tyler applied the conclusions he had drawn from the inscription of Tarkutimme to the decipherment of a group of symbols in the first line, consisting of three cones, two heads of animals, and other characters. He considered that there were strong grounds for the opinion that the Zuzim mentioned in Gen. xiv. 5, were indicated,in fact, that the whole inscription was a record of one or more

campaigns against this people. The geographical position of the Zuzim was adverted to as rendering likely a hostile raid on their territory from a city on the site of Jerablus.

The affinities of the Hittite language were as yet doubtful. There were, however, in the Bible Hittite proper names which appeared to be Semitic or even Hebrew. The decipherment of the Hittite inscriptions was as yet only in its initial stage; and, to a considerable extent, the modes of research employed must be tentative, and the results attained, provisional.

Mr. Hyde Clarke thought the best thanks of everyone were due to the Rev. A. H. Sayce and Mr. Tyler for the labour they had gone through, but he still adhered to his own interpretation. At the same time he was of opinion that more material was really required, and it would be better if there was a little less imagination and conjecture. There were various symbols to be found on the autonomous coins of Asia Minor, &c., and he had been led to ask if these bore any relation to the names of towns, i.e., do the names of towns bear any relation to a previous language? There are, he stated, a large number of instances in which the names of towns agree with the animals' heads and other symbols upon the coins. This he thought made it possible to attach to these symbols in the inscriptions their proper meaning. He accepted the symbol suggested by Mr. Rylands for King.

Rev. W. Wright said that as he was the first, in 1872, to make casts of the Hamath stones, and to suggest that the inscriptions were Hittite remains, he felt a great interest in everything connected with them. These casts had been preserved in the British Museum since 1873, when they arrived in England, and the duplicate copies belonging to the Palestine Exploration Fund were in the South Kensington Museum. When sending home the casts, he had proposed to call the inscriptions. Hittite," but no one would entertain his theory, and it was not without difficulty that he obtained publicity for his article on the subject. In the year 1874 it was published in the "British and Foreign Evangelical Review." He would beg to suggest to gentlemen dealing with this subject to let the Hittite theory remain a theory until proved, and in the present state of our knowledge of the subject not to use such confident assertions as "quite sure" and "perfectly certain." He