The Hittile Hieroglyphs Deciphered.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 206, 4 June 1887, Page 2

The Hittile Hieroglyphs Deciphered.

Mr James Glaisiiek, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, has received from Claude Conder, R.E., a communication informing him that the reading of the mysterious Hittite inscriptions (so called), which baffled every attempt to decipher them ever since their re-discovery in the year 1872, has been accomplished. The inscriptions were first found by Burckhardt in the year 1808. Mr Glaisher says :— " This discovery throws great light on the early chapters of the book of Genesis, and explains certain names^ in ancient history which have hitherto been impossible to explain." Captain Conder, in announcing his discovery to Mr^ Glaisher, sa y S : _" It appears that the inscriptions are invocations to the gods of heaven, ocean, and earth— exactly the deities (including Set) whom we know from Egyptian and cuneiform tablets to have been adored by the Hittites and by other tribes of Asia Minor. It is, no doubt, a disappointment to find that they are not historical ; but I shall be able to show that they furnish, nevertheless, very important historical deductions, and throw a new and most astonishing light on the early history of Western Asia and of Egypt." The following (subject to improvements) is the rcading,of the more important texts. The first is a prayer to the sun :— " May the Holy one mighty and powerful hear the uprising prayers. I call upon the Most High I adore my Lord Shine, Lord. . . . Great Spirit, so be it. He gives me the rain of Heaven." A second prayer is addressed to tho gods of water, and of the sky and ocean:— "l pray .... to my God of the Water, the Stately Lord of Water, tho God of Heaven. I makean inscription in his honour. I extol him. I cause a great libation to be made as an offering. "I make an offering to the Most Holy the King of the water. I call on the (strong?) Lord, the mighty ono. The (strong ?) King (strong?) light ; Chief God of Heaven. . . . I offer to. I cry. . . .1 extol (him) praying for water." In a third text we read as follows :-" To Thee the mighty one . . . the powerful, the Chieftain, the acknowledged Lord, be prayers made I cry with prayer to the Holy one, the Great Lord . . . To God and Goodness both I cry to the great spiritual. . . . Amen. ... to my Water God. He set my Water God chief 1 cry to. To the beneficent god of dawn. ... I cry. To my Holy one. (May he make . ' . . .my supplication ?) Offering a lib, ation to the God of Heaven. . . . I cause an excellent libation to be offered to him. . . . Accept my most excellent libation. The crescent moon I greatly . . ." The text is much injured, r and contains several very unusual emblem's, but of its general sense there can be no question. The Records of a race who disappeared in the eighth cenrury 8.C., from which dates the rise of the Babylonian power, and whose beginnings can be traced back probably further even than those of the Egyptians, nrmst have much to tell us. And it is to these that Captain Conder has found the key.

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