Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/34

months afterwards, at Dr. Isaac Taylor's suggestion, I compared the forms of these eight characters with the forms of those characters of the Cypriote syllabary which possessed the same values. The result was most unexpectedly confirmatory of my conclusions; the forms in each case being almost identical. Those who wish to test the truth of this assertion can do so by referring to Dr. Taylor's recently-published work on The Alphabet, where the corresponding Hittite and Cypriote characters are given side by side (vol. ii. p. 123).^[1]

If, now, the Hittite hieroglyphics may be definitively regarded as the source of the Asianic syllabary, it is evident that Lydians or Trojans could not have come to employ it till some time, at all events, after the period when the conquerors of Carchemish carved their legends on the cliff of Sipylos and the rocks of Karabel. The cartouche of Ramses II., lately discovered by Dr. Gollob, by the side of the so-called image of Niobê, as well as the fact that the latter is an obvious imitation of the sitting figure of Nofretari, the wife of Ramses II., which is sculptured in the cliff near Abu Simbel, indicates that this period was that of the 14th century B.C. Between this date and that at which the inscriptions of Hissarlik were written, a full century at least must be allowed to have elapsed.

I have little to add or change in the Appendix in Ilios on the Trojan Inscriptions. The reading, however, of the legend on the terra-cotta seal reproduced on p. 693 (Nos. 1519, 1520) of Ilios has now been rendered certain by two deeply-cut and large-sized inscriptions on a terra-cotta weight in the possession of Mr. R. P. Greg, which is alleged to have come from Hissarlik. The characters, at any rate, resemble those of the Hissariik inscriptions, and before the