RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Inquisition Inscriptions
INSCRIPTIONS.
I. Egyptian Inscriptions. Forms and Character (§ 1). Number, Age, and Contents
(§2). The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (§ 3). Illustration of the Bible (§ 4). II. Cuneiform Inscriptions.
The Name; Area Covered by the Script (§ 1).
Discoveries; Decipherment of Persian (§ 2).
Decipherment of Babylonian-Assyrian (§3).
Origin and Character of the Script (§ 4). III. Christian Inscriptions.
1. Ancient Christian Inscriptions. Methods of Writing (§ 1). Languages Employed (§2). Contents (§3).
Value of the Material (§ 4).
2. Medieval and Later Inscriptions.
3. History of Epigraphy. The Early Period (§1).
The Nineteenth Century (§ 2).
I. Egyptian Inscriptions : The inscriptions of Egypt are no new discovery. The term most used to describe the characters em- 1. Forms pj0ye(j m the inscriptions, " hiero- Ch t glyphics," is of Greek origin (hieros, " sacred " -f- glyphein, " to carve") and bears witness both to early knowledge of the existence of the writing and to the conception at that time that the priestly class was its executor. In more modern usage the term is not confined to the Egyptian inscriptions, but is used generally of any kind of picture-writing. The inscriptions on the monuments of Egypt are in the main in a picturewriting, the individual signs of which are representations of objects or actions more or less conventionalized. This detailed representation passed by the method of abbreviation into a shorter form called the hieratic script, and by the extension of this process to a still shorter form, the demotic. But in only the very late period of Egyptian history was either the hieratic or demotic form employed upon the monuments, though both were used on papyri from an early age. While originally the signs stood for the objects they pictured, at a very early stage they came to have phonetic quality, and from this to the development of an alphabet the steps were rapid and easy. While this process was going on, the signs were given values associated with those already customary and also others disconnected from the original connotation. The alphabet was of twenty-one letters (some authorities say twenty-two, others twenty-four), all consonants, though some of the letters were employed to indicate vowel sounds, as in the Semitic languages. The signs became also signs of syllables as well as of single letters, and, still further, signs of words or ideographs. In all, the number of symbols known from the monuments is slightly under 1,400. Since some of these symbols might express several ideas, it became necessary to use certain signs as determinatives to fix the meaning of the group in which they occurred, thus to remove ambiguity. The signs composing a word or idea are grouped in quadrangular form, though the order of grouping is not invariable, being either perpendicular or horizontal, according to the shape of the components, the exigencies of the space at disposal or the artistic taste of the scribe. The groups were arranged in columns or in lines, according to the material used and the space and form available for the inscription. The writing runs either (preferably) from right to left or the reverse when arranged horizontally, or from above downward when it is in columns.
The area within which these inscriptions are found embraces the whole of the Nile valley as far as Nubia, parts of the peninsula of Sinai, 2, Number, ancj iocati0ns in Syria and Palestine. Contends. Records begin with the second dynasty; during the fourth, fifth and sixth dynasties they become numerous, though largely centralized around Memphis; then they become fewer until with the eleventh dynasty they again grow abundant and spread out over a wide area, continuing numerous till the fourteenth dynasty. Of the Hyksos kings few remains are found. With the seventeenth dynasty inscriptions once more become abundant and continue so, with exceptions in some dynasties or single reigns, till down into Roman times. The inscriptions were placed on the walls of temples, on stelae and monuments set up within the temple courts, on obelisks, and in tombs both of the Pharaohs and of the nobility and the wealthier classes, and on gems, rings, and scarabs. Since the temples of the earlier period have vanished, it follows that the inscriptions of those times have for the most part perished. Yet while some of the earliest monuments were destroyed at a very early date, it sometimes occurs that the record which they bore was copied on a more perishable material which has survived. A matter which often causes embarrassment to the decipherer is that it was the known habit of some Pharaohs, as in the case of Rameses II., to remove the royal name in the cartouche of the original Pharaoh who ordered the inscription, and to inscribe their own in its place, thus claiming the deeds originally assigned to another and dislocating the order of history. The earliest inscriptions come from massive masonry tombs, where often little more than names, titles, and, sometimes, the legal provisions for maintenance of the tomb are preserved. Later, in addition to these bare statements, the lists of titles are extended to include something of the career of the deceased. Finally they contain records of achievement — whether of Pharaohs, generals, or administrators — of the occasion which the record commemorates, and may even include the royal patent for the work of which the inscription speaks. But, in general, a vagueness characterizes the content of the inscriptions and makes them illusive and difficult, not only in themselves but also in the historical matter to which they refer. Thus, in a story of conquest, the foe is often referred to not by name or country, but is described by some derogatory epithet: again, the events narrated were often contemporary and matters of general knowledge; it therefore did not seem to the maker
Inscriptions