RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Inscriptions
em wall at the western end of the temple, a list of places in that region the submission of which he claims to have received (cf. Records of the Past, new series, v. 29-53, for the list of names). Noteworthy and productive of a vast amount of discussion are the names Yakob-el and Yosep-el, which seem to represent an early form of the names Jacob and Joseph. The real significance of these names, paralleled from the cuneiform inscriptions, is as yet under debate, but eponymous derivation seems to be favored. The geography is also illuminated by the lists of Seti I. and Rameses II. (nineteenth dynasty), the latter's inscriptions on the Ramesseum at Thebes and at Karnak, and by that of Rameses III. at Medinet Haba.
Shishak I. (twenty-second dynasty) also furnished on the south wall of the great temple at Karnak a list of geographical names in which there are 156 cartouches, not all legible (cf. W M. Miiller, Asien und Europa, Leipsic, 1893, pp. 166 sqq.).
The monuments of Seti I., Rameses II. and IV., and Meneptah contain references which are thought by the advanced school to bear on pre-Mosaic history. That the Aperiu (cf. Heb. 'Ibhri, "Hebrew " and the Habiri of the Amarna Tablets, q.v.) were Hebrews is not yet assured, though it is possible. Seti I. and Rameses II. speak of an Aseru or Asaru in western Galilee in the region assigned to the tribe Asher in the Hebrew records (Judges v. 17, cf. i. 32). Of this alternative explanations are given: the Asherites were a Canaanitic tribe absorbed later into the Hebrew confederation (which would go with the assumed eponymous derivation of the name and with the Biblical account of descent from a concubine) or the Hebrews who settled in the region took the name of the country (W M. Miiller, ut sup. pp. 236-239). On a stele of Meneptah discovered in 1895 occurs the only known mention of Israel on the Egyptian monuments (in the form l-si-r-'l) as a people whom Meneptah had reduced. This mention is complicated by the fact that Meneptah is now quite generally regarded as the Pharaoh of the Exodus; how, then, could Israel be in Palestine during his reign? Accordingly many commentators are disposed to see in the Israel of Meneptah's inscription a part of the Hebrews settled in Palestine who did not go down into Egypt and gave their name to the confederation in later times; these commentators regard as confirmation of this the occurrence of Yakob-el and Yosep-el (ut sup.). Light on the Exodus of the Hebrews comes not from the hieroglyphic, but from a combination of a Greco-Roman inscription with the identification of Succoth and Pithom through indications in the Coptic version of the Old Testament and through indications in Greek writers (see Egypt). While the bearing of Egyptian inscriptions on Hebrew history and ethnology is thus vague and indecisive, if it has any value at all it is in the way of strengthening the case of the newer school of constructive history. Geo. W. Gilmore.
II. Cuneiform Inscriptions: Cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, " wedge," was first applied in the year 1700 by Thomas Hyde, professor of Hebrew in the University of Oxford. In that day Hyde was
acquainted only with some rude copies of Assyrian
characters, and with some equally rude copies of
Sassanian and Palmyrene inscriptions,
1. The concerning which he argued that they
Name; Area were not ietterSj nor intended for
the Seriut ^ters, but were mere ornament. Later investigation has shown that the cuneiform method of writing is one of the oldest known to man and one of the most widely diffused, and that it sufficed for more than five thousand years to express the ideas of nearly a score of peoples, among whom were some of the greatest culture races of antiquity. It was invented by the pre-Semitic Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia, was adopted by their conquerors, the Semitic Babylonians, and thence carried to Assyria. It was besides diffused among all the neighboring peoples and came into use as far east as Elam and as far west as Egypt (see Amarna Tablets).
The first modern observer of cuneiform characters
was Pietro della Valle, about 1618 a.d., who copied
from the ruins of Persepolis in Persia
2. Discover- & £ew charaC£ers in random but fairly
pherment accurate fashion. The material thus of Persian. Pr°vided was too scanty to stimulate any earnest effort at decipherment. The first opportunity afforded European scholars for study of the cuneiform was given in 1774 by Carsten Niebuhr, a Dane, father of the famous Roman historian, who had copied at Persepolis a number of small inscriptions, grouped in threes upon the remains of the palaces of the Achamenian kings. Previous travelers had expressed the opinion that three languages were represented in these Persepolis texts, and later study has shown the three languages to be Persian, Susian, and Assyro- Babylonian. The task of decipherment was rendered difficult by the fact that no bilingual inscription was found in which a known language occurred. The method of decipherment was to be archeological rather than philological, and the process was necessarily slow and insecure. The first efforts in decipherment of the Persian inscriptions — the simplest in each group of three — put forth by Friedrich Christian Karl Heinrich Miinter and Olaf Tychsen seemed to show that these texts contained only forty-two signs, which were therefore mainly alphabetic with some syllabic values, but only a few correct values for the signs were determined. The first decipherment of an entire text was made by George Frederick Grotefend, who was almost continuously engaged upon decipherment from 1802 until 1844. The facts with which he began were that these texts came from Persepolis, and that the ruins there were the remains of palaces erected by Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. He assumed, consequently, that each text began with the name of a king, and his success was achieved by comparison of two inscriptions, which Grotefend finally translated as follows: "I. Darius, the mighty king, king of kings . son of Hystaspes. II. Xerxes, the mighty king, king of kings son of Darius,
the king." This result was small in itself, but it afforded the clue for the decipherment of several languages, besides the three found at Persepolis. At the same time that Grotefend was engaged in
Inscriptions