United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is one of the many gains that the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has brought to the student of the Old Testament, and it makes us understand the story of Abraham's migration in a way that was never possible before. He was no wild nomad wandering in unknown regions, among a people of alien habits and foreign civilization.
Applying these known characters to the decipherment of the inscriptions, giving them their accepted value, we soon found that the language in which they are written is, in the main, the vernacular of the aborigines of Yucatan and other parts of Central America to-day.
In the walks of comparative philology much has been accomplished. Sanskrit has been exhumed. Aryan and Semitic roots are traced back to an almost synchronous antiquity. The decipherment of the Egyptian inscriptions seems to bring us into communication with a still more remote form of language. More recent periods derive new light from the Etruscan tombs and the Assyrian bricks.
Useful to the student as these first lists were, in the early stages of decipherment, they are now of little value.
Philologists may take their time over the decipherment of the texts inscribed on the reliefs, but the great people of prey who, for at least four centuries, pillaged all Asia without themselves becoming softened by the possession of so much accumulated wealth, live, henceforward, in the long series of pictures recovered for the world by Layard and Botta.
Suffice it to say that the guarantee for the soundness of the conclusions reached by scholars is furnished by the consideration, that it was from small and most modest beginnings that the decipherment began.
Accordingly we further read that at the same time "Melchizedek, king of Salem," and "priest of the most High God," "brought forth bread and wine," and blessed the Hebrew conqueror, who thereupon gave him tithes of all the spoil. It is only since the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna that the story of Melchizedek has been illustrated and explained.
We have no means of determining whether the cosmogony of the Chaldaeans formed any part of the Assyrian system, or was confined to the lower country. No ancient writer tells us anything of the Assyrian notions on this subject, nor has the decipherment of the monuments thrown as yet any light upon it.
It was natural, therefore, at the beginning of hieroglyphic decipherment that the Greek accounts should be accepted in full, and that Ramses II. should have been regarded as the greatest of Egyptian conquerors. But further study soon showed that, in this respect at least, his reputation had little to support it.
A tablet has just been unearthed at Galle, bearing an inscription in Arabic, Chinese and Tamil. The Arabic is beyond decipherment, but enough is left of the Chinese to show that the tablet was erected in 1409 to commemorate a visit by the eunuch Cheng Ho, who passed several times backwards and forwards over that route.
Word Of The Day