The inscriptions recently discovered at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt have shown that in the century before the Exodus the common medium of literary intercourse in Western Asia was the language and cuneiform script of Babylonia. It was subsequently to this that the Hittites forced their way southward, bringing with them their own peculiar system of hieroglyphic writing. But the cuneiform characters still continued to be used in the Hittite region of the world. Cuneiform tablets have been purchased at Kaisarîyeh which come from some old library of Kappadokia, the site of which is still unknown, and Dr. Humann has lately discovered a long cuneiform inscription among the Hittite sculptures of Sinjirli in the ancient Komagênê. If the Hittite texts are ever deciphered, it will probably be through the help of the cuneiform script.
A beginning has already been made. Within a month after my Paper had been read before the Society of Biblical Archæology, which announced the discovery of a Hittite empire and the connection of the curious art of Asia Minor with that of Carchemish, I had fallen across a bilingual inscription in Hittite and cuneiform characters. This was on the silver boss of King Tarkondêmos, the only key yet found to the interpretation of the Hittite texts.
[Illustration: THE BILINGUAL BOSS OF TARKONDEMOS.]
The story of the boss is a strange one. It was purchased many years ago at Smyrna by M. Alexander Jovanoff, a well-known numismatist of Constantinople, who showed it to the Oriental scholar Dr. A. D. Mordtmann. Dr. Mordtmann made a copy of it, and found it to be a round silver plate, probably the head of a dagger or dirk, round the rim of which ran a cuneiform inscription. Within, occupying the central field, was the figure of a warrior in a new and unknown style of art. He stood erect, holding a spear in the right hand, and pressing the left against his breast. He was clothed in a tunic, over which a fringed cloak was thrown; a close-fitting cap was on the head, and boots with upturned ends on the feet, the upper part of the legs being bare, while a dirk was fastened in the belt. On either side of the figure was a series of 'symbols,' the series on each side being the same, except that on the right side the upper 'symbols' were smaller, and the lower 'symbols' larger than the corresponding ones on the left side.