Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

774 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
The ideographs prove to be very numerous. As we
learn from our determining the contents of the inscriptions,
we have ideographs for the names of countries, persons and
gods, for titles and dignities such as king and lord, for adjectives,
and so on. The numerous ideographs used for
the names of gods who play an important part in the inscriptions
deserve special mention. A very remarkable feature
still awaiting a satisfactory explanation is the fact that
perhaps all the gods mentioned in the inscriptions may be
represented by a hand placed in different positions. Thus
the " Father of the Gods " has a flat hand as his original
hand-hieroglyph, which however was simplified later, while
the " Mother of the Gods " has a fist as her handhieroglyph.
Some of the ideographs, apparently, may be added or left
out at pleasure. Such are the symbols for " god," " man,"
" country," found before the names of gods, the names and
attributes of kings, the names of towns and countries respectively.
In such cases the symbols are to be considered
as determinatives, specifying the category of the word which
follows.
The symbols with
two main classes, those which are
phonetic values may be divided into
but rarely met with, and
those which are found everywhere in the most various wordgroups.
It is at once apparent that the phonetic values
of the latter must be as simple as possible, representing
only a single sound, or at the most a consonant and a
vowel, while the majority of the former represent combinations
of more than two sounds, perhaps a consonant and
a vowel and a consonant, or, neglecting the vowels in between,
a series of say two consonants.
The symbols ocurring frequently are remarkably small in
number, and in at least four different instances two of them
have been interchanged. As they are not vowel-signs, it
follows that the sounds they stand for must have one con-