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

784 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
extended my field of operations, succeeding in finding new
sound-values and further meanings of words which could
only confirm my thesis. Thus I have been able to read
the Hittite word for " king," apparently arwai = Armenian
ark'ay, also the word for " man," in Hittite written r, but
read aro = Armenian ayr, out of an earlier aro, and so on.
Under such circumstances we scarcely need this additional
fact that the phonetic values of the hieroglyphs, so
far as these hieroglyphs are recognizable as pictures, stand
in relation to certain Armenian words, thus showing that
the Hittite writing was invented by the forefathers of the
modern Armenians.
The consonants, for which the hieroglyphs stand, correspond
either to the beginning or to the whole of those
words which must once have been the Armenian names for
the corresponding pictures. Thus in the inscriptions a
pointed shoe stands for / or d, while in Armenian trekh
means a peasant's shoe ; a calf's head representing the
whole calf stands in the inscriptions for po, pa, etc., while in
Armenian the word for calf is ort from earlier port. More
decisive are the cases where the correspondence is still more
complete. For example, we find a fascicle with the phonetic
value t(d) and r, while Armenian trt'sak means "
"
bundle ;
the head of the horse or colt, as we saw above, must be approximately
read mudal or mutal, while " colt " in Armenian
is
mtruk {mtr-u and the diminutive ending) out of an earlier
form m-d-r or m-d-l with i or u after the m. Furthermore,
the picture of a pine tree or the like,
the cryptogram for sar- or
saroy in Armenian is
or a tree in general, is
t(d)sar-, meaning " king," while
a word for the pine or the like (hardly
a Persian loan-word), and tsar means " tree."
In this connection we may turn to the inscription referred
to above, which we took to belong to a king Mut(d)allu of
Kommagene. The name of his country, i. e., Kommagene
(Kommoghi), is here represented by two hieroglyphs, a bull-