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

DURING Win CENTURY: HITTITES 787
name of the people of the inscriptions accordingly seems to
be Hatio.
When I was laying the first foundation for the decipherment
of the inscriptions and had just recognized the Armenian
character of the speech, I conceived the idea that
the native name of the Armenians, Hay, in plural Hayk 1 ,
probably went back to a form Hatio, according to the
laws
of Armenian phonetics ; but this was a pure hypothesis
which the inscriptions failed to substantiate. Proof, however,
now appearing to be forthcoming, I am forced to declare
that I hold the above views until further notice. The
difference between the Kh of Khate and the H of Hay is
not fatal
to my theory and may be easily got over.
Nevertheless it must be stated that h in the beginning
of Armenian words may go back to p or s.
Very possibly,
therefore, Armenian hat-anel originally began with ap, which
at the time of our inscriptions does not yet seem to have
become h as in modern Armenian. But if at the time of
our inscriptions the root hat, meaning " to cut," was perhaps
still pronounced as pad, the hieroglyph for " to cut
"
in the same way could only be read as p(a)d or p(a)t, and
not as h(a)t. In this case the name of the people of our
inscriptions would be Patio, not Hatio, and could have
nothing to do with the name of the country Khate and the
name Hittite derived from it. Moreover it is worthy of
remark that three times in an inscription we find a word
with a labial and a dental as consonants which it seems possible,
though not likely, to identify with the national name
of the people of our inscriptions. On the other hand, however,
we must not omit to mention that in two inscriptions
we meet with a succession of symbols (those for ', / and ')
which possibly might have been used to denote a word
Hatio.
Be this as it may, whether Hatio or Patio is the form we
are looking for, so much is certain, that the name of the