ON PROBLEMS IN INDO-GERMAN PHILOLOGY. 153 



which was written down alphabetically. The same may be said of the other 

 pure races of the Syro- Arabian family ; and this alone will explain the perma- 

 nence and uniformity of their syntactical structure. 



With regard to the cuneiform characters, I cannot doubt that they are of 

 Mesopotamian and therefore of Semitic origin. Internal evidence shows that 

 their origin was not immediately hieroglyphic, but that they emanated from 

 a system of phonetic writing in which affinities of articulation are fully per- 

 ceived and recognised. The form of the character was regulated by the 

 materials. The alluvial plain of the two rivers furnished abundance of 

 brick earth, and nothing could be more simply ingenious than to form a set 

 of letters which might be made by impressions on the unbailed clay struck 

 with the end of an iron tool, and arranged in different groups according to 

 a technical plan or convention. The lapidary character whicli was subse- 

 quently imparted to this mode of writing does not interfere with our evi- 

 dences of the fact tiiat the cuneiform letters were the natural and simple 

 invention of a people of brickmakers, who had abundance of clay, and no 

 hewn stones to write on. In these days of note-paper and envelopes we do 

 not sufficiently consider how much the mode of writing, in the first begin- 

 nings of the art, depended upon the nature of the stationery. The ostracism 

 of Athens and other cities, and thepetalism of Syracuse show what difficulties 

 were caused by a general demand for slips of paper. When the great body 

 of citizens in those populous towns wished to get rid of an obnoxious states- 

 man, it was usual to effect this by writing down the name of the party to be 

 exiled and sending it in as a ballot-paper. In the want of other substitutes 

 for waste-paper, the Syracusans employed olive-leaves, and the Athenians, 

 Argives and Megarians used fragments of broken pottery, i. e. pot-sherds. 

 It is amusing to observe how the old blunder about the offrpuKoy still main- 

 tains its ground. Even Mr. Grote talks of votes given by means of oyster- 

 shells I To say nothing of the fact that oarpaKov never meant an oyster-shell, 

 how would they write on such a material, and whence would they obtain 

 such a superabundance of these shells ? On the contrary, the most econo- 

 mical and abundant substitute for waste-paper would undoubtedly be broken 

 pottery ; a mons testaceus might be formed in any town where porcelain is 

 used ; and any pointed instrument would scratch the obnoxious name on a 

 piece of tile or broken vase. 



But while we can explain the cuneiform writing even down to the origin 

 of the characters of which it is composed, and while we can not only read 

 the Cartouches of Egyptian kings, but discuss the fii'st beginnings of hiero- 

 glyphic writing, it certainly is most unsatisfactory to reflect that we cannot 

 understand the remains of the Etrurian language, which we find in the midst 

 of the old Italian civilization, written in a character with which we are fa- 

 miliar, belonging to a well-known historical epoch, and surrounded on every 

 side by literary and linguistic associations. It is the remaining object of 

 this paper to show, by a process of ethnographic exhaustion similar to that 

 which I have employed in discussing the Semitic question, that there can be 

 only one solution of the Etruscan problem, and that if we cannot explain 

 everything in the inscriptions, we can at least see the limits within which 

 their explanation is possible, the line of motion in which our future progress 

 must take place, and the goal at which we must ultimately arrive. 



Looking at the population of Europe just as we should regard the geology 

 of a district, we must recognise the following ascertained facts in the strati- 

 fication of the Indo-Germanic family. The eastern half of Europe, from the 

 Baltic to the Mediterranean, is filled by diflerent branches of the Sclavonian 

 family. In the south no less than in the north these Sclavonians abut upon 



