68 MAJOR C. R. CONDER, D.C.L., R.E., 
They are in good hands there, but we cannot at present get any 
information about them; I believe they are being read by 
German scholars of the first calibre, and they are said to contain bi- 
linguals in the Hittite language ; they are not, however, written in 
Hittite script, but in cuneiform. If they should prove to be in the 
Hittite language, we shall have the means of testing the results 
we have got by the assistance of bi-linguals of considerable length, 
which would be an important gain in the study of the subject, but 
I much doubt if the Hittites ever used the cuneiform script. 
Mr. W. St. C. Boscawen, F.R.Hist.Soc.—I have listened with 
very great interest to Major Conder’s paper. The subject of 
Hittite civilisation is one that is daily increasing in importance. It 
has almost, as it were, sprung upon us. A few years ago the few 
inscriptions we had from Hamath appeared to be connected with 
hardly anything we knew; but following the discoveries of Prof. 
Sayce, we now know that these monuments bore a close relation to 
those of Cyprus and Asia Minor, and that a lost chapter of 
Oriental history is about to be restored. Major Conder has been 
able to tell us a great deal on the subject to-night. I have 
devoted some considerable study to the question, and I have 
visited one or two of the principal sites where monuments are to be 
found; but I think, as yet, we are a considerable way from 
obtaining an accurate key to the inscriptions. Those inscriptions, 
which have gone to Berlin, I believe, are very important indeed. 
I saw a few days ago, in a letter, a short account of two of the 
inscriptions ; and, if they are what they appear to be, they exactly 
agree with what I maintained some few years ago would be the 
case,-—that we should find that the language of these inscriptions 
was conn cted with a language which is already partly known to 
us, which has been read but not deciphered,—I mean the ciphers 
which appear on the tablets from Cappadocia. I believe Mr. Pinches, 
who is here this evening, was the first to discover some of those 
inscriptions, and his discoveries have been supplemented by 
Mr. Ramsey, who has found other tablets. With regard to com- 
paring the Turanian and Hittite languages, I think we must 
hesitate before we come to a conclusion, for the case based on the 
Turanian language is not, to my mind, a strong one. I re- 
member a learned doctor, whose name has been quoted more 
than once to-night, viz., Dr. Oppert, giving a description of that 
often-used word “Turanian.” He said it was the philologis‘s 
*‘ waste-paper basket,” and when you had a language with which you 
