Sottnds and Inflections of the Cyprian Dialect. 3 



the I of t\, the shortening of the second syllable of iirlcrralii} 

 the crasis of deSa'^ d\{xy, besides two striking instances of 

 hiatus. 



In view of all these difficulties I cannot believe that the 

 true reading of this difficult inscription has yet been reached, 

 and I have therefore felt it unsafe to attempt to base any 

 grammatical conclusions upon it, at least for the present. 

 An irregularity or two in an inscription otherwise certain 

 (e.^. aiXcov CoLL. 60, 14 ; a^a6dt 59, 4) may be easily ad- 

 mitted ; but to admit the existence of irregularities in any 

 number in an inscription which is thereby made to yield only 

 an unsatisfactory sense, reduces the probability of the cor- 

 rectness of any one word to a minimum. 



No. 69, though apparently accepted without reservation by 

 Hall {Journal of the American Oriental Society, xi., p. 221), 

 seems to me to be open to precisely the same objections as 

 urged against No. 68, including faulty metrical structure. 



No. 126 is uncertain in several of the characters, and a 

 number of the words as read by Deecke involve principles at 

 variance with the usage of the dialect. The sense too is not 

 convincing. 



No. 41 is now taken by Deecke {Be:;z. Beitr., xi., p. 317) 

 as reading from left to right, instead of from right to left as 

 formerly. This gives an entirely different text, which has 

 not yet been fully made out. Meister, following Deecke, has 

 offered in the Berliner PJiilologische WocJienschrift, 1887, 

 No. 52, a new reading of the inscription. But this is largely 

 conjectural and 'to be accepted with caution. 



Nos. 122-125 have been shown by Voigt {Bezz. Beitr., ix., 

 p. 168) to be in all likelihood cleverly executed forgeries, and 

 will accordingly be left entirely out of consideration. 



1 This is Deecke's explanation, but it is simpler to assume aphasresis of the 

 initial «. 



■■2 Equally harsh would be the assumption of synizesis in Qtuii, with shortening 

 before the initial vowel. 



133 



