636 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
8. A Discussion on a new System of Decipherment of the Hittite 
Hieroglyphs lately published by the Society of Antiquaries. By 
R. CampsBett THompson, M.A. 
Last November the Society of Antiquaries courteously offered a hearing to 
my decipherment of the Hittite hieroglyphs, which they are now about to publish 
in vol. Ixiv. of Archwologia. Briefly the steps employed in my decipherment 
are as follows :— 
There have been five previous decipherments, which are practically all 
different (Sayce, Conder, Jensen, Gleye, and Rusch), and I have, in turn, 
ventured to differ almost entirely from these. But I must at once acknowledge 
my indebtedness to Professor Sayce’s system for the signs of ‘country,’ ‘god,’ 
‘king’ (or ‘ lord’), the god Tesup, the nominative s and a few ideograms, and 
his brilliant identification of the place-name Tyana, which, by a slight alteration 
of his values, has provided us with d(t)a, a, n(a). These are the chief points 
of our agreement, which I have amplified in a note to my article; beyond 
these our coincidences are rare, particularly in the translations, wherein I can 
hardly agree at all with him. To Jensen is due the value ‘lord’ for the ‘ three 
strokes’ sign, but his system appears to me to be impossible; and the same 
may be said of the other three. To Peiser is due the division-mark. 
My system, briefly, depends, first, on the application of the names of Hittite 
and other chiefs of the ninth century to the hieroglyphs: and then, with the 
syllabic values thus obtained, the comparison of the grammar known to us 
from Hittite cuneiform tablets from Boghaz Keui. By the kindness of the 
Trustees of the British Museum I was allowed to quote freely from the 1911 
inscriptions from Carchemish, particularly one long text of about 600 characters. 
An elaborate sign occurring twice in one line of a Carchemish inscription led 
me to give it a provisional value gar, on the supposition that it formed part 
of the names Sangar (a chief of Carchemish) and Gargamis. This apparently 
gave good results, and thus yielded the values san, n, gar, g, and incidentally 
proved Professor Sayce’s s. Application of this g and s to another place-name 
gave a hypothetical Ka-r-g-mi-s, which values were again apparently successful 
when applied elsewhere. The Hamath inscriptions, by a similar process, yielded 
Ir-khu-li-na, the well-known contemporary of Sangar; and thus, step by step, 
using the same values, the Hittite inscriptions yielded the following names, 
which now show that it was a frequent custom to indicate proper names either 
by a detached stroke or a tang added to a component character :— 
(1) The inscriptions of North Syria and north of this district : The chiefs 
Tesup-*-r (=Adad-id(?)-r, Adad-idri, Benhadad) : Irkhulina: Mutal, Muttallu : 
‘Aram, chief of Kask’ (=Kashkai: i.e. Arame of Bit-Agusi) : Guam 
(=Giammu): Khunu (=Akhunu): ‘the Kauaut of Katte’ (=the tribe Kauai 
of Katé): K’ra (=Kirri, who succeeded Katé): Ninnas (=Ninni): Sangqar : 
Kak (=Kaki) : probably Zalli or Lali (=Lalli) : and a name, probably Shalma- 
neser, described variantly as san Asra, san Asir, and san Ninwis, ‘King of 
Assyria’ and ‘King of Nineveh.’ Added to these are Panammi (=Panammu 
of Sinjirli) and Garali (=Karal, his father) : the places Amd(t)a (=Hamath) : 
Gugum (=Gurguin): Kargmis, Gargms (=Gargamis) : Mizir (=Muazri), and 
probably Ams (=Homs): 7(a)-bal(?) (=Tabal): M(W)tr (=Pitru): Aninna 
(=Adinnu) : Umk (=Amk): Katnaut (=the Katnai tribe). 
(2) The inscriptions of Cappadocia: the King of Tyana, Araras 
(=Ariarathes). ” 
(3) Uhe inscription of Fraktin: ‘ Ma(?)-d(t)a-n-r, Jord of chiefs’ (=Muwtallu 
=the Egyptian form Mautener’). . 
(4) A seal, provenance unknown: Targu-s-n(a)-a-li (=Targashnalli of the 
Boghaz Keui texts). 
These syllabic values provide equivalences between the hieroglyphs and 
Hittite cuneiform in the verbal terminations and augment, the suffixed pronouns, 
the pronominal base kat, the prepositions aba, ea, ta, -kan, -nda, -zi, and the 
nom. -s, accus. -m, and genit, s of the noun. 
The roots da ‘ to give,’ g ‘to go, come,’ san ‘to make’: the verbal augment 
a: and the grammatical terminations: seem to point to an Indogermanic origin 
for the Hittite language. 
ae 
