480 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 224 



of Harvard college, and Jastrow of the University 

 of Pennsylvania, further proofs were offered con- 

 firming, from certain references to the sunrise in 

 the cuneiform texts, the mythological notions at- 

 tributed by Dr. Ward to the Assyrians from a 

 study of the seals in question. 



Prof. Isaac Hall followed with an account of an 

 important Syriac manuscript in the Union theo- 

 logical seminary of New York. Dr. Hall gave 

 specimens of the manuscript, which will probably 

 be published in the journal of the society. 



Rev. Mr. Winslow had an interesting communi- 

 cation to make on the completion of an edition of 

 the ' Book of the dead.' The publication of this, 

 the most famous literary production of the ancient 

 Egyptians, was undertaken at the instigation of 

 the International congress of orientalists, under 

 the superintendence of Prof. Eduard Naville of 

 Geneva. An idea of the labor involved in this 

 task may be gathered from the fact that the dis- 

 tinguished Swiss savant has been engaged in the 

 preparation of it during the past twelve j-ears. 

 More than thirty papyri copies of the wox'k were 

 employed by him, besides the inscriptions on the 

 walls at Thebes. As a result, two large folio vol- 

 umes and one in quarto lie before us, containing 

 the text, an elaborate introduction, and many 

 thousands of variant readings. The old Egyptians 

 carried the notion that this life was but a prepa- 

 ration for the next, to much further excess even 

 than the Christians of the middle ages. Their en- 

 tire philosophy and religion hinged around the 

 one point of a future life ; and hence it hap- 

 pens that their religious book par excellence, their 

 Bible as we might say, was a ' Book of the dead,' 

 or rather a ' Book for the dead,' containing an 

 elaborate ceremonial and important instructions, 

 all bearing directly upon death and the future 

 world. The honors and distinctions which have 

 been fairly showered upon Professor Naville since 

 the completion of his enormous task, by the 

 crowned heads of Eiu-ope and by learned socie- 

 ties, give proof of the great importance attached 

 to this publication, which may indeed be said to 

 mark an epoch in the history of Egyptology. At 

 the suggestion of Mr. Winslow, the executive 

 committee of the American oriental association 

 adopted resolutions tendering its congTatulations 

 to Egyptologists and to Professor Naville, upon 

 the appearance of the work. 



Prof. D. G. Lyon announced a new publication 

 in the department of Assyriology, which he be- 

 lieved to be as important to Assyriologists and 

 Semitic scholars in general as the ' Book of the 

 dead ' was to Egyptologists. He referred to 

 Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch's Assyrian dictionary, 

 the first fascicule of which has just been issued. 



The vs^ork had been announced already ten years 

 ago, since which time scholars have been most 

 anxiously waiting for it. Professor Lyon dwelt 

 upon the enormous labor involved in it and on its 

 great importance ; but to judge from the first 

 part, which only embraces a small portion of the 

 first letter, the dictionary, when completed, will 

 be of an enormous size, and it is doubtful whether 

 it can be finished in less than a decade, to say the 

 least, that is, if Professor Delitzsch continues it 

 on the large scale mapped out in this fascicule. 

 There is certainly no- one better qualified for this 

 prodigious undertaking — which, when completed, 

 will be a monument to German scholarship — than 

 Delitzsch, who is acknowledged to be without a 

 superior as an Assyrian scholar ; and his courage 

 in not shrinking from the difficulties it involves is 

 in itself worthy of our highest admiration. As- 

 syriology is perhaps the youngest of the sciences. 

 Scarcely three generations have passed since the 

 first attempt was made to decipher a line of cunei- 

 form writing ; but so rapid is the progress which 

 has been made, more especially during the past 

 two decades, that such an undertaking as that of 

 Delitzsch has become at least a possibility. 



The afternoon session was opened with a paper 

 on ' Ikonomatic writing in Assyrian,' from Prof. 

 Morris Jastrow, jun., which treated on the tran- 

 sition from picture-writing to phonetic writing in 

 the Assyrian cuneiform system in connection with 

 a theory advanced recently by Dr. D. G. Brinton 

 of the University of Pennsylvania. The latter 

 assumed an intermediate stage between the meth- 

 od of expressing thought by pictures, and purely 

 phonetical writing, to which be gave the name of 

 ' ikonomatic writing,' and which consisted in 

 using pictures or symbols for the purpose of indi- 

 cating a word or words similar or identical in 

 sound to the object represented by the picture. 

 We find this method, which is the principle upon 

 which the ordinary rebus rests, very widely em- 

 ployed in the Egyptian, Chinese, and in Mexican 

 pictography. Thus, in the first named, nefer is 

 the name of a lute, and represented, by a picture 

 of that instioiment. But nefer, by a coincidence 

 of sound (but not of stem), also signifies door, 

 conscript soldier, and colt. Accordingly, by the 

 adojition of the ikonomatic device, the picture of 

 the lute is employed to recall any of these three 

 words, though generally with some determinative 

 sign as an aid to the reader to enable him to know 

 which of the various nefers is meant. In the 

 Mexican and Mayan systems, as Dr. Brinton shows, 

 this method is carried to much further excess, a 

 remote similarity of soimd being sufficient to 

 warrant the tise of a picture or symbol in this 

 way. , 



