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The Ethiopic Inscription from Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

In the JRAS., 1954, pp. 119 ff., Professor Enno Littmann, the Nestor of Ethiopic epigraphists, published a Gə'əz inscription from Egypt together with two photographs, a vocalized version and a translation. His decipherment covers seven lines of widely varying legibility, but it appears from scratches visible in fig. 1 that the original inscription contained at least two further lines of which nothing can be recognized to-day. Littmann acknowledges (ibid., p. 121) that most of the restorations, especially those following upon line 3, are “mere conjectures”. This view is, indeed, borne out by study of the inscription and by its very bad state of preservation. In other words: of an inscription of probably nine lines barely a third is in a condition offering a reasonable basis for decipherment. When one remembers that most Ethiopic inscriptions (as, indeed, Oriental epigraphic documents in general) are provided with a generous portion of a preliminary and introductory character, one soon realizes that hopes of a substantial enrichment of Gə'əz epigraphy are bound to be disappointed. This does not mean that the remaining three lines are of no value; any contribution to the not over-abundant inscriptional material of early Ethiopic deserves attention. Professor Littmann and Mr. Meredith have placed Semitists in their debt by making this still unvocalized Gə'əz inscription available for general discussion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1955

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References

page 159 note 1 I submitted my views to Professor Littmann who, in the course of the ensuing correspondence, encouraged me to publish my remarks. I have reason to believe that Professor Littmann is in substantial agreement with many of the points adduced in the following.

page 159 note 2 am using my own mode of transcription which I have endeavoured to justify in my Semitic Languages of Ethiopia: A Comparative Phonology, London, 1955Google Scholar.

page 160 note 1 Cf. among others the obelisk of Matara where 'Agaz appears alone (Littmann, , Aksum Expedition, iv, p. 61Google Scholar; Ullendorff, , JRAS., 1951, pp. 26 ff.Google Scholar).

page 160 note 2 See also some of the very relevant passages quoted in Dillmann's Lexicon.

page 160 note 3 This is now also acknowledged by Prof. Littmann on further examination of fig. 1 (letter of 27th December, 1954).