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prove to be, they have, in part at least, themselves repudiated their former work. It must be admitted, of course, that a hieroglyphic literature presents the most and the greatest difficulties of interpreta tion, and most surely presents them and there these dangers of fatal mistake are greatest. But another fact is not easily recognized, i‘s, indeed, too often overlooked altogether; this, namely, that a language not hieroglyphic and a literature in a known tongue presents difficulties which differ from these mentioned only in degree and in the form of embodiment and not at all in the essential quality of the danger involved. Since a literature means only what it was intended to mean by those from whom it comes, whatever it may be that in any degree obscures that intention, whether method of writing, peculiarities of expression, or references to topography, history and manners and customs, it always presents that one and the same problem which the element of human colition inter jects, the problem of determining which of all possible meaning was chosen as the intention of the author. So that, in any case, the historical method, and only the historical method, can speak the last word in criticism. But the historical method in all ancient literature, whether sacred or profane, becomes the archaeological method. The most plausible theory of a literature, though it seem to embrace every detail and meet every condition imposed, even though it actually does so, may after all be found to be, as in one or two attempts at the decipherment of -the Hittite inscriptions, wholly false when tested by facts of con temporary history and by the principles of comparative philology, which are them selves but some of the universal facts of human experience. 3. Now the dangers of unconfirmed the ory in life and literature are added together in history, which, in its final form, is but life written down, human experience given over to all the infinitely varied convention alities of literature. Here it is doubly
do it, if the proper precautions are not taken. It is easy to see the truth of this conten tion in the case of unknown numerals. A dozen persons may each assign values to such numerals and, with such assigned val ues, may add, subtract, multiply, and divide correctly in method, though not a single assignment of value be correct and the assignments of not two of the dozen be alike. This danger, so apparent in the case of numerals, which are, in fact, word signs, is always present and to be reckoned with in the decipherment and interpretation of hieroglyphic writings. Actual examples of the fulfillment of Renouf’s warning thesis are not wanting in the history of the decipherment of unknown tongues. The grotesque, yet confident, efforts at the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta stone which supplied the true key, are not for gotten. Indeed, it is to be hoped that they will always be remembered to stimulate caution in future decipherers of unknown tongues. Budge says: “In more modern times, the first writer, at any length, on hiero glyphs was Athanasius Kircher, the author of some ponderous works in which he pre tended to have found the key to the hiero glyphic inscriptions and to translate them. Though a man of great learning, it must be said that, judged by scholars of today, he would be considered an imposter.” Joseph de Guines (1770) maintained that China was settled by Egyptians and the Chinese characters only degenerate hiero glyphs. Similar failures in the attempt to deci pher the Hittite hieroglyphs and translate the Hittite inscriptions must form painful recollections to some distinguished scholars yet living, whose efforts, extending in some cases not only to lists of signs, but to syl labaries, vocabularies, grammers, and trans lations, are now, in part, and in some cases, in toto, rejected by the whole learned world. However successful present or future efforts of these distinguished scholars may
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