Archibald Sayce: Perbedaan antara revisi

 

== Riwayat hidup ==

 

Pada tahun 1874 Sayce menerbitkan sebuah makalah panjang, "The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians" ("Astronomi dan Astrologi bangsa Babel") dalam ''Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology'' vol. 3, part 1, dengan transkripsi dan terjemahan teks-teks dalam tulisan [[kuneiform]] yang berkaitan. Naskah ini merupakan salah satu artikel pertama yang mengenali dan menerjemahkan teks-teks astronomi kuno dalam tulisan paku itu.

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Pada tahun 1876, he deciphered one of the [[logogram|hieroglyphic]]s inscribed on stones at [[Hamath]] in Syria, by deducing that the profile of a man stood for "I". In 1880, he deciphered another hieroglyphic which he recognised as the governing prefix that identified divinity. He had suspected for some time that [[Boghazkoy]] was the capital of the [[Hittites]] because some hieroglyphic scripts found at [[Aleppo]] and Hamath in northern Syria were matched to the script on a monument at Boghazkoy.

Sayce concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic system was predominantly a [[syllabary]], that is, its symbols stood for a phonetic syllable. There were too many different signs for a system that was alphabetical and yet there were too few for it to be a set of ideographs. That very sign standing for the divinity had appeared on the stones of Hamath and other places, always in the form of a prefix of an indecipherable group of hieroglyphics naming the deities. This led Sayce to conclude that by finding the name of one of these deities with the help of another language endowed with similar pronunciation, one might analyse the conversion of the aforesaid name in Hittite hieroglyphics. Also, he stated that the keys to be obtained through that process might in turn be applied to other parts of a Hittite inscription where the same sign were to occur.