Excerpt from Report of the Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists: Held in London, 1874

Section is the interpretation of the Etruscan language. That tongue, which belongs to the extinct class, has exercised the in genuity of Europe for more than a century, and the difficulty of solving the mystery has alwa s been a reproach to the power of decipherment and nter reist on exhibited in the rapid progress made in the Semitic Cuneiform and Hamitic E yptian. Since the work of Lanai, various in uirers have re erred it to the different European languages, anai himself to the Greek and Latin, Sir William Betham to the irish, M. Judas to the Hebrew, another in airer to the Teutonic, and the Rev. Isaac Taylor to the Turan an stem. Mr Taylor proposes la 'ing his views before this S. Etion, and the sub ect is one wort ny of the atten tion of the Congress, as in the scursiou that will very likely ensue it will probably be shown wh ther it should be considered a Turanian or an italian dialect, to which latter class the o inions of scholars have generally inclined to assign it. The ws of Mr. Taylor will, however, have specially to be con sidered, and the proofs he wishes to bring forward in favour of his by thesis will be passed under examination. The great dificuig) about the Etruscan language is that the words do not appear to be directly connected with the Italian dialects as they are at egos-sent known, and the inscriptions are, although nume rous, short to enable sufficient comparisons to be made to determine logically the meanin of words not being proper names which are found in the di ercut texts The an Sec on will have is rs on the Sanscrit literature and eu jccts con nected wit t, and the flood of light which the study of this language has thrown on the history of Euro an languages has m 9 its study the most favoured of Orion languages. 'l here is eu to be found the original source of the very tongue in w ch this Address is delivered. It is, as all are.awure, a literary, not a monumental language, as no monuments inscribed in Sanscrit or its nearest Indian alects are older than the ith century as It is a problem yet to be solved, what was the oldest Aryan al habet? As it Greek, Syrian, or Lycian Y As yet none is known 0 der than the 7th century a c., and of course t xey are all comparatively recent compared with the E piisu and Baby lonian. Among the languages of the Aryan eetion attention should be directed to the Lycian, as it is certainly one of the oldest which a pear on the monuments This dialect limited to a small 1 mliy in the south-western coast of Asia Minor, and written in a xed Greek and I'htenician ai habet has not fit been interpreted to any extent, although e al habet has en deciphered. It was in 1839 that the late Sir i-cilowce first brought to En land trustworthy copies of Lycian inscrip tions. Several of t ese were bilingual, and the language has been supposed to resemble the Zend; but the interpretation has been suspended. And although attempts have been recently made to affiliate it to the Sclavonic and even to one of the Wels languages, it must still be classed, like the co nate Carian, among the extinct or unknown languages of Asia inor.

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