Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

THE CAPPADOCIAN CUNEIFORM TABLETS

BY PROF. A. H. SAYCE
The discovery of the Cappadocian tablets was due to the sagacity
of Dr Pinches, who announced it in the Proceedings of the Society
of Biblical Archeology, November 1881. The following summer
Professor W. M. Ramsay purchased five more tablets of a similar
nature at Kaisariyeh; upon these I published an article in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, November 1882.
Many of the characters, however, were erroneously identified by
Dr Pinches and myself, the result being that the conclusions I
drew in regard to the language of them were incorrect.
A considerable collection of similar tablets was subsequently
made by M. Golenischeff, who was thus enabled to correct the
erroneous values assigned to the characters by Dr Pinches and
myself. Among others was the character Si, the identification of
which furnished a key to the decipherment of the texts. It soon
became evident to M. Golenischeff that they were wholly, or in
part, in a dialect of Assyrian. In 1889 he generously placed his
copies of the tablets, as well as his discoveries, at my disposal [see
my letter in the Academy, Sept. 7, 1889, p. 157), and in 1891
published copies of twenty-four of his tablets together with an
introduction and a list of the characters and their values.
In the following year I published the first translations that had
been attempted of fourteen tablets, along with an introduction and

BABYLONIACA. - II.

1