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Our Earliest Historical Contacts with the Indo-Europeans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
The recognition of the kinship of many of the languages of Asia and Europe was the starting-point of the science of Indo-European philology; and hardly was the first linguistic family-tree set up before there was inaugurated the search for the original home of the Indo-Europeans, a search which has been going on for nigh to a century, and whose chief accomplishment to date has been a voluminous literature. Needless to say, the site of the first home has not yet been fixed. In the course of time the quest had gradually shifted from Asia, where Bactria served as a convenient centre for the original community, over to Europe, where Germany and Scandinavia were the chief claimants for this honour, when the discovery of Tocharish, a centum-language, once more revived the hypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans. Far be it from an Assyriologist to take sides in this matter: but may he be permitted to remind the Indo-European scholars that the chancesof finding older historical information about the Indo-Europeans than that furnished by the inscriptions from the Egypto-Babylonian cultural area are very slight indeed? It is the purpose of this paper to point out the earliest known contacts of the Indo-Europeanswith that cultural area and then to speculate a little as to when and whence these tribes may have come into Asia Minor and on into the Semitic world.
- Type
- Semitic, Sumerian, Hittite, and Egyptian Section
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1924
References
page 49 note 1 See Meyer, Eduard, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, pt. 2, §§ 561–70Google Scholar; and Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Indo-European Languages,” for the literature.
page 50 note 1 Cf. Langdon, , “Sumerian Origins and Racial Characteristics”: Archoeologia, lxx, 145 fGoogle Scholar.
page 51 note 1 American Journal of Semitic Languages, xl (1923), 1 fGoogle Scholar.
page 53 note 1 Breasted, , History of the Ancient Egyptians, 227Google Scholar.
page 54 note 1 See the following notes.
page 54 note 2 Twenty talents of gold seems to have been the regular price which the Pharaoh was compelled to pay for the establishing of “brotherhood” with the Asiatic kings. Ashur-uballit reminds Amenophis IV that, when his ancestor Ashur-nadin-ahe sent to Egypt, 20 talents of gold were given him. and Ashur-nadin-ahe was probably a contemporary of Thutmose III, who received the “tribute of the chief of Ashur (Breasted, , Ancient Records, ii, § 446)Google Scholar. The king of Hanigalbat also received 20 talents from Amenophis III (Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, No. 16). The total weight of the gold of the gifts sent by Amenophis IV to Burraburiash amountedtol,200 minas, that is twenty talents (Knudtzon, No. 14, Col. 2, 34).
page 54 note 3 Knudtzon, No. 42. There is some doubt as to the identity of the sender of this letter, but the evidence points to his having been a king of Hatti.
page 56 note 1 Orientalistische Literaiurzeitung, 1906, 588 f.
page 57 note 1 Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vi, 5, 8 f.
page 57 note 2 American Journal of Semitic Languages, xxvi (1910), 96 fGoogle Scholar .
page 57 note 3 Geschichte des Altertums, i, §§ 455, 468.
page 58 note 1 Die Sprache der Hethiter, 1917.
page 60 note 1 The Harri (or Hurri) of the Boghaz-Keui documents ?
page 60 note 2 Mariannu = marya “lord” occurs frequently as a class-name in the Amarna Letters, the Boghaz-Keui documents and the Egyptian records.