1845.] The Himyaritic Language. 237 ARTICLE II. THE HIMYARITIC LANGUAGE. FORSTER'S PRETENDED DISCOVERY OF A KEY TO THE HIMYARITIC INSCRIPTIONS. By Edward E. Salisbury, Professor in Yale College. ARAB historians and geographers inform us of an alphabetical character anciently in use in Yemen, which they call the Himyaritic, from the name of an ancient dynasty of southern Arabia. The first European who sought to verify this information by the discovery of existing monuments, was Carsten Niebuhr. His inquiries, however, though not altogether fruitless, brought no inscription to light. Forty years later, about the year 1810, Seetzen, following a hint of Niebuhr, had the good fortune to discov er several inscriptions. But he made no attempt to decipher them, and the copies of some of them which he published in the Fundgruben des Orients, remained an unexplored mine.' About a quarter of a century after this, in the year 1834, the number of discovered inscriptions was greatly increased by researches, in connection with the coast-survey of the British along the southern shores of the Arabian peninsula; and the attention of some of the most distinguished philologians of Germany began to be directed to finding a key to the unknown character, which was now regarded as undoubtedly the Himyaritic of the Arab authors. In 1837 Roediger of Halle published some observations, preparatory to a deciphering of the inscriptions, in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes.2 Next appeared an essay by Gesenius in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung for July, 1841, which first gave results of deciphering, in certain readings. This was followed in the same year by a pamphlet from Roediger, entitled Versuch über die Himjaritischen Schriftmonumente; and in 1842 Roediger published a Himyaritic alphabet, with an Excurs über die Himjaritischen Inschriften, proposing interpretations of his own, as an appendix to a German translation of the travels of the first British discoverer of the inscriptions, Capt. Wellsted.3 'S. Fundgrub. d. Orients. Il. 282. 2 S. Z. für d. K. d. Morgenl. I. 332. 3 J. R. Wellsted's Reisen in Arabien. Deutsche Bearbeitung-von Dr. E. Rödiger. Halle, 1842,2 Bdd. |