From: tgpedersen
Message: 54136
Date: 2008-02-25
>Oh! Asir! Vanir! Interesting! (Now all hell breaks loose)
>
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@>
> wrote:
> >
> > It's definitely an odd situation. I realize they once
> > used the term "Hieroglyphic Hittite" but I thought the
> > term died out long, long ago. The idea that it's
> > possibly an Iranian among the Urartians makes sense
> > --although the Armenians claim they are the heirs to
> > the Urartians. It's something that does need to be
> > followed up, though.
>
>
> The idea that Schythians lived among the Urartians in eastern
> Kurdistan in the 7th centuty BC is perfectly acceptable -- there was
> plenty of Scythians and Cimmerians throughout the Near East during
> that century. What is not accepted in Harmatta's hypothesis is that
> the Saqqez inscription (Lake Urmia area) represents a written
> document encoding an ancient Scythian language, for which there are
> no other known parallels in the ANE. Prof. Alemany's critique I have
> reproduced in my earlier post is based on the fact that no other
> scholar has taken the hieroglyphic-like symbols engraved in that
> inscriprion as language-encoding signs -- therefore, how could the
> inscription have encoded an Iranian language?
>
> If Harmatta's hypothesis were true, that would be revolutionary:
> this would be the first written inscription in a Scythian language
> so far discovered west of Central Asia!
>