BABYLON AND PERSIA

196 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSLA.7. Interesting and important as these sepulchralmonuments are, they do not supply us. with what weseek. Wc find no clue to help us date the mostarchaic of them, as these are not generally furnishedwith inscriptions. Many of the late ones, indeed,make up for it by presenting us with a double set,what has been called " bilingual inscriptions," i.e.,inscriptions in two languagesthe native, and Greek.From these we see that the alphabets used for thetwo languages have much resemblance. The sameremark applies to such Phrygian inscriptions as havebeen discovered. The languages of this group ofnations, i.e., such scraps as the few inscriptions havepreserved, although they can be deciphered with butlittle difficulty, owing to the familiar alphabet, havenot been reconstructed to any satisfactory extent,mainly from scantiness of material. Even theseslender resources, however, establish the existenceof at least two different groups among the languagesof ancient Asia Minor in historical times: those ofPhrygia, Mysia, and others in the west and thenorthwest are found to incline towards a very ancientAryan philological type, the Pelasgic, from whichthe Greek language is descended, while there is greatuncertainty about those of Lycia and the neigh¬boring Caria.*8. It is evidently impossible, from such slight andscattered data, to gather materials for any thing thatcould be called history, yet perhaps not quite im-* I'rofessr A. H. Sayce. in one of his latest works, positively de¬clares that the Lycian language "is not Aryan,' in spite of .all theattempts that have been made to show the contrary."