INSCRIPTIONS, a term applied to all writings engraved or written on objects or monuments not of the class of books, principally on hard materials, such as metals, stones, and other substances. They arc a class of documents of the highest interest and importance to history and philology, and a consideration of them embraces the whole scope of history, language, and art. The eldest (excepting those of China) are probably the Egyptian inscriptions found in the pyramids (see PYRAMIDS), of about 2000 B.C. ; to which succeed those of Assyria and Babylonia, reaching nearly as high an antiquity (see CuNmFoRai which are succeeded by the Persian and Median, 525 B.C., and along with which prevailed the Phenician, probably about 700 B.C. (see FIIENICIA); which were in their turn succeeded by the Greek, between 500 and 600 B.C., or even earlier; which were succeeded by the Etruscan and Roman, in 400-300 B.C., and continued through the middle ages in Europe to the present day. See PALEOG RAPHY. In the east, the oldest inscriptions are those of China, which ascend to 2278 B.C.; those of India not being older than 315 B.C., or the age of Sandracottus; while the antiquity of the hieroglyphical inscriptions of Central America cannot be determined. Of many ancient nations, the history and language are found in inscriptions only, as in the case of Lycia and Etruria, and all official inscriptions have a certain authority, from their contemporaneous nature, and the care with which they were executed.
Before the invention of paper or other light substances for the record of events, pub lic acts, devotions, and other documents were inscribed on bronze, as the early treaties and dedications of the Greeks, or even lead, as certain small of imprecation and others found in Greece; gold plates were inscribed and placed foundations under the temples, as that of Canopus show; time neequatu•s of consuls among the Greeks, and the discharges of the Roman soldiery, were inscribed on bronze tables; while charms, amulets, and other formulae were occasionally inscribed on metals. The inscriptions known, probably amounting to half a million, have been classed finder public or official acts, tables of magistrates, military titles, lists of magistrates, those relating to the gymnasia or games, honors rendered to emperors or men, donations, rites, private and sepulchral, comprising epitaphs, sonic in elegiac and heroic verse, and numerous minor inscriptions on gems, vases, and other objects of ancient art, ou wax tablets or pugillaria, and the scrawls discovered on the walls of public and private edifices, as at Pompeii and elsewhere. The study of the letters and their form will be seen under
ALPHABET; that of the different languages and the mode of deciphering, under their respective heads. Those found upon coins will be mentioned in NUMISMATICS.. The most remarkable inscriptions are the trilingual inscription of Rosetta, that of Shal manazer on the obelisk of Nimrud, and the cylinder of Sennacherib; the trilingual inscription of Darius I. on the rock at Behistun; the Greek inscription of the soldiers of Psammetichus at Ibsamhoul, and of the bronze helmet dedicated by Hiero I. to the Olympian Jupiter; the inscription on the coffin of the Cyprian king Asmumazer; the Etruscan inscription called the Eugublue tables; that of Mummius, the conqueror of Corinth, at Rome, and the will of Augustus at Ancyra; the inscription of the Ethiopian monarch Si]co; the old monument of Yu, and the inscription of Se•gan•fu, recording the arrival of Christianity in China (631 A.D.); the inscriptions of Chandra and Asoka in India. The study of inscriptions is so difficult that it has formed a special branch of scholarship, such as decipherment for those of which the language has been lost, or epigraphy for the dead languages. Special collections of the inscriptions of different localities, and general ones, have been made of those in the seine languages as Assyrian, Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, and Latin, by Gruter, Muratori, Btickh, Franz, Orellius, Mommsen, Letroune, Lebas, and others. Inscriptions have also engaged the scholarship and attention of the most accomplished philologists, with various success, from the end of the 17th century. They have been forged by Fourmont and others.—Grute•, Thesaurus Inser. (fo. 1603-63); Muratori, Pains Thesaurus (4to, 1739); Kellerman, Spec. Epigraph. (1841); Mommsen, Inscript. Xectpol. (fo. 1852); Backh and Franz, Carpus laseript. Gra'c.; Osann, Sylloge (1822); Lepsius, laser. Umbr. et Use.; Gesenius, Script. Ling. Phcen ; Garucci, Graffiti.