PHRYGIAN LANGUAGE. The native lan guage of the Phrygians is known partly through glosses preserved by Ilesychius and ether lexi eographers and authors, partly through inscrip tions found in the territory once occupied by this people. Tombs with inscriptions were discovered in the valley of [Melt:min by Colimel Leake in 1820. Four of these inscriptions. inelieling that on the sepulehre of King were first pub lished by Hamilton in 1842. A number of additinte inscriptions were published by Ramsay in 1883 and others copied by himself and Sterrett appeared subsequently. \Lilly of these are in tireek. but have Phrygian additions at the encl. That the additions contain formulas of execra was first surmised by Schmidt in 1869. The researches of Ramsay and Fick have corroborated this conjecture. As Herodotus (vii., 73) and Strube (xlvii., ecxcv.) declare that the Phrygians were related to the Armenians and the Thracians, it was natural that the language should be supposed to be Armenian. That was done by Mordtmamn and Gosehe. A collection of 63 glosses was made by Lagarde. Ile concluded that the Phrygians were derived from the Thracians and that. their Iranian character Va,s proved by such words as aM/Lea and sappavr. There seems to be good reason to• assuming that the Phrygian language belonged to the Iranian family. While most of the monuments found belong to the Roman period, there are some that have plausibly been essigned by Ramsay to the end of the eighth century n.c. If one doubtful letter is a x rather
than a 1G, as seems proMoble, the Phrygians ap parently received their alphabet, not from the Ionians, but front the old .,liolians. After the I'lu•ygian language had been supplanted by the Greek, it still maintained itself in imprecations, believed to be more efficacious in the speech of the fathers. The same alphabet has been found at Abu-Simbel in Egypt in inscriptions that must date from B.C. (350-590 and in an inscription found in Lemnos in 1886 in an unknown language and of uncertain age. Consult : Leake, clournal of a Tour in Asia Minor (London. 1824) ; Hamil ton, Researches in. Asia Minor, Pontus, and Ar menia (ilL, 1842) ; Stewart, Ancient Monuments of Lydia and Phryyia (lb., 1842) ; Lagarde, licsammclIc Abhandlanyen (Leipzig. 1866) ; Cor pus Inscriptionum Gra-carom, iii. 3810, et seq.; Schmidt, Nene lykischc Studien (Jena, 1869); Fick, "Zuni Phrygisehen," in Bezzenberger's Bei tritge, xiv., 50; Ramsay, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xv. (London, ]883) ; id.. in Jour nal of Hellenic Studies (Loudon, 1882, 1884) ; in Zcitschrift fur verglefehende Sprachforschung, xxviii. (Gillenloh, 1887).