Archaeological Mystery from 700 BC believed to have been solved by an Assyriologist
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Reported by Phys.org:
Ancient symbols on a 2,700-year-old temple, which have baffled experts for more than a century, have been explained by Trinity Assyriologist Dr. Martin Worthington.
The sequence of "mystery symbols" was on view on temples at various locations in ancient city of Dūr-Šarrukīn, present-day Khorsabad, Iraq, which was ruled by Sargon II, king of Assyria (721–704 BC).
The sequence of five symbols—a lion, eagle, bull, fig tree and plow—was first made known to the modern world through drawings published by French excavators in the late nineteenth century. Since then, there has been a spate of ideas about what the symbols might mean.
They have been compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs, understood as reflections of imperial might, and suspected to represent the king's name—but how?
Dr. Martin Worthington of Trinity's School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies has proposed a new solution in a paper published April 26 in the Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research. He argues the Assyrian words for the five symbols (lion, eagle, bull, fig tree and plow) contain, in the right sequence, the sounds that spell out the Assyrian form of the name "Sargon" (šargīnu).
Read more here.