Undeciphered Scripts

Abstract

ACCORDING to a letter from Sir Denison Ross in the Times of Sept. 21, M. Guillaume Hevesy, a Hungarian resident in Paris, has discovered that a number of the signs of the prehistoric Indian script on seals from Mohenjo-daro also appear in the script of the Easter Island inscribed wooden tablets, while some of the Easter Island signs, not present on the Indian seals, are to be found in the proto-Elamic of Susa. It would now be interesting to hear whether there is any coincidence in the interpretation of the prehistoric Indian signs suggested by Sir Flinders Petrie (see NATURE, Sept. 17, p. 429) and those suggested for the Easter Island script in the Report of the Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute of which Mr. Sidney Ray was chairman. The suggestion of a connexion between the two scripts is not the only attempt to find an affinity between Easter Island and this part of Asia. M. J. Hackin, of the Musée Guimet, has recently directed attention to the resemblance which has been noted between the wooden statues, probably ancestral, which were objects of reverence among the Kafirs of Afghanistan before they were overwhelmed by Islam, of which examples are now preserved in the Kabul Museum, and the well-known statues of Easter Island. The resemblances certainly are strong, although it might be argued that they do not go beyond what may be due to the limitations of an undeveloped technique. It must also be admitted that when the material which it is sought to bring into relation is so widely separated in date as in these instances, the comparison, in default of intervening links, carries more interest than conviction.