* * * * *
"Are you sure at least that this inscription is interesting enough to
justify us in our undertaking?" I asked Morhange.
My companion started with pleasure. Ever since we began our journey I
had realized his fear that I was coming along half-heartedly. As soon
as I offered him a chance to convince me, his scruples vanished, and
his triumph seemed assured to him.
"Never," he answered, in a voice that he tried to control, but through
which the enthusiasm rang out, "never has a Greek inscription been
found so far south. The farthest points where they have been reported
are in the south of Algeria and Cyrene. But in Ahaggar! Think of it!
It is true that this one is translated into Tifinar. But this
peculiarity does not diminish the interest of the coincidence: it
increases it."
"What do you take to be the meaning of this word?"
"Antinea can only be a proper name," said Morhange. "To whom does it
refer? I admit I don't know, and if at this very moment I am marching
toward the south, dragging you along with me, it is because I count on
learning more about it. Its etymology? It hasn't one definitely, but
there are thirty possibilities. Bear in mind that the Tifinar alphabet
is far from tallying with the Greek alphabet, which increases the
number of hypotheses. Shall I suggest several?"
"I was just about to ask you to."
"To begin with, there is [Greek: agti] and [Greek: neos], the woman
who is placed opposite a vessel, an explanation which would have been
pleasing to Gaffarel and to my venerated master Berlioux. That would
apply well enough to the figure-heads of ships. There is a technical
term that I cannot recall at this moment, not if you beat me a hundred
times over.[7] [Footnote 7: It is perhaps worth noting here that Figures de Proues
is the exact title of a very remarkable collection of poems by Mme.
Delarus-Mardrus. (Note by M. Leroux.)] "Then there is [Greek: agtinêa], that you must relate to [Greek: agti]
and [Greek: naos], she who holds herself before the [Greek: naos],
the [Greek: naos] of the temple, she who is opposite the sanctuary,
therefore priestess. An interpretation which would enchant Girard and
Renan.
"Next we have [Greek: agtine], from [Greek: agti] and [Greek: neos],
new, which can mean two things: either she who is the contrary of
young, which is to say old; or she who is the enemy of novelty or
the enemy of youth.
"There is still another sense of [Greek: gati], in exchange for,
which is capable of complicating all the others I have mentioned;
likewise there are four meanings for the verb [Greek: neô], which
means in turn to go, to flow, to thread or weave, to heap. There
is more still.... And notice, please, that I have not at my
disposition on the otherwise commodious hump of this mehari, either
the great dictionary of Estienne or the lexicons of Passow, of Pape,
or of Liddel-Scott. This is only to show you, my dear friend, that
epigraphy is but a relative science, always dependent on the discovery
of a new text which contradicts the previous findings, when it is not
merely at the mercy of the humors of the epigraphists and their pet
conceptions of the universe.