Atlantida

* * * * *

"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.