Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/211

182 detected some trace of Ormuzd. But he identified the first portion of the word with the Zend of Anquetil 'éhoré,' and read for the whole 'Oromasdis cultor.' Yet, according to his own transliteration the word gave him ''α u r. . d  α,''  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·

He knew that a vowel may be omitted; and it is certainly strange that he never suspected that the two intervening letters might express 'muz,' and the whole give him 'Aurmuzda.' In deference to the Murgab inscription he had already changed his original z into a k, and his sch into sr; and we should think he might have seen sufficient ground in what has been said to justify his abandoning the o gh. His singular attachment to o gh prevented him from observing that the fourth letter in this word is the same as the letter that follows 'aka' in the other; and it is curious he did not see that an m in one case would help him on with 'Ormuzd,' just as an m in the other would lead up to 'Akam[enian]'.There was an additional reason indeed for his changing his o into m, for he knew that (according to Anquetil) nt was the sign of the accusative — a form from which he was forced to depart when he made o an accusative termination. If he had advanced to 'akam,' we can scarcely suppose that he would have failed to recognise 'Achaemenian' and would have modified his transliteration in accordance with this new