Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/228

Rh reasons that led him to these important results, as well as many grammatical and literary considerations which he promised to publish in a more extended Memoir. One success he may indeed claim. In reading the name of Hystaspes he compared it to a Zend form 'Vyschtaspo,' which gave a more correct result than the 'Goshtasp' of Grotefend. This happy accident enabled him to assign the correct value of r instead of g to one cuneiform sign; and in the second letter of the same word he substituted y for Grotefend's o, and thereby approached nearer the correct value, which is i. These are the sole contributions he made to the work of decipherment.

It must not, however, be supposed that his treatment of the alphabet was wanting in originality. It will be recollected that Grotefend was in possession of thirteen correct values; but of these St. Martin rejected five. The eight that remained added to the two he determined himself (r and y or i) gave him an alphabet of ten correct values, as opposed to the thirteen in the possession of Grotefend. He altered the values Grotefend had incorrectly assigned to nine other characters, without making any improvement upon them.