Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/248

Rh correct. He thus added Persia, Media, Babylon, Arabia, Cappadocia, Sarangia, Bactria and Sogdiana to the names deciphered from the cuneiform; and we have seen how nearly he arrived at four more—Athura (or Assyria), Armenia, Ionia ' and Parthia.

Among his contributions to a knowledge of the grammar, he pointed out that the change of Grotefend's o into m brought the accusative singular into line with the Zend and Sanscrit; the genitive aha is also found in Zend, and both languages alike use it as a dative. A nominative ending in oh has also its counterpart in the Zend termination in o. He indicated the apparent barbarism that treats the nominative case as inherent in the word itself; so that the case-ending is appended to it without modification, as if we wrote 'dominus-um' for 'dominum,' or 'dominus-i' for 'domini.'

He inferred from the two words 'Aurmzda' and 'izrk' that cases occur in which both the vowels and the aspirate are suppressed; and he concluded that the system of cuneiform writing could not have been originally applied to express a Sanscrit or Zend language, in both of which the vowel is rigorously represented. He conjectured also that the cuneiform signs for the vowels might include an aspirate that rendered its separate expression unnecessary. 'There is therefore an evident disagreement between the language of the inscriptions and the characters in