Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/255

226 values, may be allowed to pass, especially in consideration of the German pronunciation of w. Nine were incorrect—i' (16), k (19), o (25), z (26), h (27), n (28), g(32), g(33),s(40).

But it contained a peculiarity of its own into which Lassen was betrayed by a desire to press the grammatical forms of Zend upon the cuneiform language. In the first place he insisted with not less force than Burnouf, in distinguishing the long and short vowels. Each of the vowels a, i, u are accordingly allotted two distinct signs, and one of his defective signs is pressed into the service in order to secure a û. But in addition to this his α, when it occurs in the middle of a word, takes the value of α; and in a similar position his î and û nuiy become y and r. Still more remarkable is his treatment of diphthongs. He observed three instances in which two signs are seen frequently to follow each other. Of one of these accidental combinations he made a long ĉ, of the second an ô and of the third a q He forfeited much of the advantage of his greater command of correct values by falling into these errors. He, however, boldly recognised that some consonants are represented by more than one cuneiform sign, among which he includes t with four signs; s, r, n and m with two each. He was not uniformly correct in the signs he allotted nor in their number; but if he gave too many to t, which has only two, he did not give enough to m, which has three.

Lassen gave full credit to Grotefend for his ingenious discovery, and he admitted that the values established