Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/278

Rh sign zh(i) and Oppert z(j)i; but both these sounds have since yielded to the one proposed by Rawlinson, and it now appears as j before i. But Rawinson's most striking success was with the last letter, 33 (, another g of Lassen. In his letter to Burnouf, he proposed to substitute m. . It is the initial letter in the name Lassen read 'Gudrâha ' and thought indicated the Gordyaei. Rawlinson suggested the name was M'udraya, and should be compared with the Phoenician 'Mǔdra' and the Hebrew 'Mitsraim,' and signified, in fact, Egypt. Both of these emendations were, however, rejected by Lassen.

There is another sign which came under discussion at this time. It will be recollected that we have assigned 13 to Lassen, who gave it the approximate value of t. Rawlinson, however, suggested to Burnouf that its true value is not t but tr. In this, however, he had been anticipated, as we have seen, by Grotefend in 1837, who suggested thr. It is admitted that it is impossible to distinguish between the comparative merits of tr and thr; ^ and as Rawlinson probably knew nothing of Grotefend's 'Beitriige' at the time, he may be credited with having discerned the correct sound of the sign.

Then, as on subsequent occasions, his great merit lay in the superiority of his translations. He was already in a position to criticise Lassen's efforts in this department with some severity. He thought that Lassen had 'in many cases misunderstood both the etymology of the words and the grammatical structure