Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/284

Rh (𐏑𐏓 • 𐎢) ô, likewise disappear; and, what is even of more consequence, his disastrous (𐎢 .𐎺) for q is quietly suffered to drop. Strange to say, the unlucky conjunction of these two letters u and w with q excited the unbounded admiration of Jacquet, who regarded it as the most brilliant inspiration of its author.

To compensate for these omissions, Lassen added a sign (𐏑𐏓) which with 44 in addition to the thirty-three signs in Niebuhr's list, made up the thirty-five letters which constitute his alphabet. This sign (𐏑𐏓) is always found in conjunction with 31 (𐎴) n. Grotefend pointed out long ago that the two signs 𐎴. 𐏑𐏓 replace the word for 'king' and, whatever might be their pronunciation, there was no doubt as to their signification. It was at first supposed that the last letter was an alternative sign for 27 (𐎹); but this had to be abandoned, and Lassen now gives it the value of rp, and he reads the combined letters 'narap.' He was led to this result because Westergaard thought that the word corresponding to it in the second column had the sound of 'narap.' The two signs are now treated as together forming a monogram for 'king,' and in transliteration they are represented by khs to indicate an abbreviated form of the royal title. He adds also the two new signs that occur in the Inscription of Artaxerxes. The one (𐏍) first appeared in the copy published by Grotefend in 1837; the other (𐏏) is dimly discernible in Rich (Pl. 23, line 10), and is no doubt more clearly delineated by Westergaard. The first had evidently the sound of dah, for it precedes the j in the well-known word 'dahjunam'; the other clearly denotes the complex sound 'bumi' in the word 'bumi-ja.'