Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/298

Rh beginning to be remarked that certain of these sia'us to which modifications of the same sound were ascribed were only to be found hi combination with particular vowels. Lassen himself had pointed out hi his First Memoir of 1836 that m (29) always preceded an z. Jaccjuet added that r (40) always occuirred before u. Iloltzmann also remarked that 28 (»-y^), to whi(^h he gave the value of </, is always followed by a, and 19 rf by i}

The merit of Hincks consists in this : that he was the first to point out that the various signs allotted to the same letter did not differ from each other l)y any modification of sound as Lassen supposed, and also that their employment was regulated according to the vowel that succeeded them. lie accordingly divided the signs for these consonants into two classes, ac- cording as they were followed by a, inherent or expressed, and by i or it ; and he added r : the former he called primary, and the latter secondary, consonants. Lassen, as we have said, was of opinion that the secondary letters must have a somewhat different value, and in particular that they were all aspirated. He also thought they might be used indifferently before any vowel. Thus, for example, he supposed that the two signs for m (»-yyy and J^^) might both be used before i, and that they expressed a slightly different sound. Hincks, on the contrary, maintained that ►-YTY could never really open upon i; and when it ap})ears to do so, as in the group ^^ . ^, d is always under- stood. Thus y^^ • ft i^ ' ^^"^1/ ^^^^ *^yyy ft j^^ ' ^^^^i ' oi*

' mc,' the secondary form of vi Ijeing equivalent to its primary form ; aiid he ascribed the existence in the alpliabet of this peculiarity to a survival from a

' See abo\e, pp. i*29, 244 : lloltznianii, pp. 60, 7H.