Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/299

270 syllabic mode of writing. Its utility is, however, obvious, for with only three vowels — a. i and u — it would otherwise be impossible to render the sounds e and 6 [at — au). As, however, the consonants them- selves were of the same value, Hincks writes them with the same sign, and discards the h which had till then been added to mark an imaginary difference in the sound of the secondary consonants. This is precisely what liawlinson did hi his Supplementary Note, and for the same reason. Hincks lays down the general rule that when a prinuiry consonant replaces a secondary consonant before / or u^ ' an a must be interposed either as a distinct syllable or as a guna to the vowel.' * This alteration led to a considerable modification in the method of transliteration, but its importance arose from the altered translation of which the words became susceptible. Thus, in the instance already given, Mniy' is the termination of the first person shigular i)resent tense of tlu^ verb ; while ' mey ' (properly ' maiy ') is the enclitic pronoun used for mi/. So also the words Lassen transliterates ' utamija khsathram ' and renders ' tum hoc regnum,' when properly transliterated ' utame ' (* utanuiiy ') signify ' meumque regnum.' -^

IIin(»ks had also the merit of callini^ attenticm to the indiscriminate addition of a by Lassen to words ending in /?/ and nw. This lengtheniiiir of the syllable some- times entirely obscured the sense — as in ' thatija,' which Lassiii supposed to signify ' gcnerosus,' and which is in fact the verb ' he savs.' '^

When we ccmipare Ilincks's alphabet with Lassen's (passing over the mere omission of the aspirates) we

' Trrtns. li. I. Acad. loc. cit. pp. 117 Is. - I/>. ]). 124 ; rf. Spiegel, K Inscription, line 18, p. (>. •^ Trans. JL I.Acad, loc. cit. p. IK). For Hincks's Al])liabct sec Trans. li. I. Acad. loc. cit. p. l.*U and A]>]t. A.