Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/346

Rh in a few cases—such, for example, as the e already men- tionecl, the similarity to the form of a Babylonian character was the only clue to the value of the Median sifjfn.^ If he had allowed himself to be more influenced by the Babylonian script he would have slightly in- creased the number of his corret^t values ; - though, on the other hand, a too rigorous adherence to this rule might have landed him in some errors. He hazarded the imi)ortant statement, subsequently so remarkably confirmed, that there are evident signs that the sylla- barium had been originally devised to express a Scythic tongue,^ for, he said, ' the unchangeable roots, the agglutinative structure and the simple syllabisation of such tongues are perfectly suited to such a mode of writing, while the Semitic and Indo-Germanic cannot without the most awkward and unsvstematic arran«fe- ments be represented by it.' He considered that the languaw of the second column must have been that of the pastoral triljes of Persia ; and he pointed out that the omission from the Median text of the names of the districts in which Otiara and Kliages are placed showed that those towns were well known where the lan<i[ua<jfe was si)oken, and it also afforded some evidence of the area it covered. On the other hand, the discovery of Scythic inscriptions at Susa seemed to point no less emphatically to its southern range, and the possibility presented itself that that was the source from which it spread. De Saulcy farther showed that a close analogy might be traced to Turkish ; but Xorris was the first to point out that its nearest modern relation- ship is with the Volga-Finnish branch of the Scythic


 * Sec also Nos. 67, 74 (Xorris's list).

^ For example, Nos. 17, 35, ."iS.

' Oppert tab's the credit of this to himself: * Depuis 18ol, j'avais entrevii I'origine touranit*nni» dr TecriturM cuneiforme ' (Les MedeSy p. 5), but he acknowh'dges that Xorris had suggested it.