Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/349

320 M. Oppert had now become the chief representative of cuneiform studies upon the Continent. His essays on the Persian column of the inscriptions (1851-2), evinced a (*omplete mastery of the subject and consider- able independence in the treatment of doubtful passages. The reputation he had earned led to his being attached to the French scientific expedition to Babylonia. On his return he undertook to write an account of the expedition, and his second volume, which made its appearance in 1859, contains an elaborate account of the work of decipherment.^ Although the book is chiefly ('oncerned with Assyrian, he has given a Sylla- barium of the Median, with the object chieily of com- paring it with the Babylonian and Assyrian systems of writing.- The great importance resulting from such a comparison now becomes apparent. The values of the Assyrian signs were already ascertained in a large number of cases, and it was recognised that, with some exceptions, the similar sign in Median generally ex- pressed the same value. The principle was also definitely admitted that each sign has only one value,^and that an independent sign may be looked for to express the com- bination of the vowels a, i and u before and after each of the principal consonants, Z", p, t, m, r, / and 5, and therefore we may expect a sign for eac^li of such forms as /'a, /./, /iVA, a/', U\ ulx\ and so on. The application

' Kq}rflition i^cvmtifif/i/c en Mesopotamia (18.')l-4), par Jules Oppert, vol. ii. Paris, 1859.

- M. Oppert cauiiot always be taken seriously where his own claims are concerned. Writing in 18.")0, he says of the Median : * Tons nos devanciers, y compris M. Norris, Tont ])rise pour une ocritun* distincte de celle des Assyriens' (p. 71). Leaving out of account Xorris's identification of 47 of the characters, l)e Saulcy had pronounced them to be * identical' in 1848. Oppert now compares 07 Median signs and 8 ideograms with both Babylonian and Assyrian groups.

^ M)eux caraeteres n'expriment jamais le meme son/ p. 35. *Les mem»*s sons syllabiques sont toujours attaches au meme signe,' p. 77.