Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/352

Rh When Mr. Layard visited the same neighbourhood, in 1841, he was fortunate enough to be able to copy two inscriptions at Malamir, one of thirty-six lines and the other of twenty-four.^ Rawlinsou, in his classifica- tion of the cuneiform inscriptions, called them the Elymaean, and from the differences they i)resented, he considered that they ' are entitled to an independent place,' aj)art from Babylonian or Assyrian. In 1850, he again points out their dissimilarity from either of the two last mentioned, but he adds that they are not so difficult to read as those he had found on the l)ricks at Susa.- The surprising discovery ofDeSaulcy that the Median and Babylonian characters are * identical ' notwithstanding their apparent diversity, naturally stinuilated the ingenuity of other writers to widen the s])here of the ' identical ' ; and Mordtniann was among the first who laboured in this direction. The work was continued by Lenormant, who made his appear- ance withhi the circle of cuneiform sr^holars in 1871, by the i)ublicatin of his first series of 'Lettres Assyrien- n(»s/ followed, in 1873, ])y the ' Choix de Textes.' The result of the minute comparison he instituted was to sliow that the Old Susian script closely resembled Old Babylonian, while the Elymaean of Malamir is simply an earher form of the Median or Xew Susian character. The development towards ' identity ' had now gone so far that Bertin describes the diffei-ence between Old Susian and Old Babylonian as very slight, while Ely- maean and Median are simple ' variants of the same.' ^

' Layard (Sir II.), J'>(r/i/ Adventurer (181)4), pp. 1«^<, 1>L>0. Cf. Pro- fessor »Sayce in 7V«/^<. «SVx'. /Hb. ^Irc/i. iii. 17 '2.

- ./. Ji. A. S. X. 2S ; t'h. xii. 483.

' * Develojmient of Cuneiform Syllabary M 1S87), ./. H. A. S. vol. xix. They appeared to Mr. Xaux in ISol ' to contain a considerable number of new characters, for which no conjectiinil e(^ui\alent can be found either in the Babylonian or the Assyrian alphabet' ( \ifiei^/i and Persrpo/i'j*, ]). 431 ).

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