Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/355

326 of fresh errors was introdured. Six or seven values, correctly ascertained in 1859, were now rejected and erroneous ones substituted. At least three of the values proposed for the sijjns omitted by Oppert were very far indeed from the mark. The ideo<rram for ' horse ' was rejected in favour of the syllable az^ which may have suggested to Weisbach the substitution of ' donkey ' in place of the noblei* quadruped preferred b}' Oppert.

The two writers who ha^e brought the knowledge of the Median syllabary to its present standard are Oppert and Weisbacli : the former in a special treatise written in 1879 (' Le Peuple des Mcdes ') long remained the leading' authority on the subiect, and his conclu- sions have in the main derived confirmation from the more recent investigations of Weisbach on the language of the second column, which appeared in 1890. With very few exceptions, to be noticed latei*, both scholars are in substantial airreement as to the values of the signs; and it is this agieement that forms for the present the standard of riglit and wrong, by which the eflbrts of their predecessors linve been judged. Both writers were *zuided to a lar^e extent by the values of the corresponding 13abylonian characters.^ Oppert, as was said, tliought he could trace a resemblance between ninety-six of the Median signs and their Babylonian equivalents. In each case, the sound as well as the form of the cliaracter was appropriated. Weisbach is nuich less struck by the general application of this law. lie fully admits the stronof }<imilaritv of many of the si^ns, but some have, he says, so far diverired from their oriiiinal tv])es as to be hardly recoirnisal)le. Otiiers, he thinks, were borrowed from New Assyrian, and a few from oldei* forms. Indeed lie is, on the whole, indisposed to derive the syllabary direct from

^ Mennnt, Los Ecrituipiiy p. 137.