Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/373

344 his classification was to persuade him that the graphic system of Assyria was sul)stantially the same as that found at PersepoHs and Babylon. He accepted Eich and Westergaard as the most faitliful copyists of the former, and lie compared ninety-six of their signs with those at Khorsabad. He found that seventy-two were so similar that their identity could not fail to be recomised at first sioht. Fourteen others exhibit a greater difference, but their identity is capable of demonstration. There are therefore eighty-six signs out of ninety-six concerning which no doubt can exist. He thought the difference was not so great as between Gothic and Latin characters. With respect to the writinur at Van, he counted a hundred and twelve to a hundred and fifteen characters, and he found that ninety- eight or a hundred were reproduced identically at Khorsabad.^ When he began to write upon this subject he had only just received a copy of the East India House insc'ription, and it was some time before he could hazard an opinion as to the relationship of the New Assyrian to the Old Babylonian.- The result of a first study of the two hundred and eight3?'-seyen signs in the East India House inscription was the identification of a hundred and seven of the siu'us with the Assyrian, and a more careful investigation ultimately raised the number to one hundred and seventy-nine.^ The remainin^f one hundred and eioht have not, he saA'S, any proper equivalent at Khorsabad. He was inclined to attril)ute a uood deal of the diversity to the material and the histrument used. Where, for example, the stone was brittle, as at Van, the engraver sliowed a disinclination to make the wedges cross, and the chisel would naturally produce a different effect from the

' Jofmial Asiatiqne, 184S, xi. 248 ff. - lb. 1847, ix. 376.

^ lb. xi. L>49.