Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/393

364 the other. The 'vowel-sounds,' he declared, 'were inherent' ; but it was allowable also to represent them by separate signs; and farther redundant consonants were frequently introduced for the sake of euphony. These opinions were immediately traversed by Lowen- stern, in his 'Expose des Elements ' (1847). This tract followed the sudden, though happily transient, con- version of Hhicks to the appli(\ation of the Semitic vowel system to the Babylonian writinir. Lowenstern embraced this view with characteristic energy ; and it was adopted also by De Saulcy, hi whose case it became one of the chief causes of the ultimate failure of his Assyrian studies.

Lowenstern, as w(^ liave said, considered that Hawlinson was fundamentally wrong in applyhig the laws derived from Indo-Eurojjean languages 'to a wi'itinuand a lani^^uaae that aie Semitic.' He al)Slutely denied that the vowel is inherent.* The signs are simple consonants, and they may Ix^ used in c(mnection with any vowel sound. The vowels mav or may not be

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expressed, and the signs for them are to a large extent expressive of any vowel sound. One sign he mentions may convey the sound of hon^ a, and ya ; another of a or ha. ir and //.- The vowels art% lu* savs, by no means limited to the a, i and ii of the Sanscrit, but include also the e and o and the diphthong ao. He entirely disagrees with the opinion of EawHnson that the equivalent signs have any modilied value. He com- l)ares Assyiian with Egyptian, and regards the signs that ai'e aj)parently intercliang(*able as simple Miomo- phones.' He shows the differiMit ways in which the names of the Achaemeiiian kinas are written ; and di'aws the api)arently inevitable inference that the different simis have one and the same sound. 'The

o ' E.rposf'j p. 44. '^ lb, p. 73.