Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/396

Rh times apparently interchanged for them.' In this List of Variants we constantly find six or seven signs — sometimes many more — grouped togethei* as of equi- valent value. In view of later discoveries, it will be seen how extremelv useful this classification mirfit be(*(mie, for the signs thus brought together were no doubt usually those that contained the same consonantal values. In the meantime, however, Botta was at a loss to find any reasonable explanation. Like llawlinson, however, he could not believe that any of them were, as Lowenstern maintained, real homoj)hones, or signs having identical values. They nmst, he tliought, be distiuijuished from each other by some slioht shades of so\nid that were sufficiently near to ])e easily con- founded." He explained, in antici])ation of the dis- coverv so soon afterwards made by Hincks, that 'it is l)ossible that the language is syHabic — so fai", at least, as that each consonant is represented by a different sign, according to the vowel to which it is joined. Thus, for example, there would be one sign for U ; others for ha^ hi. et(*. In Semitic lan^jfuai^es the short vowels have little importance, and therefore the syllal)le //a might be expressed by the sigii for h only ; by the two signs b and a ; and also in certain cases, by the simis that represent b in ('onnection with tin* other vowels.' It will be seen that Botta was verv far indeed frcmi being the mere painstaking classifier which it was oncte the fashion to describe him. He and Longperier were, in fact, the oidy two Continental scholars, at ])resent

' liawlin.son thus dL'scribt'S Botta's labours. Il»* has b»»en t*mplo\vd in same word with orthopTajiliical variations funii»»hinp him with a kev to the ♦'(juivalent signs: and by these means he has sucrt-eded, he informs m*^, in reducing the Assyrian alphabet to some maiuigeulilf comj)ass.'— ,/. /»'. A. .V. 1S46, X. '29.
 * constructing a Cin])let»' tablf of variants, the tivijuent rt']>ftition of the

' Journal Asiatique, 1S4H, March, xi. :24").