Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/411

382 the syllable. Itawlinsoii, liowever, did good service in the present Memoir by layinu* down the first rndiments of the grannnar, a l)raneh of the subject that Hincks subsequently did much to elucidate ; and he was also the first to l)riug into prominence the polyphonic character of the lamjuaue. Hincks had indeed re- marked that ' inanv charaders admit of two or more kindred values'; but Eawlinson ftirther shows that ' certain chai'acters represent two entirely dissimilar sounds — sounds so dissimihir that they cannot be broucfht into relation with each other.' He <^ives as an example the sign for the vowel a, which also conveys the sound of ' bar.'

But the i]freat distinction of Kawlinson lav in his unequalled j)ower of translation. Large numbers of Assyrian inscriptions were now before the world. The 'Monument de Klun-sabad' luul appeared in 1848; Layard's collection followed in 1849, and hichided the inscri])tion on the Black l)elisk found in 1846. So far onlv a few words had l)een made (mt with more or less of accuracy; but nothinof had vet been done in the way of a connected ti*ans]ation. The few lines of the Kliorsabad inscription which Hincks attempted in the Addenda to liis pa])er (Feb. 20, 1850) had not as yet appeared.^ llawhnson, howexei", ol)scrved that many of the connnon expressions used at Behistun were adopted ahuost verbatim from the Assyrian annals ; and it was the discovery of these known passages in the Assyrian inscriptions that first encouraged him to undertake their translation. He disclaimed all pre- tensions to be ' a com})lete master of the Assyrian lanufuaiie ' ; and he still si)eaks of it as to a «rreat extent unintelliofible. 'The first outwork,' he says, 'has been carried hi a hitherto impregnable i)Osition, and that is

' Tran^s. H. L Acad. xxii. 70.