Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/417

388 gives in his present Moinoir. ' In the articuhition kat^ for example, which is composed of two cliaracters, ka and at^ eitlier one or other of these sio-ns must repre- sent a simi)le lettei* ratlier than a syllal)le ; and as this peculiarity of ex])ression pei'vades the whole Assyrian alphabet, I think I am justified in still adhering- to the statement which I announced last vear, that the phonetic si^ns were in some cases syllal)ic and in others literal.' ^ However this may be, he now finally abandons the description of the signs as letters, and no simi)le al})habetical values are to be found in his ' Indiscriminate List.' There can be little doubt that the alteration in the method of writhij,^ is to l)e best explained by a corresponding change of opinion.^' However m-eat mav have l)een liis l)liL>'ation toHincks, he soon made the discoverv his own. He corrects the errors and supplies the deficiencies of his predecessor. He siii)presses the twofold signs for a, and limits the regular syllal)ic coml)inations to the three vowels tij i and a., which thus vielded six instead of seven values for each of the consonants. Following Hincks, he accepts only fifteen distinct consonantal values, but he prefers to use z and kh in place of the ^ and // of Hincks, now written z and h. With these he has given one hundred and seven simple syllabic combuiations, a nuicli larger number than reallv exists ; but he has no less than seventy-eight correct, out of a possible number that sliglitly exceeds eiglity.^ He, however, took no account of the signs that indicated the exceptional combinations with the vowel e^ which amount to about a dozen. This defect was soon afterwards noticed

1 J. It. A. S. xiv. 4.

Geschichtey p. 91).
 * Dr. Ilommel Las, however, come to a somewhat difi'erent conclusion^

^ Menant estimates ' the necessary simple syllables ' at eighty-two,, though this number is slightly moditied in practice {Manuel^'p. 6). ;