Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/426

Rh In the present Memoir Iliiu-ks modified in some resi)ects his original mode of writing. Following Rawlinson's exami)le, he has discarded the use of c in favour of X: for the Koph series; and he adopts s to express the thi-ee Hebrew sounds of 5, s and | (,s, te, and s/t). Ih* also follows llawlinson in substituthig z^ fovj, and /A for 7. All these modifications have been accepted except the last, which is now written A. On one other point, however, he was less ccmciliatory. In defei'ence to Eawlinson, he drops his two sounds for a : his h)ng a l)ee(nnes now simply a ; but he insists on the distinct recognition of the union of the consonant with e or o. 'We must,' lie savs, 'consider the seven forms which miulit beln<»" to each.' These forms, therefore, are now a^ e or o^ i and a ; and one of the chief points of disai>*reement with Rawlinson is that the latter ignores the sounds of ^ or and substitutes either i or a. Ilincks was quite right in mauitainhig that Rawlinson unduly neglected the vowel e\ for his ' Indiscriminate List ' only contains one syllable formed with e., viz. ep. Ilincks was, however, wrong in supposing that there is any regular sylhibic combina- tions so framed. The regular svllabic combinations are six, not seven, and they are formed with a, i and u 01 dv — as Itawlinson rifditlv saw. The combinations with e are exceptions to the rule, and have been ascribed to local or dialectic changes.^ They amount to about twelve and, strange to say, only one was Crre(*tly identified by Ilincks {te). The sound seems to be practically unknown.

In the passages we selected to illustrate Eawlinson's transliteration of the Hehistun inscription, we placed that uiven by De Saulcv two vears later side by side with it, not on account of its intrinsic merit, but

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 * See Menant, Manuel^ p. 10.