of decipheriiijj: a laiioiia,i»*e in which the chnraeters are sometimes used as phonetic syllal)les and sometimes as ideograplis. In each case it was necessary first to determine in which sense it o(*curred, and, if in the latter, the pronunciation could only be ascertained when it was found spelt out phonetically in some known word. For example, the pronunciation of the ideogram for 'm)d' was fixed by findinu* that it formed t\ieil-u in ' Bab-ilu/ When the pronunciation of the ideogram was known, it afforded, as has been said, in the majority of cases no clue whatever to the svHabic value of the sign, and the transliterator was lial)le to fall into the error of reading a word ideographically histead of phonetically, just as fre([uently as to mistake ideograms for phonetics. Conn)ound id(M)grams were also not infrequent, where two or more were used to express an idea, but without reference to the soinid. For example, the word for ' palace ' is composed of two ideograms, hit and rah, meaning respectively Miouse' and 'great' ; but llincks warned the reader that he might fall into a serious error if he were to supj^ose that they are employed in conjunction phonetically, and that 'bitral)' is the pronunciation of the Assyrian word for
- palace.' ^ lie shows that several ideographs may be
used as simple determinative suliixes to words which are phonetically com})lete without them. The deter- minatives prol)ably all originally re{)resented words, and many of them preserved their phonetic values.^'
' TransactioiiSj xxii. 25. In this ca.Ms however, it is so. llincks after- wards instanced an, which, followed by oc, he reads, not * anac/ but
- nabu.' A thenmim. Sejjt. lM , 1 850.
- lie explained this matter with groat clearness in 1S50, when he
showed that the sign fora// is us»'d (1 ) as a simj»Ie ])honograph in some words, as in *zarangu '; (2) elsewhere it occurs alone as an indei>eudent ideograph for *god,' and forms the plural * gods' by the mere addition of the plural sign. (3) Again, it is found before the proper names of gods, as before Aurmuzd. Here the name iS ]>honetic'ally complete without it, and it i*
