CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 575 of which are supposed to represent letters, oth- ers syllables, and others are perhaps ideographs or pictures. The language is supposed to be- long to that family variously designated by philologists as the Tartar-Finnish, Mongolian, Turanian, and Scythian. In works treating of these inscriptions it is perhaps most frequent- ly called by the last name, and we have so des- ignated it. The greater part of what has been written upon the subject by Rawlinson, Norris, Westergaard, Oppert, and others is scattered in the journals of learned societies, more es- pecially the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic So- ciety of Great Britain," the Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord of Copenhagen, the Journal Asiatique of Pa- ris, and the Zeitschrift der deutscJien Mor- genldndischen GesellscJiaft. The third kind of cuneiform writing presents if possible still more formidable difficulties, while far stronger motives stimulate the endeavor to overcome them. Previous to 1842 the chief specimens of this kind were those on the same monu- ments on which were found the Persian and Scythian inscriptions ; but in that year M. Bot- ta, French consul at Mosul, commenced ma- king excavations in the mounds near that city. Mr. A. H. Layard was then travelling in the East, and made the acquaintance of M. Botta. In 1845 Botta made known his wonderful dis- coveries, and in October of that year Layard, under the patronage of the British museum, started for Mosul to engage in a friendly rival- ry with Botta in exhuming the ruins of Nine- veh, the long lost capital of the ancient Assyri- an empire. The walls of the palaces he un- earthed were covered with cuneiform inscrip- tions, and immense numbers of clay tablets and cylinders or prisms covered with the same characters were found. Thousands of these were sent to the British museum, of which they now form one of the most important depart- TBANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION OF A PORTION OF AN ASSYRIAN DECAGON IN TUB BRITISH MUSEUM A, COL. IV., LINES 48-50. 1 & T ina immi su (va) istin In days those then a ina sat mu - si in(the) middle (of the) night, tul slept va and i - na dreamed tal sut - tu (a) dream, urn - ma ina eli thus : " Concerning ki - gal - H (the) matter sa (*) which Sin Sin sa - dir (var. di - ir) was arranging va ma - a sa and of them who it - ti against ( f * ) Assur, &c. Asshur, &c. ments; and Mr. Layard's published accounts of his researches excited general attention. In 1849 and 1850 Botta also published in Paris an account of his researches, and the Louvre has a department devoted to Assyrian antiquities almost as extensive as that of the British mu- seum. Some years afterward an expedition was sent out by the French government under the direction of Oppert, an account of which he published in 1859 and 1863. In 1873 Mr. George Smith explored Mesopotamia at the expense of the London "Telegraph," and he is expected to return there during the present year (1874) as the agent of the British museum. Thus a vast mass of inscriptions upon slabs, tablets, bricks, &c., has been collected. To the interpretation of these records a great number of scholars have devoted themselves, among whom Rawlinson, Hincks, Morris, Smith, Tal- bot, Sayce, Botta, De Saulcy, Oppert, Lenor- mant, M6nant, and Schrader have been most
- Determinative sign used where the name of a god is to
follow. 242 VOL. v. 37 distinguished. The success that has attended their efforts warrants the belief that the inter- pretation of all the records which are of any interest will be finally accomplished. The difficulties which have been overcome will be best appreciated from a statement, necessarily brief, of the results of their labors. From very ancient times three, and perhaps four, differ- ent peoples inhabited the Assyrian empire. They differed in origin and language, and were yet in close contact and had intimate politi- cal and commercial relations with each other. With which of them sphenography originated it is as yet impossible to decide ; but it was adopted from one people by another, and vari- ously modified by each. It was originally a system of hieroglyphic or picture writing, and was undoubtedly invented by a people who did not belong to either the Indo-Germanic or Semitic family. Should the interpretation of the Medo-Scythian inscriptions, those of the t Determinative wedge used where the name of a person is to follow.
