4 
a) 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 137 
; writing of them admits, and with the equivalent Hebrew and Roman characters, 
The first character in fig. 4 represents 4leph, Mem ; and by the aid of the Leaf, Aleph, 
and the Owl, Mem, we have four modes of writing the syllable equivalent to the 
simple syllabic character. None, however, of the five modes of writing distinguishes 
the vowel. All these modes are equivalent to a pair of Hebrew letters; but they 
represent three different combinations of Roman letters; to each of which a distinct 
Assyrian character corresponds, In fig. 5 there is only one mode of completing the 
syllable used. Two Egyptian ways of expressing Mem, Nun were in use; and each 
might represent three syllables, two of which had Assyrian characters to represent 
them, while al! three might be represented by combinations of two Assyrian charac- 
ters, having the respective values of MA.AN, MI.IN and MU.UN. It appears, 
then, that the values of Assyrian and Egyptian characters are not even of the same 
kind. They could not be the same unless the value were a vowel; and in point of 
fact they never are the same. 
Dismissing then the idea that the Assyrian mode of writing was in any respect 
derived from the Egyptians, we have to seek its origin in the lower part of the valley 
of the Euphrates, where the clayey nature of the soil would account for the plastic 
character of the writing. The name of Accad occurs in Gen. x. 10, as that of one 
of the earliest cities in this district, and it is also found in the Assyrian inscriptions, 
apparently applied to the whole district. It has therefore been chosen with great 
propriety by Sir H. Rawlinson to represent the people who invented the Assyrian 
mode of writing. The language of this people may be called Accadian; and there 
are in existence ample means of attaining to the knowledge of its structure and its 
vocabulary. The sources of information respecting it are of three sorts. The bilin- 
gual tablets in the British Museum were written in the seventh century B.c. Some 
of these contain Accadian sentences and equivalent Assyrian sentences, either in 
parallel columns, or one beneath the other. In others, sentences in the two lan- 
guages are analysed, so as to give the precise meaning of every element in the long 
Accadian words that we meet. In all the Assyrian inscriptions Accadian words are 
occasionally introduced; and when different copies of the inscriptions have been 
found, it often happens that one contains an Accadian word and another its Assyrian 
equivalent. The oldest Assyrian inscription of considerable length is that of Tiglath 
Pileser I., whose capital was sacked by the Accadians of Babylon 419 years before 
the first year of Sennacherib (702 8.c.). The inscription was therefore written a 
little before 1121 8.c. Inscriptions, the language of which is wholly Accadian, and 
which are anterior to the Assyrian ones, are said to be in existence; but copies of 
them have not yet been raade public. A third source of information as to the glos- 
sary of the Accadian language goes back to the origin of this species of writing. The 
phonetic values of the characters used in the original writing of the Accadians were 
the names of the objects which the characters represented. We know what certain 
characters represented, and we know their phonetic values; and thus we come to 
know the Accadian names of certain objects at the time when this mode of writing 
was invented. We cannot assign the date of this invention ; but we have a minor 
limit for it. In the inscription of Tiglath Pileser [., who began to reign about 
1130 8.c., mention is made of a temple, which after standing 641 years, having be- 
come ruinous, had been taken down by the great-grandfather of this king, sixty years 
before his accession. Sixty is a round number, but is more likely to have been less 
than greater than the actual number; but the other number, which purports to be 
accurate, was doubtless taken from an authentic record. The temple would there- 
fore have been built about 18308.c. Now, Tiglath Pileser found inscriptions written 
by its builder, who lived before the origin of the Assyrian monarchy ; and we have 
; thus the 19th century B.c. as the latest date at which the origin of Accadian writing 
can be fixed. Its actual date was in all probability several generations earlier. 
_ The bilingual tablets teach us that the Accadian language was in its structure as 
dissimilar as can well be conceived possible both to the Indo-European languages 
and tothe Semitic ones. Ithad unmistakeable affinities with the language of the in- 
scriptions found at Susa and in its neighbourhood, and with that of the Achemenian 
inscriptions of the second kind. These latter had been supposed by Mr. Norris to be 
connected with the Ugrian languages; while others believed them to be represented 
by the Mongolian or Dravidian languages. The author, being unacquainted with 
