Rev. Epwarp Hincks on Persepolitan Writing. 125 
touched on; and the attempt at explaining the enclitic mé, “my,” is worse 
than Lassen’s. 
I now come to consider the second writing. Here I adopt a great number 
of Westergaard’s values of the characters. As to many of them, however, I differ 
from him more or less. In some I reject his modifications of the values of con- 
sonants, which, it appears to me, this people never intended to distinguish. In 
some cases I add vowels to his values, thus making characters to represent 
syllables, which he made simple letters. In other cases I substitute a different 
vowel for his; and in some cases I differ altogether as to the value of the cha- 
racter. These differences will be seen in the catalogue of the characters, where 
I first give his value, if he has given any, and then my own, if I have been able 
to satisfy myself as to it. They will also appear from comparing passages as 
transcribed by him and by me. In this place I will mention the differences 
between us, in respect to general principles. 
1. Westergaard thinks that II. had six vowels, a, d, 7, u, e, and o, and six- 
teen consonants, 4, k, t, p, hh, ph, th, 7 (i.e. y), 7, w, 8, sh, z, h, n, and m ; and 
he thinks that the characters represented, in the first place, these twenty-two 
characters, and then syllables, composed of the consonants followed by vowels. 
I think that there were four vowels, a, 7, «, and er, which this people regarded 
as a proper vowel ; and only five consonants, p, ¢, k, s, and  ; that besides these 
nine simple sounds, there were characters representing combinations of the five 
consonants with preceding and following vowels ; and that the vowels also formed 
combinations with each other. Of these there were or might be twelve, viz., 
ai = 6, Ya, YU, yer ; au = 6, Wa, Wi, wer ; aer = dr, ra, ri, ru. It is probable 
that many combinations which were theoretically possible had no representatives at 
all, while many bad two, or even three, which were perfectly equivalent, as in the 
case of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Besides what may be called the regular 
combinations, consisting of one consonant and one vowel, there were some which 
represented more complicated combinations, that happened to occur frequently, 
such as fas and rus, in which a vowel lay between two consonants, and ersa, in 
which there were two vowels joined to one consonant. There were also cha- 
racters, such as 37 and 74, already noticed, which were confined to foreign 
words, representing sounds occurring in them, which were not used in the ordi- 
nary words of the language, or, if used, were not distinguished. 
