249 
VIII.—On the third Persepolitan Writing, and on the Mode of expressing 
Numerals in Cuneatic Characters. By the Rev. Epowarp Hincxs, D. D. 
Read 11th January, 1847. 
WHEN L laid before the Academy, at its last sitting, my alphabet of the third 
Persepolitan writing, with the corresponding lapidary characters, I by no means 
expected that it would prove perfectly correct. No first attempt at the alphabet 
of an unknown language has been so. I considered it, however, an approxima- 
tion, and, probably, as near a one as could be attained by means of the data in 
my possession ; and I looked forward to its being amended by those who had the 
command of more numerous inscriptions. There were some circumstances which 
left no doubt on my mind that error existed somewhere in it, though I could not 
discover where. The number of dentals was too small; there was no character 
for tw or dw; the name in N. R. 11, answering to Haradtish, and the word cor- 
responding to the compound epithet wisadahyush, in D. 11, were only in part 
legible ; and the manner of writing the name of Ormazd, in the inscription H., 
and that of Artaxerxes, on the vase at Venice, could only be explained by sup- 
posing the sculptors to have committed errors. All these difficulties, and others 
connected with the great inscription of the E. I. Company, have been removed 
by an important rectification, or series of rectifications, which I have made during 
the last fortnight; and the language has, moreover, been brought to exhibit a 
much greater similarity to the other Semitic ones than I had at first supposed. 
I have, therefore, to request leave to substitute the alphabet which I now send 
for that in my last paper. As the correspondence between the cursive and lapi- 
dary characters in the plate to that paper* is correctly given, though the values of 
many of the characters are erroneous, and as the plate is, I believe, partly 
engraved, I propose to let it stand, with so much of the paper as is necessary for 
understanding it ; but the transcriptions of Babylonian words into Roman cha- 
racters, and the catalogue of Babylonian characters, will be superseded by those 
* The table of characters in page 245. 
to 
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VOL. XXI. 
