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IX.—On the different Kinds of Cuneiform Writing in the triple Inscriptions 
of the Persians, and on the Language transmitted through the first Kind. 
By the Rev. Cuarres Wituiam Watt, D. D., Vice Provost T. C. D., 
Ni. Pol eAs 
Read December 13th, 1847. 
THE connexion of the subject here proposed for consideration with my inquiry 
into the origin of alphabetic writing, having compelled me to examine it of late 
with much attention, and the train of investigation into which I was thus drawn 
having led me to results which, I am in hopes, will be found not entirely devoid 
of interest, I venture to bring some of them under the notice of the members of 
the Royal Irish Academy in the course of the following observations. 
1. With regard to the language of the inscriptions of the Persians in the 
first kind of cuneatic writing, *—besides that the uncertainty which still exists, as 
to the powers of some of the letters of the system, extends, more or less, to the 
sound, and, in consequence, frequently to the sense of the groups in which they 
occur,—a great many of the words completely deciphered in those inscriptions 
have become everywhere else extinct, and the attempt to identify them with 
terms of known signification has, in several instances, been made through trans- 
mutations of quite too arbitrary a nature to be securely relied on. Hence, as 
well as from the mutilations to which records of such vast antiquity have of 
necessity been exposed, no legend of any considerable length in this kind of 
writing has been as yet found, in which the meaning of some of the sentences 
does not remain either very doubtful or quite unknown. The most favourable 
standard that can be taken of the degree of success with which this study has 
been attended, is unquestionably Major Rawlinson’s analysis of the portion of the 
* The kind above referred to is called the first, not from its age, but from the position of 
preeminence it occupies in all the triple inscriptions of the Persians. In point of age, this kind 
is probably the last of the three, as it is more simplified in its elements than either of the others, 
VOL. XXI. 2K 
