in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 265 
time, in some other kind of writing, to denote more complex objects of thought, 
and the difficulty of the case is removed; for, on a new use of characters being 
suggested, writers may be easily imagined to be led by the force of habit to 
transfer to this use symbols they had been previously much accustomed to, 
though in other respects unsuited to it, rather than take the trouble of selecting 
new ones better adapted for the purpose. Thus it may be seen that, when a 
phonetic employment of signs was brought under the notice of the Egyptians, by 
the circumstance of their being taught Greek writing (as Herodotus expressly 
records that they were, in the reign of Psammetichus), they did not on that occa- 
sion invent new characters, but selected some of their old ideagrams, which they 
made, through a new application, to stand for the initial articulations or initial 
vowel sounds of the words by which their former meanings were expressed. Thus, 
for instance, in phonetically representing the name ‘ Ptolemy,’ they denoted 
the articulation / by the figure of a lion, the Coptic for which animal is Aa&or, 
‘labo’; and, most probably, the ancient Egyptian term for it began likewise 
with that articulation. Whether the Persians in the reign of their first Darius 
acted on the same principle, while shifting the cuneiform combinations from their 
primitive to a secondary use, cannot, I apprehend, be now ascertained; we can 
no longer, for example, tell whether the first combination of wedges in the group, 
No. 1, of the table attached to this tract, had originally a meaning, the ancient 
Persian word for which began with the articulation d; the second, a meaning, 
the Persian for which commenced with the vowel sound a ; and so on. But what- 
ever may have been the original significations of those combinations of wedges, 
their alphabetic values, which are perfectly simple and uncompounded, could not, 
I submit, have been the primary, but merely derivative applications of signs, 
containing respectively such a multiplicity of entirely distinct and separate 
ingredients. 
7. The alphabet under examination is, in the main, derived from the Greek 
one ; its consonantal powers, indeed, that are equivalent to sh, w, and y, must 
have been adopted in imitation of a Shemitic model, and so was likewise its col- 
lection of vowels, as shall presently be shown ; nor have we any reason to be sur- 
prised at the phonetic values of its ingredients having been drawn from different 
sources, since the Persians, in the time of Darius, the son of Hystaspes,—during 
whose reign this derivative system first made its appearance,—held intercourse 
VOL. XXI. 22 
