270 Rev. Dr. Watt on the different Kinds of Cuneiform Writing 
of their letters, the Persians, in the pride of a more elevated condition, endeavoured 
to conceal their obligations in this respect to foreign instruction; and, just in 
hike manner as had been shortly before done by the Egyptians while yet inde- 
pendent, they substituted for the Greek characters some of their own ideagrams, 
though far less suited for the phonetic use to which they thus came to be 
applied. 
8. The vocalie structure of the cuneiform alphabet is “clearly of Shemitic 
type,” as Major Rawlinson very justly observes, in the second chapter of his 
Memoir (p. 62), and as, I believe, has been on all sides admitted, ever since it 
was ascertained by the late Dr. Beer, that there were but three vowel-letters in 
this alphabet. The correspondence, however, between the systems of vocalization 
here compared, extends far beyond the mere number of their respective elements: 
but, to show this, I must previously advert to a distinction which appears to have 
been hitherto overlooked, or, at least, not sufficiently attended to in this investi- 
gation. A complete determination of the phonetic values of the cuneiform 
letters would require an analysis of the sounds of ancient Persian names of men 
and places, not as uttered by natives of Persia at present, or for several centuries 
back, but as pronounced at the times when the legends containing those names 
were actually inscribed. This condition, indeed, is no longer attainable, so that 
we must, with regard to some few of the sought values, rest satisfied with mere 
approximations ; but still the bearing of it in mind is of use in assisting us to 
ascertain the authority chiefly to be relied on in this inquiry; which is certainly 
not that of any of the Persian writers, as the oldest of their extant historical 
works of any celebrity, the poetical romance of Firdausi, was not composed till 
about 1500 years after the age in which Darius, the son of Hystaspes, reigned. 
Neither do any of the records extant in the cognate dialects, though of such 
boasted antiquity, carry us back in reality to within a distance of even 500 years 
from his reign ; and before the expiration of that interval, the denominations of 
their earlier sovereigns were grossly corrupted by this illiterate people, as I shall 
presently take an opportunity of showing by the example of the name of the 
very monarch just mentioned, who, next to Cyrus, was the most remarkable and 
least likely to be forgotten of all their ancient kings. The only eastern writings 
supposed more nearly related to the latter general than grandson ; but, if traced to the former, 
he must be placed still further in the line of descent from his older namesake. 
