274 Rev. Dr. Watt on the different Kinds of Cuneiform Writing 
it will be sufficient to refer to two of the examples above given, namely, the 
transcriptions of the groups equivalent to the Apyevia and Mapdovos of Hero- 
dotus into ‘ Armena’ and ‘ Mardoniya.’ In those examples the m of the former 
group and the d of the latter are, by the acknowledgment of both of the 
authors referred to, secondary consonants that do not admit of being treated as 
signs of syllables ending in a; and, therefore, if the vowel-letters after them 
were not immediately susceptible of the values of e and o respectively, as well as 
of those of 7 and w, they could not, in the positions they here occupy, acquire 
such values by the influence of the assumed operation ; and the father of history 
must have written the above names Appuvia and Mapdovvi0s,—a consequence 
which is directly at variance with the text of, I believe, every extant manuscript of 
his work. In truth, the fanciful and highly artificial rules of guna belong to a 
much later age than that of the inscriptions. They are, indeed, quite incompa- 
tible with the crude state in which the cuneiform alphabet has been transmitted 
to us, as has been, I may observe, very judiciously maintained by one of the 
above-mentioned authors, in the body of his chapter on the subject,* although he 
rather precipitately came to a different conclusion in the supplementary note 
thereto appended. 
The second feature I would bring under notice, of the cuneiform vocaliza- 
tion, is one that not merely assimilates it to, but even identifies it with that 
of Shemitic writing. Although the matres lectionis soon went out of use in 
cuneiform designations, yet vestiges of them may still be traced in the inscrip- 
tions; namely, of employed for a,¢ y for e or 2, and w for 0 or vw. Of course 
such vestiges should be searched for only in the proper names first written, in 
which, having been once introduced, they may be easily conceived to have 
been retained through the force of habit, though the Persian scribes had the 
option of a less ambiguous mode of denoting vowel-sounds, which came even- 
* Tt [the Persian cuneiform alphabet] admits not of the epenthesis of the Zend, nor of 
duplication, nor of the artificial developments of the guna, and of the widdhi ; it acknowledges 
no law of sandhi, properly so called: it is, in fact, in every respect, in a comparatively crude 
and unfinished state.” —Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. x. part ii. p. 53. 
+ My very limited acquaintance with this writing does not supply me with an example of 
employed in it to denote e ;—a use of the first mater lectionis which was, probably, as seldom 
resorted to therein, as in the older kinds of Shemitic writing. 
