in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 287 
but he was quite unwarranted in this alteration, if the specified plate of the Arche- 
ologia be correct, which exhibits the character in question in as perfect a state as 
any in the group it terminates, and shows mutilation only in the subsequent part of 
the same line, which has not been copied in my table. Had the Major perceived 
the correspondence of this character to the Shemitic yod, in occasionally serving 
to denote the sound e, he would have found no necessity for correcting it in this 
place; where, in fact, e answers better than any other vowel to that used by 
Herodotus in his transcription of the last syllable of the above designation. He 
considers this designation, as changed by himself, a very corrupt one; and, to 
give time for such corruption taking place in cuneiform orthography, concludes 
that it was intended for the last sovereign of the name it expresses, that is, for 
Artaxerxes Ochus. But, granting the altered, or even the unaltered group, to 
be very corruptly written, still the inference thence drawn by our author does 
not stand, and the Artaxerxes here denoted may, notwithstanding, have been 
(and most probably was) the immediate successor of Xerxes ; as the deviation in 
this instance from correct Persian orthography is best accounted for by the pro- 
vincialism of the writer. or the use of /, instead of 7, in the Egyptian portion 
of the specimens before us, proves them to have been written, not by Persian, 
but by Egyptian scribes, who probably belonged to some tribe that in after times 
spoke the Bashmuric dialect of the Coptic language.* A Persian would, to a 
certainty, have employed a hieroglyphic r in the Egyptian designation of either 
of the two names, where the / now appears in it; while, on the other hand, an 
Egyptian, even though of a tribe of men that were unable to utter 7, must yet 
have inserted a cuneiform letter of this value in the Persian designation of the 
same name; as the cuneiform alphabet afforded him no option on the subject, not 
containing any element immediately and properly of / power. On the cuneiform 
part of these specimens I have only further to observe, that the use of the cunei- 
form y, in the first name, as a mater lectionis, is fully attested by the correspond- 
ing letter of the hieroglyphic designation of the same name, viz., the two 
feathers, which always stand immediately for a vowel, whether ¢ or 7, according 
to the exigency of the case. 
* But few fragments of the above dialect have been as yet published ; one of its most remark- 
able features, as displayed in those fragments, is, that 7 is wanting in them, and that they always 
exhibit the Coptic Z, where the letter of power is employed in the other two dialects of this tongue. 
