tn the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 309 
that might follow. I read the above n’ni, or n’né; ne.ne.be must be read 
nné. be, not n’neb.”—On the three Kinds of Persepolitan Writing, &c., p. 21. 
In our author’s practice, however, he does not adhere strictly to the rules here 
laid down ; as, for instance, he deprives syllabic signs of the vocal part of their 
power, in other cases besides those in which they are followed by characters of, 
respectively, the same values in their consonantal part ; and, after substituting a 
short e for wv, as one of his two primary vowels, he still retains the ~ in its former 
capacity, in addition to the secondary one which he arrived at by means of com- 
binations specified in the latter of the above extracts. But a clearer conception 
of his theory with regard to this subject will be got from the following example : 
The eight characters here presented for inspection are copies of those con- 
stituting the first line of the great Babylonian inscription, in the Museum of the 
Honorable the East India Company. ‘They certainly have very little the appear- 
ance of letters, and look far more like symbols, significant, independently of all com- 
binations, each of them by itself. Dr. Hincks, however, assumes them to convey 
a phonetic expression of the name Nebuchadnezzar, exclusively of several other 
groups of characters of the like nature, unnecessary to be here considered, and 
to which he attributes the phonetic representations of the very same name. The 
series of characters now before us, he, after rejecting a deciphering of them 
previously adopted, reads, in the final part of his Essay, in the three following 
ways : 
Nabu .k? . ku .ba.ru.tba.sa . ra, in page 21. 
Nnebe. g’ .ge.w'.re .w'.cha.r, in page 26. 
Nebe k u 1 uw cha wr, in page 26. 
To the last of these readings he gives the preference at the close of his 
Memoir, in the following terms: “ The correct pronunciation of the name ap- 
pears to be Nebekilichar :” and yet this word corresponds with the sound of 
the name in question solely in its first two syllables, where, it may also be ob- 
served, the resemblance is effected only by taking the extraordinary liberty of 
attaching to the initial character a phonetic value of double the legitimate length; 
and to which character the author, in another assumed phonetic representation of 
