Sept. 27. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



221 



cording to a scale adapted to the requirements of 

 printing, lie orders only so many of each letter as 

 he is likely to use. That scale may be nearly re- 

 presente<i in the following way : the letter z being 

 the one least used in English, he will re(iuire 



Twice the number of letter z for letter x 

 Twice also — — j 



— — q 



— — k 



— — b 



— — P 



— — g 



— — w 



— — m 



— — u 



— — d 



— — h 



— — a 



» — — e 



Suppose now a person to write English in 

 cypher, using unknown characters for the well- 

 known letters ; it would be easy to decypher his 

 writing, if of sufficient length to make the general 

 rule acted on in the printing trade applicable. 

 The decypherer, by selecting each distinct un- 

 known character, and numbering them respectively, 

 would find that the character ofteiiest occurring 

 was e, the next oftenest t, and so on to the cha- 

 racter having the lowest number, being least used, 

 whicli would of course be z. Persons accustomed 

 to decypher European correspondence for diplo- 

 matic purposes, will pronounce best on the jjrac- 

 ticabiiity of this method for the decyphering of 

 modern languasres. 



It IS proposed then to apply the same method in 

 the several languages supposed nearest of kin to 

 that of the Nineveh inscriptions. AVithout en- 

 tering into the reasons for that opinion, it may 

 suffice, for the present purpose of illustration, to 

 .assume that the language of these inscriptions is 

 Chaldee. To apjily tiiis method the numbers of 

 each letter occurring in the Taigum of Onkelos on 

 Genesis, or the whole rentateucJi, should be taken. 

 This enumeration has been made as regards the 

 Hebrew (see Uagster's Fiimihj Bible, at the end 

 of Deuteronomy). The readiest mode of efiecting 

 such enumeration would be to ein[>loy twenty-two 

 persons knowing the Ghaldee letters, and to assign 



60 



a letter to each, calling out to them each letter as 

 it occurred in Onkelos, whilst each person kept 

 count of his own letter on a tally, and summing up 

 the total gave in the result to the reader a< the end 

 of each chapter. This would be necessary with a 

 view to ascertain what quantity of unknown in- 

 scription was recpiired to evolve the rule, as the 

 proposed method is clearly inapplicable when the 

 quantity of matter to be deeyphei'ed is incon- 

 siderable. 



Having gone over sufficient ground to satisfy 

 himself of the certainty of the rule, the decypherer 

 would next count the numbers of each distinct 

 character in all the cuneiform inscriptions acces- 

 sible to him, making allowance for fnal letters, also 

 for vowel points which may be attached to the 

 character, as in Ethiopic. Assuming the rule in 

 Chaldee to be the same as in Hebrew (it is in fact 

 very different), he would find the character oftenest 

 occurring in the Nineveh inscriptions to be 1, the 

 next D. the rest in the following order as to fre- 

 quency of occurrence, \ n. 3. H, N. :. ■?. 2. 1, tJ'. i, n. 

 p> T. D. 1. V. y. D. D; the first letter, ), van, occur- 

 ring neai-ly seven times as often as 0, teth. The 

 order of the letters would, in fact, vary much from 

 this in Chaldee ; the servile letters being different 

 would alone much disturb the assumed order, ac- 

 tually ascertained nevertheless, as respects the 

 Hebrew letters, in the five books of Moses. One 

 word as to the order in which the several lan- 

 guages should be experimented on. The Chaldee 

 would be the first, and next in succession, (2) the 

 Syriac, (3) the Ethiopic, (4) the Arabic, (5) the 

 Hebrew (die jungsie Schwester*), and (6) the 

 Pehlvi. The Indo-European languages woidd, in 

 case of fiiilure in the above, claim next attention ; 

 of these first the Zerid, next (2) the Sanscrit, then 

 (3) the Armenian, &c. &c. 



The resemblance of many of the characters on 

 the Babylonian bricks, as well as on the stones of 

 Nineveh, is very great to the characters known in 

 our Bibles as Hebrew, but which are in fact not 

 Hebrew but Chaldee, and were introduced by the 

 Jews subsequent to their Babylonish captivity : 

 the original Hebrew character was that still exist- 

 ing on coins, and nearly approximates in many 

 respects to the Samaritan character. In some 

 MSS. collated by Kennicott, he found the tetra- 

 grammaticon " Jehovah " written in this ancient 

 character, whilst the rest was Chaldee. The cha- 

 racteristic of the unknown letters is their resem- 

 blance to nails, to arrow-heads, and to wedges, 

 from which, indeed, they are commonly designated. 

 In the Chaldee (the Hebrew of our Bibles) this is 

 also strikingly visible, notwithstanding the effect 

 of time in wearing down the arridges : thus, in the 

 oftenest recurring letter, ), in the left leg of the 

 n. in y, in V. in D. in i, in D, and especially in ty, 



* Adelung in Mithridates. 



