OF THE ARROW-HEADED CHARACTER. 511 
more nice and faithful characters could not be 
produced by a veritable Babylonian style than 
that which results from this truly simple and pri- 
mitive mode, which although originating by acci- 
dent, might afterwards have been intentionally 
employed in marking (as is the practice to this 
day) certain lots of new made, and consequently, 
moist bricks; the practice in our own time 
being the insertion of a chip of wood, or small 
stone, into the side of the soft brick, which 
marks a certain lot, whereas on the banks of the 
Euphrates, in the remote days of the primitive 
Babylonians, the more simple mode of marking 
might have been such as seen in Fig. 12, namely, 
by indenting the side of the soft brick with the 
corner of a hard one, the result being, as before 
stated, a most perfect arrow-headed character— 
in this way the arrow-head might have existed, 
and been employed simply as a conventional sign 
or mark as to number, and afterwards, on being 
seen by some fertile mind, its admirable qualities 
might have been appreciated, and its wonderful 
capabilities of combination thenceforth applied, so 
as to become, as it certainly did, the fundamental or 
elementary character of the entire Babylonian 
alphabet, and—as I hope to prove to my readers 
likewise—the basis of the Greek, Roman, and 
