THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, 1848. 479 



Major Kawlinson having taken, independently, nine of those as- 

 signed by Dr. Hincks. 



The data for the investigation of the Median or second Perse- 

 politan writing are abundant, the trilingual inscriptions of Perse- 

 polis and Behistun furnishing more than ninety proper names, 

 together with their Persian equivalents. Notwithstanding this, 

 the progress made in the investigation has been comparatively 

 small. In fact, with the exception of Grotefend, who made the 

 first step, Westergaard is the only writer who has attempted the 

 task of deciphering it with success. Major Kawlinson indeed 

 informs us, in his memoir on the Persian character, that he has 

 made considerable progress in deciphering the two other kinds of 

 Persepolitan writing ; and he has given a sketch of his views on 

 the orthography, and the general structure and affinities of the 

 language of the second kind : but none of his results, as" to the 

 values of the characters, have been as yet published. 



Westergaard held that the Median alphabet had six vowels 

 and sixteen consonants ; and that the characters represented first 

 these twenty-two letters, and then syllables composed of the conso- 

 nants followed by vowels. Dr. Hincks maintains, on the contrary, 

 that there are but four vowels and five consonants ; and that, besides 

 the characters representing these nine simple sounds, there are 

 also characters representing combinations of the five consonants 

 with preceding and following vowels, as also combinations of the 

 vowels with each other. Again, while according to Westergaard 

 the vowels are not all expressed, according to Dr. Hincks every 

 vowel is expressed at least once, and often more than once ; it 

 being customary to write vowels twice over, at the end of one 

 character and at the begining of the next. In accordance with 

 this principle, Dr. Hincks adds vowels, in many cases, to Wester- 

 gaard's values, thus making the characters to represent syllable* 

 instead of letters. Notwithstanding these important differences, 

 however, he confirms, in general, the values given by Westergaard, 

 although he differs from him altogether as to five of the characters, 

 and assigns values to five more, which that writer had not valued 

 at all. 



But it is upon his labours connected with the third Perse- 

 politan writing that Dr. Hincks' chief claim as an original 

 discoverer must be founded. Grotefend discovered that the 

 characters, in this writing, were partly expressive of syllables, and 



