160 REPORT — 1860. 



the Assyrians, had no SH. They expressed that sound in foreign words by their 

 double letter SK. In both these instances the final sibilant, which is preserved in 

 the Egyptian, disappears in the Assyrian gentile adjective. In the name of Carche- 

 nish (Gargamusk of the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions) the case ending is pre- 

 served in Hebrew, Assyrian, and Egyptian. In Tarshish. it is preserved in Hebrew, 

 but lost in Egyptian. This name has not been met with in the Assyrian inscrip- 

 tions ; but the Greek form Taptr-os shows that the second sibilant in the Hebrew word 

 is a case ending. In the Tiglath-Pileser inscription names of districts are always 

 expressed in the genitive, the character signifying " country" which precedes them, 

 being to be read as a noun in construction, mat. Some of these genitives are Assy- 

 rian, as Kummukhi, " (the land of) Kummukh;" but others are to all appearance 

 Indo-European, as Ligrakhinas, Ammaus, Adaus, Skaraus. These last three have 

 a strong resemblance to the genitives of the Persian nouns in ush, such as Margaush, 

 Babilaush. The au was pronounced as two syllables. 



The next point investigated was the interpretation of the words of this language, 

 ligwindintis and lasanan, and their connexion with like words in other languages. 

 The former word was supposed to be equivalent to Xtovroei&els, and the latter to 

 \aS)v. It was observed that Xeaiv was a secondary word for " lion," the participle of 

 a verb, which was itself derived from the primitive word Wis, originally Xe/s. The 

 words first introduced were nouns, from which verbs were derived. Thus mus, 

 mouse, expressed the idea to which the name was first assigned. It had been stated, 

 and assigned as a reason why the Sanskrit language ought to be acknowledged as 

 the parent of the European languages, that Sanskrit was the only language in which 

 the verb "to steal," from which mouse, "the stealer," was derived, was known to 

 exist. It is very true that the Sanskrit noun signifying " a mouse " was derived 

 from a Sanskrit verb signifying "to steal;" but this verb was itself derived from 

 a primary noun signifying "a mouse," which was preserved in Greek, Latin, and 

 Teutonic, though unknown in Sanskrit. As in English we say "to ape a person," 

 meaning " to do to him what an ape does," *. e. " to imitate him ;" so we might 

 say "to mouse a thing," meaning " to do to it what a mouse does," i. e. "to steal 

 it." In Wilson's Sanskrit dictionary four different forms of the verb " he mouses it " 

 are given ; but the root, the primary noun mus, is not to be found in the language 

 at all. So much for this argument in favour of the antiquity of Sanskrit, as com- 

 pared with the European languages cognate to it ! Whatever weight it has is in the 

 opposite direction. 



Using the primary for the secondary Greek word for " lion," and the uncontracted 

 form, we should have \wei8eas. In the Cadmean alphabet, in which i was only 

 used as a semivowel, this would be written \efoFeibeas ; and the word preserved in 

 the Assyrian inscriptions, if expressed in the same alphabet, would be XeyfevSevas. 

 The other word lasanan, expressed in this alphabet, would be Xacrovov, or at least 

 might be so rendered ; for, as long a expressed the sound of a in fall or in father, 

 the corresponding short a might have the sound of o in folly (which would be ex- 

 pressed by o) as well as that of a in fat. So the Assyrian Aranta became 'Opovrrjs 

 in Greek. In this same Cadmean alphabet, \aa>v would be \ao-6ov : the <r being here 

 " KifibrjXov," or deceptive ; — written, but not pronounced ; as it was so late as the 

 time of Pindar. 



The dropping of the sibilant between two vowels being admitted to have taken 

 place in a great number of instances (if not in every instance where it was originally 

 unaccompanied by a consonant or semivowel) by all Greek grammarians ; and the 

 cov of the genitive plural being also admitted by Bopp and others to have been 

 originally avov and then oov (as M e 'T M was originally /iWfoi/a and then fj.ei(oa), there 

 is no difficulty whatever in deriving the second Greek word in classical use from that 

 preserved in the Assyrian inscriptions. The former of the two words, however, 

 requires some remarks. 



In the first place, it is not generally admitted that -eas, from a nom. sing, -tjs, has 

 sprung from evas. It is commonly supposed to be from etrns. The point suggested 

 } S) — that the Ur-Griechisch word now discovered is evidence that this supposition is 

 not altogether correct. It is admitted that a compound adjective in -tjs, the latter 

 element of which is a noun in -oy -eos, such as hva-jxev^s, Si-en;?, would have originally 

 formed its genitive in •e<ros. Such a word would correspond to a Sanskrit noun in 



