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characters which were not syllabic were consonantul, like the Phoenician 
and Hebrew, as contrasted with alphabetic, like the Greek and Coptic. 
I mean to say that, properly speaking, there were no vowels. What 
have been supposed to be such were really breathings or semi-vowels. 
They in some instances indicated the vowels that were to be supplied ; 
but vowels had in every instance to be supplied. 
A comparison of the Cuneatic or Assyrian and the hieroglyphic or 
Egyptian methods of writing, will best show my meaning. The Assy- 
rians had characters representing complete syllables, consisting of two 
consonants and a definite vowel between them ; and they had characters 
representing incomplete syllables, either a consonant followed by a 
definite vowel, or a consonant preceded by a definite vowel. A combi- 
nation of a character representing an incomplete syllable of the former 
kind, and of a character representing an incomplete syllable of the latter 
kind, would be equivalent to a character representing a complete 
syllable. Supposing there be twenty-two distinct sounds in the lan- 
guage, and that each complete and incomplete syllable were to be repre- 
sented, 22 x 22 x 3, or 1452 complete, and 22 x 6, or 182 incomplete 
syllables, would have to be represented. It would be scarcely possible, 
however, to devise such a number of Cuneatic characters, and 1t would 
be absolutely impossible to recollect them. It is, consequently, a mat- 
ter of necessity that several syllables should in many cases be repre- 
sented alike, and that many complete syllables should be without repre- 
sentations. For example, 82 72 and the incomplete syllable 3, might 
have one character to represent them; and, again, 28, 377, 2), AY the in- 
complete syllable 2_, and the five corresponding syllables which have 
5 in the place of 2, might have one character to represent them all. 
Those complete syllables which neither occurred in the inflexions of 
common roots nor in combinations of preformatives, or of a prefor- 
mative and an initial radical, might be left without any representa- 
tives. The number of syllables that it would be desirable to represent 
might thus be reduced to less than a quarter of the whole number 
in existence. The number of characters in use was also limited 
in another way. The characters originally represented objects, and 
stood for sounds which were the names of those objects, or signified 
some action which they would suggest. An incomplete syllable could 
not, therefore, have any proper representative. Its representative must 
properly denote some complete syllable resembling this, which was a 
significant word. For example, the class of ten syllables (eight com- 
plete and two incomplete), mentioned above, might have for their com- 
mon. representative a nose, FS; a similar class with ¢ instead of a for 
the vowel, might have for their representative corn about to be reaped, 
3N; and another class with w for the vowel might be represented by a 
bird, *AY. 
All this is well established ; and I have been strongly impressed with 
the opinion that the hieroglyphic system of writing is much more likely 
to have been analogous to this than to that of the Greeks. We know 
R. I. A. PROC.—VOL, VII. 2D 
