27 



tic values for the same characters in the second kind ; as may 

 be shewn even by the evidence of those who have attempted 

 to make out the writing of the latter kind phonetic. The 

 characters in question are assumed to denote in that writing 

 respectively, pu, pa, and jo, by Westergaard, and pti, pa, and 

 yu by Hincks. 



14. With regard toM. Botta's search, in specimens of writing 

 cognate to that of the third kind, for letters of the same power, 

 or, as he calls them, variants or homophones, it is shewn, 

 from his own description of the process of investigation em- 

 ployed by him, that what he in reality m-akes out are charac- 

 ters, not of the same phonetic, but of the same ideagraphic 

 value ; or, in other words, they are not equivalent letters, but 

 equivalent symbols. 



15. The innumerable fragments of legends in the third 

 kind of cuneiform character, which are spread in such profu- 

 sion all through the ruins of Babylon, prove this to have been 

 the national writing of the inhabitants, as long as they con- 

 tinued to erect buildings, or till the capture of their city by 

 Cyrus, after which the place fell into a state of decay, from 

 which it never recovered. But the language of the same people, 

 at the time of the event just specified, is also preserved to us in 

 some chapters of the book of Daniel, as well as in other parts of 

 the original Scriptures. We are, therefore, in possession of the 

 very language of the Babylonian inscriptions, on the suppo- 

 sition of their lines consisting of groups of characters im- 

 mediately expressive of words ; and whenever a sufficient 

 quantity is to be got unmutilated of any species of alphabetic 

 ■writing in a known tongue, it can always be deciphered. If 

 it be objected, with regard to the third kind of writing in 

 question, that it is not exactly the same, but only cognate 

 to the Babylonian kind, even admitting so much, we are 

 still to bear in mind that the purports of several specimens of 

 this kind are ascertained by the aid of the corresponding le- 

 gends of the first kind ; and besides, supposing them phone- 



