72 



sage consisting only of a few words might differ widely from 

 the average distribution. In order to be able to decipher an 

 article written in a language of the nature of which he is not 

 informed a -priori, the decipherer ought to be provided with 

 tables formed by the analysis of many languages of different 

 kinds, with which the table of the cipher might be compared 

 successively. 



A collection of sequence tables would be valuable, not 

 merely for the purpose of deciphering, but also in connexion 

 with philology. They would exhibit to the eye affinities and 

 characteristic differences of cognate languages : they would 

 manifest the changes which particular languages undergo in 

 the course of time : they would, moreover, indicate general 

 principles of euphony, prevailing amongst all languages, and 

 founded on the very nature of our organs of speech and 

 hearing. 



It is easy to see that, by reference to principles of this 

 kind, considerable progress might be made towards the deci- 

 phering of purely alphabetic writings in a language wholly 

 unknown. A tabular analysis will, in the first instance, dis- 

 cover vowels by their greater readiness to combine with other 

 letters either preceding or following them ; next, amongst the 

 consonants, the liquids, particularly r, will in general be found 

 to combine with the rest most freely ; and, lastly, the letters 

 of the same organ will be found to form a group which enter 

 similarly into combination. 



Mr. Graves suggested that this method of tabulating might 

 be employed with advantage in the case of the cuneiform 

 writings. Admitting that one or two kinds of this character 

 had been deciphered, and found to be phonetic, we might 

 tabulate the deciphered inscriptions, and compare the tables 

 so formed with one founded on an analysis of inscriptions in a 

 third and different cuneiform character. If this latter were 

 phonetic, and its language cognate with those of the deci- 

 phered kinds, we might expect to find the three tables possess- 



