Crofton — On a Brick with Archaic Babylonian Characters. 383 



The inscription is in the Archaic Babylonian character, or one of 

 the early stages after the primary hieroglyphics from which all the 

 cuneiform writing has been derived ; bnt, for the sake of convenience, 

 I have reduced this to the Neo-Babylonian character. 



The name of Nebuchadnezzar is here represented (after the vertical 

 wedge used in the modern character as determinative for a man) — 

 first, by the ideogram for the god Nebo — in which, if the characters 

 were syllabic, they might be an and ah — then by three syllabic ele- 

 ments ; and lastly, by a monogram for the verb "")^J, here used as 

 an imperative. The same name is elsewhere written entirely sylla- 

 bically, as : — 



JSTa - hi - uv - lew - du - ur - ri - u 



zu - ur. 



This explains the right pronunciation, and affords an excellent illus- 

 tration of one of the means by which the ideographism and poly- 

 phonism of the Anarian writing have been found out. Nebo, instead 

 of being represented by an ideogram, is spelt by three phonetic cha- 

 racters with the non-phonetic determinative for a god prefixed. The 

 same character which represents hi both on the brick and in the name 

 spelt syllabically also representing dur on the brick ; but in the other 

 instance the second one of the doubled characters of the brick dis- 

 appears, and instead of it we have two different characters repre- 

 senting du and ur, thus showing that one character can represent both 

 ku and dur. The brick monogram of uzur is also in the second example 

 resolved into u, zu, and ur. The name means, most probably, " ISebo 

 protect the young man," as the middle element would correspond to 

 the Arabic ~ ^ (hudurrun), which has the signification of "a strong 

 and thickset youth." Same is the equivalent of the Hebrew ")J^, and 



- See in " The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," published by the Trus- 

 tees of the British Museum under the superintendence of Sir Henry C. Kawlinson, 

 K. C. B., vol. i., p. 51 : No. 1, " Cylinders from the Temple of the Seven Spheres 

 at Birs Nimrud ;" No. 2, "Cylinders from the Temple of the Sun at Scnkereh ;" 

 p. 52: No. 3, "Cylinder from Babylon;" and No. 4, "Cylinder brought by Mr. 

 Rich from Babylon." 



