76 Richard Cull, Esq., on the 



of the missionaries have greatly contributed to advance the 

 bounds of our knowledge in both glossology and grammar. 



Colonel Rawlinson has read another memoir to the Royal 

 Asiatic Society, on the Babylonian and Assyrian Inscriptions, 

 part of which, occupying about 150 pages, has recently been 

 published in the Journal of that Society. The memoir is 

 upon the Babylonian translation of the Great Behistun In- 

 scription. The memoir consists of — 1st, The text and an 

 analysis of the Babylonian inscription at Behistun ; 2d, An 

 indiscriminate list of Babylonian and Assyrian characters ; 

 and, 3d, On the Babylonian alphabet, of which we have only 

 the beginning now published. 



It can be shewn, beyond all doubt, that a very large pro- 

 portion of the Assyrian signs, i. e., the arrow-headed charac- 

 ters are polyphones. " But although I can thus shew the 

 probable reason of the employment of cuneatic polyphones — 

 although I can explain the fact of the character ^<, the 

 ideograph for a ' country,' being invested with such discre- 

 pant phonetic values as mat and kur, by referring to the 

 Semitic synonyms DD in Chaldee, and s . f in Arab, (cog- 

 nate with %w£«), — the practical inconvenience of such a 

 variableness of power is excessive. The meaning, for in- 

 stance, of an Assyrian or Babylonian word may be ascer- 

 tained determinately, either from the key of the trilingual 

 inscriptions, or from its occurring in a great variety of pas- 

 sages with only one signification that is generally applicable ; 

 but unless its correspondent can be recognised in some 

 Semitic tongue, it is often impossible, owing to the employ- 

 ment in it of a polyphone character, to fix its orthography. 

 In the multitudinous inscriptions, again, of Nimroud, of 

 Khursabad, of Koyunjik, and of Babylon, of which (although 

 their general application can be detected without much diffi- 

 culty) the details require for their elaboration a minute phi- 

 lological analysis, this orthographical uncertainty presses on 

 the student with almost crushing severity. On the one side, 

 in working out his readings, he can only employ philological 

 aid, — that is, he can only compare Hebrew or Chaldee cor- 

 respondents, after being assured of the true sound of the 

 Assyrian and Babylonian word ; while on the other, he must 



