Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 edition. Excerpt: ... the lesser evil, in a case where some evil was unavoidable; nor have I explained how, in applying to their use the Chaldean syllabary, they introduced into it polyphony which was not an original feature of that syllabary. I will now give these explanations. Allowing for the identity, as to their mode of being expressed, of s and n, and of i and a, an Assyrian syllable might have twenty different beginnings. To each of these three vowels might be added, giving sixty syllables consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel. Each of these would require a representative, and also the combination of each with b, g, d, kh, z, l, m, n, r, and s, as final letters in the syllable. The syllabary should thus contain 660 characters; and if some of these might be dispensed with, as of rare occurrence, there were several syllables of which it was desirable that there should be two representatives. There are, in point of fact, many pairs of homophones in the Assyrian syllabary. The reason why it was desirable is, that syllables which contained servile letters, --the preformatives p-'s for instance, might, it was thought, be advantageously distinguished from the same syllables when entirely radical. For instance, the last word in plate II. is a word in the first person plural, and begins with a character, which represents tii, or in this instance nanh (?l). The Assyrians, I believe, used the character for this sound under all circumstances; but the Babylonians were in the habit of substituting for it another character (fig. 24) when they wished to express rii, radical. Not long before this is a character which I have valued In in my transcription, which is exclusively used to express in, when the n was radical; another character, which begins plate 1.1...