onquerors. It
is possible--though we have no direct evidence of the fact--that
the Turanians of Zagros and the neighborhood had already formed for
themselves the alphabet which is found in the second columns of the
Achaemenian tablets, when the Arian invaders conquered them. This
alphabet, which in respect of complexity holds an intermediate position
between the luxuriance of the Assyrian and the simplicity of the
Medo-Persic system, would seem in all probability to have intervened
in order of time between the two. It consists of no more than about a
hundred characters, and these are for the most part far less complicated
than those of Assyria. If the Medes found this form of writing already
existing in Zagros when they arrived, it may have assisted to give them
the idea of making for themselves an alphabet so far on the old model
that the wedge should be the sole element used in the formation, of
letters, but otherwise wholly new, and much more simple than those
previously in use.

Discarding then the Assyrian notion of a syllabarium, with the enormous
complication which it involves, the Medes strove to reduce sounds to
their ultimate elements, and to represent these last alone by symbols.
Contenting themselves with the three main vowel sounds, a,i, and u, and
with one breathing, a simple h, they recognized twenty consonants,
which were the following, b,d,f,g,j,k,kh,m,n,n (sound doubtful),
p,r,s,sh,t,v,y,z,ch (as in much), and tr, an unnecessary compound. Had
they stopped here, their characters should have been but twenty-four,
the number which is found in Greek. To their ears, however, it would
seem, each consonant appeared to carry with it a short a, and as this,
occurring before i and u, produced the diphthongs ai and au, sounded
nearly as e and o, it seemed necessary, where a consonant was to be
directly followed by the sounds i or u, to have special forms to which
the sound of a should not attach. This system, carried out completely,
would have raised the forms of consonants to sixty, a multiplication
that was feared as inconvenient. In order to keep down the number,
it seems to have been resolved, that one form should suffice for the
aspirated letters and the sibilants (viz., h,kh; ch,ph or f,s,sh, and
z), and also for b,y, and tr; that two forms should suffice for the
tenues, k,p,t, for the liquids n and r, and for v; and consequently that
the full number of three forms should be limited to some three or
four l