of the Assyrian
written character is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously
repeated and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.

To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set, as an
equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in old Assyria
in the long generations when that land was the culture Centre of the
world. Nor was the task confined to the natives of Babylonia and Assyria
alone. About the fifteenth century B.C., and probably for a long time
before and after that period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the
Babylonians was the official means of communication throughout western
Asia and between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery
of a collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten,
preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the
Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a majority of
the most highly civilized people in the world to be the most perfect
script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe of the time did not in
the least realize the waste of energy involved in his labors, or ever
suspect that there could be any better way of writing.

Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into its
component phonetic elements--had any one been genius enough to make such
analysis--would have given the key to simpler and better things. But
such an analysis was very hard to make, as the sequel shows. Nor is
the utility of such an analysis self-evident, as the experience of
the Egyptians proved. The vowel sound is so intimately linked with the
consonant--the con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its
very name--that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual
recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by
itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of phonation,
was the feat at which human intelligence so long balked. The germ of
great things lay in that analysis. It was a process of simplification,
and all art development is from the complex to the simple.
Unfortunately, however, it did not seem a simplification, but rather
quite the reverse. We may well suppose that the idea of wresting from
the syllabary its secret of consonants and vowels, and giving to
each consonantal sound a distinct sign, seemed a most cumbersome and
embarrassing complication to the ancient scholars--that is to say,
after the time arrived when any one gave su