em was advanced by dint of a painstaking labor, the degree of which
cannot easily be exaggerated, until to-day the grammar of the
Babylonian-Assyrian language has been clearly set forth in all its
essential particulars: the substantive and verb formation is as
definitely known as that of any other Semitic language, the general
principles of the syntax, as well as many detailed points, have been
carefully investigated, and as for the reading of the cuneiform texts,
thanks to the various helps at our disposal, and the further elucidation
of the various principles that the Babylonians themselves adopted as a
guide, the instance is a rare one when scholars need to confess their
ignorance in this particular. At most there may be a halting between two
possibilities. The difficulties that still hinder the complete
understanding of passages in texts, arise in part from the mutilated
condition in which, unfortunately, so many of the tablets and cylinders
are found, and in part from a still imperfect knowledge of the
lexicography of the language. For many a word occurring only once or
twice, and for which neither text nor comparison with cognate languages
offers a satisfactory clue, ignorance must be confessed, or at best, a
conjecture hazarded, until its more frequent occurrence enables us to
settle the question at issue. Such settlements of disputed questions are
taking place all the time; and with the activity with which the study of
the language and antiquities of Mesopotamia is being pushed by scholars
in this country, in England, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway,
and Holland, and with the constant accession of new material through
excavations and publications, there is no reason to despair of clearing
up the obscurities, still remaining in the precious texts that a
fortunate chance has preserved for us.

IV.

A question that still remains to be considered as to the origin of the
cuneiform writing of Mesopotamia, may properly be introduced in
connection with this account of the excavations and decipherment, though
it is needless to enter into it in detail.

The "Persian" style of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the
Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is
nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more
cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as
many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian
never more than five, a