Art. XX.—Origin and Development of the Cuneiform Syllabary

Abstract

Palæography never attracted much the attention of Assyriologists, and in only a few cases have they either turned their mind to the origin, growth and development of the Cuneiform syllabary. M. Menant, who tried in his grammar to give a list as complete as possible of all the signs of various styles and epochs, has unfortunately accepted many doubtful characters, and has not distinguished the really archaic from the ornamental style. F. Lenormant, who specially studied the Babylonian syllabaries now in the British Museum, has done much to elucidate many points, but his observations bear only on a few characters, and have for principal object to ascertain the values and meanings in order to help the decipherer in reading rightly the inscriptions. He made a great step no doubt in attributing exclusively certain values of the characters to Akkadian and others to the Assyrian texts, but other works seem to have claimed his attention, and he did not follow up the subject.