The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

XXV
reader will find written In capital letters in order to
distinguish tbem from the Semitic Babylono-Assyrian words
which constitute nearly the entire body of the transcribed
text.
Syllabary. This was a kind of Akkado-Sumirian dic-
tionary. The cuneiform system of writing was invented and
elaborated at a very early period by a Sumiro-Akkadian
race speaking a non-Semitic agglutinative language. This
system was adopted by the Babylono-Assyrian tribes tliat
subsequently established themselves on the plains of the
Euphrates and the Tigris. But this adoption of the Akka-
dian script was not accomplished without considerable diffi-
culties. Not only was it not adapted to express some of
the elementary Semitic sounds, as the gutturals ri and V,
as well as the distinction between the sibilants t and 'i,
but the greater part of the cuneiform characters were poly-
phones, i. e. had several phonetic values, or, in other words,
might be pronounced in several different ways. It was
chiefly in order to make this complicated system of writing
intelligible to the ordinary reader that the syllabaries were
constructed. I now quote from Professor Sayce :— "The
syllabaria which were drawn up by order of the king [Assur-
bani-palj usually consist of three columns : in the middle is the
character to be explained, while the left-hand column gives
its phonetic powers, and the right hand column the Assyrian
translation of each of these powers when regarded as an
Akkadian word. In the right hand column, consequently,
the characters are treated as ideograms, in the left hand
column as phonetic symbols, so far as Assyrian is con-
cerned".
Determinative means a cuneiform sign which was prefixed
to an ideogram. "It serves to divide words and to mark the