originally stood for Assur, “Assyria,” came to have the sound of as, that denoting bil, “a lord,” had in addition the sound of bi, and so on.  Under these circumstances it is almost impossible to feel any certainty in regard to the phonetic representation of a single line of these old inscriptions.  The meaning of each word may be well known; but the articulate sounds which were in the old times attached to them may be matter almost of conjecture.

The Chaldaean characters are of three kinds-letters proper, monograms, and determinatives.  With regard to the letters proper, there is nothing particular to remark, except that they have almost always a syllabic force.  The monograms represent in a brief way, by a wedge or a group of wedges, an entire word, often of two or three syllables, as Nebo, Babil, Merodach, etc.  The determinatives mark that the word which they accompany is a word of a certain class, as a god, a man, a country, a town, etc.  These last, it is probable, were not sounded at all when the word was read.  They served, in some degree, the purpose of our capital letters, in the middle of sentences, but gave more exact notice of the nature of the coming word.  Curiously enough, they are retained sometimes, where the word which they accompany has merely its phonetic power, as (generally) when the names of gods form a part of the names of monarchs.

It has been noticed already that the chief material on which the ancient Chaldaeans wrote was moist clay, in the two forms of tablets and bricks.  On bricks are found only royal inscriptions, having reference to the building in which the bricks were used, commonly designating its purpose, and giving the name and titles of the-monarch who erected it.  The inscription does not occupy the whole brick, but a square or rectangular space towards its centre.  It is in some cases stamped, in some impressed with a tool.  The writing—­as in all cuneiform inscriptions, excepting those upon seals—­is from left to right, and the lines are carefully separated from one another.  Some specimens have been already given.

The tablets of the Chaldaeans are among the most remarkable of their remains, and will probably one day throw great additional light on the manners and customs, the religion, and even, perhaps, the science and learning, of the people.  They are small pieces of clay, somewhat rudely shaped into a form resembling a pillow, and thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters, which are sometimes accompanied by impressions of the cylindrical seals so common in the museums of Europe.  The seals are rolled across the body of the document, as in the accompanying figure. [PLATE VII., Fig. 2.] Except where these impressions occur, the clay is commonly covered on both sides with minute writing.  What is most curious, however, is that the documents thus duly attested have in general been enveloped, after they were baked, in a cover of moist clay, upon