Such is the first and simplest syllabarium:  but the Assyrian system does not stop here.  It proceeds to combine with each simple vowel sound two consonants, one preceding the vowel and the other following it.  If this plan were followed out to the utmost possible extent, the result would be an addition to the syllabarium of seven hundred and sixty-eight sounds, each having its proper character, which would raise the number of characters to between eight and nine hundred!  Fortunately for the student, phonetic laws and other causes have intervened to check this extreme luxuriance; and the combinations of this kind which are known to exist, instead of amounting to the full limit of seven hundred and sixty-eight, are under one hundred and fifty.  The known Assyrian alphabet is, however, in this way raised from eighty, or, including variants, one hundred, to between two hundred and forty and two hundred and fifty characters.

[Illustration:  Partial PAGE 173]

Finally, there are a certain number of characters which have been called “ideographs,” or “monograms.”  Most of the gods, and various cities and countries, are represented by a group of wedges, which is thought not to have a real phonetic force, but to be a conventional sign for an idea, much as the Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3. etc., are non-phonetic signs representing the ideas, one, two, three, etc.  The known characters of this description are between twenty and thirty.

The known Assyrian characters are thus brought up nearly to three hundred!  There still remain a considerable number which are either wholly unknown, or of which the meaning is known, while the phonetic value cannot at present be determined.  M. Oppert’s Catalogue contains fourteen of the former and fifty-nine of the latter class.

It has already been observed that the monumental evidence accords with the traditional belief in regard to the character of the Assyrian language, which is unmistakably Semitic.  Not only does the vocabulary present constant analogies to other Semitic dialects, but the phonetic laws and the grammatical forms are equally of this type.  At the same time the language has peculiarities of its own, which separate it from its kindred tongues, and constitute it a distinct form of Semitic speech, not a mere variety of any known form.  It is neither Hebrew, nor Arabic, nor Phoenician, nor Chaldee, nor Syriac, but a sister tongue to these, having some analogies with all of them, and others, more or fewer, with each.  On the whole, its closest relationship seems to be with the Hebrew, and its greatest divergence from the Aramaic or Syriac, with which it was yet, locally, in immediate connection.

To attempt anything like a full illustration of these statements in the present place would be manifestly unfitting.  It would be to quit the province of the historian and archeologist, in order to enter upon that of the comparative philologer or the grammarian.  At the same time a certain amount of illustration seems necessary, in order to show that the statements above made are not mere theories, but have a substantial basis.