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Once the idea of the consonant had been firmly grasped, the old syllabary was doomed, though generations of time might be required to complete the obsequies generations of time and the influence of a new nation. We have now to inquire how and by whom this advance was made.
Yakut has preserved for us the information that at Raishahar in the district of Arrajan there lived in the Sasanian times men, versed in a peculiar species of syllabary who wrote medical, astronomical and logical works. Wustenfeld, II, p. 887. This passage has been translated by Barbier de Maynard in his "Geographical, Historical and Literary Dictionary of Persia", in French, pp. 270-271.
Moreover, the Sumerian and Semitic verbs, which are employed in the parallel passages quoted above for the "overwhelming" of the land, are given as synonyms in a late syllabary, while in another explanatory text the Sumerian verb is explained as applying to the destructive action of a flood.
A few extracts will serve to show the nature of the ethical teaching given to Japanese children in medieval days: *A syllabary of moral precepts like the ethical copy-books of Occidentals. A model letter-writer. *The criminal laws of Hojo Yasutoki. All these text-books remained in use until the Meiji era. Let nothing lead thee into breaking faith with thy friend, and depart not from thy word.
In Rawlinson, ii. 58, no. 6, there is a list of some seventy names. Rawlinson, ii. 58, no. 6, 58. De Sarzec, pl. 8, col v. ll. 4-6. Keils Bibl. 3, 1, 80, note 3. Rawlinson, iv. 35, no. 2, 1. See a syllabary giving lists of gods, Rawlinson, ii. 60, 12. See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp. 476-87. See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp. 476-87. Perhaps the knob of a sceptre. Proc. Soc.
We may note that the true reading of the name of the founder of the dynasty of Ur has now been ascertained from a syllabary to be Ur-Engur; and an unpublished chronicle in the British Museum relates that his son Dungi cared greatly for the city of Eridu, but sacked Babylon and carried off its spoil, together with the treasures from E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk.
At the very outset of a brief survey of the history of the Babylonians, a problem confronts us of primary importance. Are there any traces of other settlers besides the Semitic Babylonians in the earliest period of the history of the Euphrates Valley? Those who cling to the theory of a non-Semitic origin of the cuneiform syllabary will, of course, be ready to answer in the affirmative.
The Phoenician inventor, whoever he was, reduced letters to the smallest possible number, and expressed them by the simplest possible forms. Casting aside the idea of a syllabary, he reduced speech to its ultimate elements, and set apart a single sign to represent each possible variety of articulation, or rather each variety of which he was individually cognisant.
There also exists in Japan a syllabary alphabet of forty-seven characters, used at present as an auxiliary to the Chinese.
The similarity of the epithets bestowed in various texts upon Ea and Nabu point most decidedly to a similar starting-point for both; and since in a syllabary we find the god actually identified with a deity of Dilmun, probably one of the islands near Bahrein, there are grounds for assuming that a tradition survived among the schoolmen, which brought Nabu into some connection with the Persian Gulf.
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