Supplementary Note sent from Baghdad, 25th August, and received in London, 8th October, 1846

Having been engaged in considering the question of aspiration, and having had the advantage at the same time of consulting Professor Lassen's acute but incomplete remarks upon the old Persian alphabet, I have been induced to adopt a somewhat different classification of the Cuneiform characters from that which is given in the preceding chapter. The peculiarity of Cuneiform writing, which I have long suspected, but only recently verified, and upon which depend the rectifications now proposed, consists in the constant occurrence of compound vowel articulations in the interior of words, of which, owing to the inherence of the a in the preceding consonant, the second element only is expressed. I have satisfied myself, indeed, that the groupes ai and au are as common in the language of the inscriptions as the diphthongs é and o in Sanskrit, (to which, be it observed, the said groupes phonetically and grammatically correspond,) and I have further remarked, that although in such Cuneiform groupes the vowel a is unexpressed, its existence may usually be detected by the form of the preceding consonant; an explanation being thus afforded of many of the supposed anomalies in the organization of the alphabet, and a very important step being gained in reducing it to simplicity and order.