Long and patient efforts have been made to decipher this script, ever since it was first restored to our knowledge; and among the would-be decipherers honourable mention must be made, for persistence and courage, of Professor A. H. Sayce and of Professor P. Jensen. Other interpretations have been put forward by F. E. Peiser (based on conjectures as to the names on the Nineveh sealings), C. R. Conder (based largely on Cypriote comparisons and phonetic values transferred from these) and C. J. Ball (based on Hittite names recorded on Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, and applied to word-groups on the Hittite monuments). These, however, as having arbitrary and inadequate foundations, and for other reasons, have not been accepted. F. Hommel, J. Halevy and J. Menant have done useful work in distinguishing word-groups, and have essayed partial interpretations. No other decipherers call for mention. A. H. Sayce and P. Jensen alone have enlisted any large body of adherents; and the former, who has worked upon his system for thirty years and published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology_ for 1907 a summary of his method and results, has proceeded on the more scientific plan. His system, however, like all others, is built in the main upon hypotheses incapable at present of quite satisfactory verification, such, for example, as the conjectural reading "Gargamish" for a group of symbols which recurs in inscriptions from Jerablus and elsewhere. In this case, to add to the other obvious elements of uncertainty, it must be borne in mind that the location of Carchemish at Jerablus is not proved, though it is very probable. Other conjectural identifications of groups of symbols with the place-names Hamath, Marash, Tyana are bases of Sayce's system. Jensen's system may be said to have been effectually demolished by L. Messerschmidt in his _Bemerkungen_ (1898); but Sayce's system, which has been approved by Hommel and others, is probably in its main lines correct. Its frequent explanation, however, of incompatible symbols by the doctrines of phonetic variation and interchange, or by alternative values of the same symbol used as ideograph, determinative or phonetic complement, and the occasional use of circular argument in the process of "verification," do not inspire confidence in other than its broader results. Sayce's phonetic values and interpretations of determinatives are his best assured achievements. But the words thus arrived at represent a language on which other known tongues throw little or no light, and their meaning is usually to be guessed only. In some significant cases, however, the Boghaz Keui tablets appear to give striking confirmation of Sayce's conjectures.