We must now turn back to the second transcript of the Persian inscriptions, which, thanks to its greater simplicity, had been deciphered before the Assyro-Babylonian. The way was opened in 1844 by the Danish scholar Westergaard.[26] With the help of the proper names he fixed the values of many of the characters and made a tentative endeavour to read the texts. But the language he brought to light was of so strange a nature as to throw doubt on the correctness of his method. Turkish, Arabic, Indian and even Keltic elements seemed alike to be mingled in it. It was not, therefore, till his readings had been subjected to revision by Hincks in 1846[27] and de Saulcy in 1850[28] that any confidence was reposed in it, and the results made available for the decipherment of the Babylonian transcripts, the characters of which frequently had the same forms. It must be remembered, however, that Westergaard worked from defective materials. Rawlinson had not yet published his copy of the Behistun inscription, which he eventually placed in the hands of Edwin Norris, who, in 1853, edited the text along with a syllabary, grammar and vocabulary, as well as translations and commentary.[29] This edition was a splendid piece of work, and with it the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian inscriptions may be said to have been accomplished. Oppert’s _Peuple et Langage des Médes_, which appeared in 1870, did but revise, supplement and systematize the work of Norris. The new language which had thus been brought to light was agglutinative. Westergaard had seen in it the language of the Medes, and, like Rawlinson, had connected it with a hypothetical “Scythian” family of speech. The term “Scythian” was retained by Norris, who, however, attempted to show that it was really related to the Finnish dialects. But the excavations made at Susa by Loftus in 1851 put another face on the matter. In 1874, and again more fully in 1883,[30] I pointed out that the inscriptions found at Susa and other ancient Elamite sites were in an older form of the same language as that of the second Achæmenian transcripts, and furthermore that certain inscriptions discovered by Layard in the plain of Mal-Amîr eastward of Susa were in practically the same script and dialect. At the same time I fixed the values of the characters in the Mal-Amîr texts and gave provisional translations of them, with a vocabulary and commentary. Oppert and myself had already been working at the reading of the older Susian inscriptions, a task in which we were followed by Weissbach with a greater measure of success. But the same cause which had retarded the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian inscriptions--a want of materials--militated against any great advance being made in the decipherment of the older Susian, and it is only since 1897, when the excavations of M. de Morgan at Susa were begun, that the student has been at last provided with the necessary means.