His contributions to cuneiform literature began in June 1846, when he read a paper ‘On the First and Second Kinds of Persepolitan Writing.’[542] This was followed by another in November ‘On the Three Kinds of Persepolitan Writing and on the Babylonian Lapidary Character.’ In January of the following year a farther essay appeared, ‘On the Third Persepolitan,’ and in the December after he published a long paper in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ on the Inscriptions of Van.[543] When he entered upon the study of the first column but little remained to be done to complete the decipherment of the Persian alphabet. His attention was therefore chiefly directed to the writing in the Susian and Babylonian columns. In a postscript to his first essay he insisted on the substantial resemblance of the language of the third column to those of the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions. He supported the opinion which had been even then suggested, that both of these ‘have much in common with the Semitic languages’ and he announced that he had read the names of Babylon and Nineveh on the bricks.[544] He devoted his ingenuity in the first instance to prove the identity of the cursive mode of writing found in the third column and in some Babylonian inscriptions with the character seen on Babylonian bricks and in the East India House Inscription. He published two elaborate tables in illustration of this theme, and offered a few suggestions as to the meaning of the signs.[545] His later contributions deal chiefly with the Assyrian inscriptions, which, since the excavations made by Botta, began to attract the largest share of public attention. In 1850, he wrote on Khorsabad, on the Assyrio-Babylonian phonetic system, and on Assyrian mythology. Among his more important contributions to Assyriology are his treatise on the Assyrian Verb (1855-6) and his Assyrian Grammar, begun in 1866.[546] The last was left unfinished, and, strange to say, no notes were found among his papers to assist in its completion. Like Jacquet, he seems to have charged his memory with the whole burden of the complicated task he had set himself to accomplish. Few scholars enjoyed a higher reputation for extraordinary acumen in unravelling the difficulties of this intricate subject. The ‘intuition’ he displayed was specially remarkable, and often led him to anticipate conclusions that other scholars only reached by a slow and arduous course of inquiry. Even Rawlinson, who shared to a high degree in this rare gift, often found himself anticipated by the Irish scholar. Hincks, for example, was the first to decipher the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar in the India House Inscription and in many other places, where Grotefend thought he had found ‘forms of prayer.’[547] This was, however, after he had received the Behistun Inscription, where ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ was found by Rawlinson in the Persian column.[548]