When Rawlinson had finished his Persian Memoir he devoted himself to a more elaborate study of the Median, and he appears to have nearly completed an essay upon the subject. Meanwhile, however, he was drawn from this branch of inquiry to the more attractive and useful study of the Babylonian column: and his work on Median was never published.[636] He did not, however, lose his interest in the subject. He handed over his copies and other materials to Mr. Norris, who undertook the investigation of the subject and to whom he continued to give valuable assistance as occasion arose. The study of Median was taken up in the meantime by Dr. Hincks from the point where it was left by Westergaard and Rawlinson. Hincks’s contribution is contained in three papers read before the Irish Academy between June 1846 and January 1847; and the last two appeared after he had seen the opinions of Rawlinson to which we have referred.[637] These papers were communicated without delay to the Asiatic Society in London, as we learn from a note by the Secretary, who says he had just received (June 1846) a communication on the Median cuneiform from ‘a learned clergyman in a remote part of Ireland.’[638] Hincks differed in some material points from Westergaard. He would not admit the long vowels, and limited them to _a_, _i_ and _u_, adding, however, _er_ to their number. He restricted the simple consonants to _m_, _p_, _t_, _k_, _s_, and _n_; and from these he thought all the other signs were combined. He rightly admitted the compound syllabic form, consisting of two consonants joined by a vowel, which Westergaard had overlooked, and he even allows the occasional use of a double syllable, such as ‘ersa’ and ‘washa.’ He showed that the vowel is never omitted, though not always necessarily pronounced. Thus the group ‘an-na-ap’ reads simply ‘anap’; and he did not consider that the simple consonants preceding its syllabic form altered the sound as Westergaard had suggested.[639] Hincks adopted the eighty-two signs distinguished by Westergaard, and attempted the identification of sixty-seven, or seven more than Westergaard. His identification of the three vowels, _a_, _i_ and _u_, was correct: and his limited number of consonants were also correct so far as they went, with the exception of _p_, which is the syllable ‘pir’ (No. 40). He, however, allotted more than one sign to some of his consonants: thus _k_ is represented by three signs, _t_ by two; and conversely he allowed that several characters might express the same value. He accepted fifteen of Westergaard’s correct syllabic values and added nine of his own, to which we may add fifteen others nearly correct, or thirty-nine in all; thus, including his three vowels and five consonants, he had forty-seven signs available for transliteration, as opposed to the twenty-nine of Westergaard. Singularly enough he made little improvement in the misleading syllabic signs of his predecessor.