M. Oppert had now become the chief representative of cuneiform studies upon the Continent. His essays on the Persian column of the inscriptions (1851-2), evinced a complete mastery of the subject and considerable independence in the treatment of doubtful passages. The reputation he had earned led to his being attached to the French scientific expedition to Babylonia. On his return he undertook to write an account of the expedition, and his second volume, which made its appearance in 1859, contains an elaborate account of the work of decipherment.[665] Although the book is chiefly concerned with Assyrian, he has given a Syllabarium of the Median, with the object chiefly of comparing it with the Babylonian and Assyrian systems of writing.[666] The great importance resulting from such a comparison now becomes apparent. The values of the Assyrian signs were already ascertained in a large number of cases, and it was recognised that, with some exceptions, the similar sign in Median generally expressed the same value. The principle was also definitely admitted that each sign has only one value,[667] and that an independent sign may be looked for to express the combination of the vowels _a_, _i_ and _u_ before and after each of the principal consonants, _k_, _p_, _t_, _m_, _r_, _l_ and _s_, and therefore we may expect a sign for each of such forms as _ka_, _ki_, _ku_, _ak_, _ik_, _uk_, and so on. The application of this system enabled Oppert to make a very decisive improvement in the Syllabarium. It will be recollected that Norris had twenty-four wrong values, and twenty-one only approximately correct. Oppert now corrects twelve of the former and eighteen of the latter. The result was that he could dispose of eighty-three values absolutely and six nearly correct. He was doubtful as to the sound of one, wrong as to seven, and he omitted seven. Thus, when the determinatives are added, all of the 106 signs in Menant’s list were deciphered except fifteen. He also added a fourth to the list of determinative signs. He showed that the one mistaken by Norris for _s_ was in fact used simply to indicate that the following letter was an ideogram (No. 66 of Hincks). It had long ago been observed that a single sign was employed for ‘king,’ and Norris added another for ‘month.’ Oppert points out that the determinative before ‘god’ was also an ideogram for ‘god,’ and that ‘man,’ ‘water,’ ‘animal,’ or ‘horse’ and ‘road’ were likewise indicated by ideographic signs. He considered that the grammatical forms show analogy first to Magyar, then to Turkish, Mongol and Finnish. He gave it the name of Medo-Scythic, and he now considered that it was spoken by the tribes at Persepolis and Behistun—more particularly by those in the north of Media. The student of the second column had at his command some ninety-nine proper names, besides a large number of Persian official terms and titles transliterated into the Median script; and with their assistance the