When Mr. Layard visited the same neighbourhood, in 1841, he was fortunate enough to be able to copy two inscriptions at Malamir, one of thirty-six lines and the other of twenty-four.[670] Rawlinson, in his classification of the cuneiform inscriptions, called them the Elymaean, and from the differences they presented, he considered that they ‘are entitled to an independent place,’ apart from Babylonian or Assyrian. In 1850, he again points out their dissimilarity from either of the two last mentioned, but he adds that they are not so difficult to read as those he had found on the bricks at Susa.[671] The surprising discovery of De Saulcy that the Median and Babylonian characters are ‘identical,’ notwithstanding their apparent diversity, naturally stimulated the ingenuity of other writers to widen the sphere of the ‘identical’; and Mordtmann was among the first who laboured in this direction. The work was continued by Lenormant, who made his appearance within the circle of cuneiform scholars in 1871, by the publication of his first series of ‘Lettres Assyriennes,’ followed, in 1873, by the ‘Choix de Textes.’ The result of the minute comparison he instituted was to show that the Old Susian script closely resembled Old Babylonian, while the Elymaean of Malamir is simply an earlier form of the Median or New Susian character. The development towards ‘identity’ had now gone so far that Bertin describes the difference between Old Susian and Old Babylonian as very slight, while Elymaean and Median are simple ‘variants of the same.’[672]