A good deal has been said from the time of Botta downwards as to the similarity of the various styles. There is no doubt that they are sufficiently formidable to require a special training in reading each kind,[739] and the Assyrians themselves found it necessary to make transcriptions from the Babylonian in order to make the writing intelligible. There was a greater diversity in the writing of Babylonian than of Assyrian, in consequence of there being no standard official type in the former as there was in the Assyrian,[740] and consequently a copyist sometimes altogether mistook a sign, and occasionally he was actually unable even to divine its meaning; indeed, so great was the diversity in the manner of writing that the Assyrian scribes made use of Tables of Variants, and in one of these no less than twenty different ways of writing the same sign have been found. On the whole, most students will be inclined to agree with Mr. Budge, who dwells more on the differences than the similarity of the styles.[741] The demonstration of the similarity of the cuneiform writing of Babylon and Assyria was followed by the more important discovery that the languages expressed by both were the same as that of the third Persepolitan column. The Persian, now deciphered and translated, was thus found to afford a key, not only to the language of the third column, but also to the large collection of inscriptions from Nineveh. Hincks, in a Postscript of June 1846, to which reference will be frequently made, announces that he believes the third Persepolitan ‘agrees, to a great extent at least, in language with the Babylonian inscriptions.’[742] In 1848, Botta endeavoured to establish beyond the possibility of doubt that the Assyrian of Khorsabad likewise agreed with the language of Babylon and Persepolis. He showed that the same grammatical inflexions, the same personal pronouns, the same particles, and very many words agreed in all three languages. With regard to the inscriptions at Van, Botta was at first in doubt, but farther study led him to believe that here the inflexions were not the same.[743] This was subsequently fully recognised by Hincks[744] and by most other scholars. It did not, however, prevent De Saulcy from hazarding a translation of one of them on the supposition that it was written in Semitic.[745] In 1850, Rawlinson agreed that both the Babylonian and Assyrian languages are to be included in a common category; but he added that ‘they can hardly be called identical, inasmuch as each dialect affects the employment of specific verbal roots and certain particular nouns and adjectives.’[746] They are, in fact, distinguished by certain dialectical differences which have been compared in degree to that existing between the dialects of the West and North of England; but other authorities think the differences scarcely amount to provincialism.[747]