It is not clear to what extent, if to any, he was indebted to Hincks. His exaggerated Semitism was probably of native growth. He was not yet aware of the age of the Babylonian bricks, as explained by Hincks in 1846: yet he knew the determinative sign for proper names, which apparently was not known to Hincks.[795] Hincks, on the other hand, recognised a sign ‘prefixed non-phonetically to the name Ormuzd, and also used by abbreviation for the word “god.”’ Löwenstern says there is ‘no special sign accompanying the names of the gods.’ He, however, recognised a sign as the monogram for ‘god’; but when he found it in conjunction with the name of ‘Aurmuzd’ he treated it as the initial letter, and gave it the definite phonetic value of _a_.[796] Such were the difficulties to be overcome before the determinative for ‘god’ was recognised. He observed that a word may be expressed by its first and last signs, an early indication of the phonetic complement.[797] Meanwhile Hincks and Rawlinson announced the discovery already mentioned that the apparent equivalent signs in Persian depended in reality upon the vowel that was associated with the consonantal value. It at once occurred to Longpérier that the great difficulty of the Assyrian homophones might be solved by the application of the same principle. If, he says, there is a separate sign for the consonant _m_ according as it is followed by _a_, _i_ or _u_, ‘one can understand how a similar practice, if extended to many consonants, would augment the number of alphabetical signs.’ He warned scholars not to be too ready to accept the existence of homophones, because he observed that ‘according as the work proceeds the number of homophones decreases.’[798]