While these discussions were proceeding, Botta continued his contributions to the ‘Journal Asiatique’ (1847-8), and afterwards published them in a separate ‘Mémoire sur l’Ecriture cunéiforme’ (Paris, 1848). He endeavoured to introduce some degree of order among the profusion of Assyrian signs. He drew up a Table, consisting of a hundred and twenty-five signs that seemed to be most commonly used; and under each of these he arranged the signs which he found were sometimes apparently interchanged for them.[799] In this List of Variants we constantly find six or seven signs—sometimes many more—grouped together as of equivalent value. In view of later discoveries, it will be seen how extremely useful this classification might become, for the signs thus brought together were no doubt usually those that contained the same consonantal values. In the meantime, however, Botta was at a loss to find any reasonable explanation. Like Rawlinson, however, he could not believe that any of them were, as Löwenstern maintained, real homophones, or signs having identical values. They must, he thought, be distinguished from each other by some slight shades of sound that were sufficiently near to be easily confounded.[800] He explained, in anticipation of the discovery so soon afterwards made by Hincks, that ‘it is possible that the language is syllabic—so far, at least, as that each consonant is represented by a different sign, according to the vowel to which it is joined. Thus, for example, there would be one sign for _b_; others for _ba_, _bi_, etc. In Semitic languages the short vowels have little importance, and therefore the syllable _ba_ might be expressed by the sign for _b_ only; by the two signs _b_ and _a_; and also in certain cases, by the signs that represent _b_ in connection with the other vowels.’ It will be seen that Botta was very far indeed from being the mere painstaking classifier which it was once the fashion to describe him. He and Longpérier were, in fact, the only two Continental scholars, at present occupied with this subject, who were gifted with any real penetration into its difficulties.