a word ideographically instead of phonetically, just as frequently as to mistake ideograms for phonetics. Compound ideograms were also not infrequent, where two or more were used to express an idea, but without reference to the sound. For example, the word for ‘palace’ is composed of two ideograms, _bit_ and _rab_, meaning respectively ‘house’ and ‘great’; but Hincks warned the reader that he might fall into a serious error if he were to suppose that they are employed in conjunction phonetically, and that ‘bitrab’ is the pronunciation of the Assyrian word for ‘palace.’[811] He shows that several ideographs may be used as simple determinative suffixes to words which are phonetically complete without them. The determinatives probably all originally represented words, and many of them preserved their phonetic values.[812] This inquiry into the nature and use of ideograms was the first that had been made, and it formed an important contribution to the knowledge of the language. His attempted transliterations are not of equal value. He rejected the reading of ‘Sargon’ given by Löwenstern, and he does not seem to have heard of the solution of the difficulty proposed the year before by Longpérier.[813] He recognised indeed that the sign for ‘king’ with which the word begins forms an integral portion of the name, but he did not perceive, like Longpérier, that its counterpart is the Hebrew ‘sar’; and he was led by other comparisons to assign the value of ‘kin-nil’ to the ideogram. He knew also that the sign Löwenstern had broken up into two and thought signified _r_, _s_ formed in fact a single sign, which he pronounced _ri_ or _li_. These efforts resulted in ‘kin-nil-li-n’a,’ which might seem even less manageable than the _r_, _s_, _k_ of Löwenstern. But Hincks was quite equal to the occasion, and, with the customary imaginative faculty of the philologist, he found no difficulty in connecting this person with the Chinzirus of Ptolemy, who, it appears, was a contemporary of Porus. He had already detected that the names of the son and grandson of this prince were Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, the builders of Kouyunjik and the South-West Palace of Nimrud. The first we find he transliterated ‘Sanki’ or ‘Sankin,’ with the possible addition of ‘rav’ or ‘ram’—‘Sankin-rav’: the other came out as ‘Adar-ka-dan.’ He also explains how he arrived at ‘Nabiccudurrayuchur’ for Nebuchadnezzar, and how he fancied he had found ‘Jerusalem’; but these instances only serve to illustrate the great obstacles that had still to be overcome. We have already mentioned the suggestions that were made first by Longpérier and afterwards by Botta with the view of reducing the number of homophones. Hincks confesses he had not seen the essay of the former, and we have not observed that he has acknowledged his obligations to Botta, though he was evidently acquainted with his work, as we see from an unpleasant reference to ‘a mechanical comparison