More important and far more valuable than these abstractions, to which the Babylonians obviously attained only at a late period, and in all probability under the influence of Greek ideas, are the results which their knowledge and acuteness gained in other fields. The cuneiform writing, according to the conclusions we have already been compelled to draw, was borrowed by the Elamites and Babylonians from the earlier inhabitants of the lower districts. It was originally a picture-writing, which, like the Egyptian, passed from real pictures to indicatory and symbolic pictures or picture-signs. The necessity of abbreviating and compressing the picture-signs was here far more keenly felt than in Egypt, quite irrespective of the fact that the strong pictorial tendency of the Egyptians was probably wanting on the Lower Tigris. The stones and slabs on which the Egyptians engraved their hieroglyphics were not to be found in the plains of the two rivers, and the slabs of mud, clay, and brick on which they were compelled to write (the pictures and symbols were written on the soft slabs with the style, and these were then burnt), were ill-adapted for sketches. Such obstinate material made the abbreviation of the symbols an imperative necessity; and it was by sharp and straight strokes that the signs could be most easily traced upon slabs of mud and clay. The oldest bricks in the ruins of Mugheir, Warka, and Senkereh display pictures in outline; then beside bricks with inscriptions of this kind we find others repeating the same inscription in cuneiform signs, which now form a completely ideographic system of writing. The immediate comprehension of picture signs by the senses died away owing to abbreviations of the kind mentioned, and the picture-writing became symbolic writing. This writing, which consisted of groups of cuneiform symbols, attained a higher stage of development when a phonetic value was attributed to a part of the cuneiform groups, whether used to signify nouns or verbs and adjectives, or new groups were formed for this purpose. By cuneiform groups both simple and compound syllables are expressed. For simple syllables, _i.e._ for those consisting of a single consonant with a vowel before or after it in order to give the consonant a sound, the cuneiform writing of Babylon and Assyria possesses about one hundred groups, and several hundred groups for compound syllables, _i.e._ for those which have more than one consonant. Side by side with this syllabic writing the old abbreviated picture-writing was retained. Certain words of frequent occurrence, as king, battle, month, were always represented by picture signs, or ideograms, and so also were the names of deities and most proper names. The greater number of the cuneiform groups were then used in a phonetic as well as an ideographic sense, and without any correlation between the phonetic and actual meaning. Thus the symbol for the word "father" had