N. B.--The formation of the second person plural deserves attention. The word _zu-nini_ is, clearly, composed of the two elements, _zu,_ “thee,” and _nini,_ “them”--so that instead of having a word for “you,” the Chaldaeans employed for it the periphrasis “thee-them”! There is, I believe, no known language which presents a parallel anomaly. Such are the chief known features of this interesting but difficult form of speech. A specimen may now be given of the mode in which it was written. Among the earliests of the monuments hitherto discovered are a set of bricks bearing the following cuneiform inscription [PLATE VI., Fig. 3]: This inscription is explained to mean:--“Beltis, his lady, has caused Urukh (?), the pious chief, King of Hur, and King of the land (?) of the Akkad, to build a temple to her.” In the same locality where it occurs, bricks are also found bearing evidently the same inscription, but written in a different manner. Instead of the wedge and arrow-head being the elements of the writing, the whole is formed by straight lines of almost uniform thickness, and the impression seems to have been made by a single stamp. [PLATE VII., Fig. 1.] [Illustration: PLATE 7] This mode of writing, which has been called without much reason “the hieratic,” and of which we have but a small number of instances, has confirmed a conjecture, originally suggested by the early cuneiform writing itself, that the characters were at first the pictures of objects. In some cases the pictorial representation is very plain and palpable. [Etext Editor’s Note: the next two pages contain many examples of heiratic symbols [--] which can be seen only in the html file or the jpg image <page0044.jpg>] [Illustration: PAGE 44] For instance, the “determinative” of a god--the sign that is, which marks that the name of a god is about to follow, in this early rectilinear writing is [--] an eight-rayed star. The archaic cuneiform keeps closely to this type, merely changing the lines into wedges, thus [--], while the later cuneiform first unites the oblique wedges in one [--] , and then omits them as unnecessary, retaining only the perpendicular and the horizontal ones [--] . Again, the character representing the word “hand” is, in the rectilinear writing [--] , in the archaic cuneiform [--] , in the later cuneiform [--] . The five lines (afterwards reduced to four) clearly represent the thumb and the four fingers. So the character ordinarily representing “a house” is evidently formed from the original --, the ground-plan of a house; and that denoting “the sun” [--] , comes from [--] , through [--] , and [--] , the original [--] being the best representation that straight lines could give of the sun. In the case of _ka,_ “a gate,” we have not the original design; but we may see posts, bars, and hinges in [--] , the ordinary character.