Note 495 — Chapter IV · BEER AND JACQUET TO RAWLINSON—A.D. 1838-1846

Canon Rawlinson explains the process thus: ‘Applying to the letters of these names the phonetic values previously obtained from the trio Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes, twenty-one out of the twenty-eight letters were found exactly to suit their place. The remainder were new forms and furnished the alphabet with four new letters, m, n, h, and ch.’ (Memoir of Sir Henry Rawlinson, p. 320.) Rawlinson himself, however, confessed in 1846: ‘I am neither able, nor is it of any consequence after the lapse of so many years, to describe the means by which I ascertained the power of each particular letter, or to discriminate the respective dates of the discoveries.’ (J. R. A. S. x. 6, note.)