This use of signs is the reverse of homophonism, where by the use of one sign many words having the same sound are expressed. It is an instance of polyphonism where one sign is used to express words having different sounds. The result was, however, the same. It led in both cases to the increase of determinatives, and other explanatory signs to indicate the word to be expressed by the sign.
The use of ideographs as determinatives was evidently suggested by the Sumerian syllabary, but the language of the Sumerians was simple, requiring fewer signs to express sounds. On the contrary, the Semitic language was more copious, possessing a greater variety of syllabic utterances.
It will thus be seen that when the decipherment of the Assyrian cuneiform was first attempted, scholars could not for a time master the curious complications they found.
The Assyrian syllabary could only be explained as a foreign importation, not as an evolution from a Semitic speech. As Professor Sayce says: “Like the discoverers of the planet Uranus, they had to presuppose another language to account for its origin and appearance.”
The decipherment of the older cuneiform soon after, and the discovery of the bilingual texts, where copies from the old Sumerian originals were placed side by side with the Semitic translations, soon explained the sources of confusion, the original values of these signs and their application to another language.
CHAPTER VII.
OF the great rulers in Mesopotamia, both Turanian and Semitic, who stand out most distinctly in the records of this remote past, are the Turanian prince, Gudea, about 4800 B. C., the great Sargon I and his son, Naram-Sin, Semitic princes, both to whom the date 3800 B. C., is accorded, and the Arabian prince, Khammuragas, or Hammurabi, the founder of the city of Babylon and contemporary with Abraham. The date now given for Sargon I, is 3800 B. C. Long before this date various families of Semitic race had evidently made their appearance in the land; Phœnician traders from the Persian Gulf, or nomadic tribes from the Arabian borders, Semitic families, attracted hither by the rich fertility of the Mesopotamian plains. These were Sabeans, perhaps, with a faint, far-off remembrance of the One God, ruler and creator of the universe, but now worshippers of the stars, the abodes of ministering spirits.
At this time in Sargon’s reign, long before the date accorded to Urea, The Builder, in the new empire arising in Accad, we find the early beginnings of the Assyrian people. There was as yet no Assyria or Assyrians. The ancient Turanian capital of Accad was named Aushar or Asshar, signifying “watered plain,” but this had not yet given its name to the region or country.
Sargon’s new capital was Agane, or Agade of Accad, while Nineveh, “the mighty” of the coming kingdom, was as yet but a collection of fishermen’s huts on the swift-flowing Tigris.