nd frequently only three; and instead of writing
words by syllables, sounds alone were employed, and the syllabary of
several hundred signs reduced to forty-two, while the ideographic style
was practically abolished.

The second style of cuneiform, generally known as Median or Susian,[13]
is again only a slight modification of the "Persian." Besides these
three, there is a fourth language (spoken in the northwestern district
of Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and the Orontes), known as
"Mitanni," the exact status of which has not been clearly ascertained,
but which has been adapted to cuneiform characters. A fifth variety,
found on tablets from Cappadocia, represents again a modification of the
ordinary writing met with in Babylonia. In the inscriptions of Mitanni,
the writing is a mixture of ideographs and syllables, just as in
Mesopotamia, while the so-called "Cappadocian" tablets are written in a
corrupt Babylonian, corresponding in degree to the "corrupt" forms that
the signs take on. In Mesopotamia itself, quite a number of styles
exist, some due to local influences, others the result of changes that
took place in the course of time. In the oldest period known, that is
from 4000 to 3000 B.C., the writing is linear rather than wedge-shaped.
The linear writing is the modification that the original pictures
underwent in being adapted for engraving on stone; the wedges are the
modification natural to the use of clay, though when once the wedges
became the standard method, the greater frequency with which clay as
against stone came to be used, led to an imitation of the wedges by
those who cut out the characters on stone. In consequence, there
developed two varieties of wedge-writing: the one that may be termed
lapidary, used for the stone inscriptions, the official historical
records, and such legal documents as were prepared with especial care;
the other cursive, occurring only on legal and commercial clay tablets,
and becoming more frequent as we approach the latest period of
Babylonian writing, which extends to within a few decades of our era. In
Assyria, finally, a special variety of cuneiform developed that is
easily distinguished from the Babylonian by its greater neatness and the
more vertical position of the wedges.

The origin of all the styles and varieties of cuneiform writing is,
therefore, to be sought in Mesopotamia; and within Mesopotamia, in that
part of it where culture begins--the extreme south; bu