each of these syllables a symbol must be set aside and held in
reserve as the representative of that particular sound. A perfect
syllabary, then, would require some hundred or more of symbols to
represent b sounds alone; and since the sounds for c, d, f, and
the rest are equally varied, the entire syllabary would run into
thousands of characters, almost rivalling in complexity the
Chinese system. But in practice the most perfect syllabary, Such
as that of the Babylonians, fell short of this degree of
precision through ignoring the minor shades of sound; just as our
own alphabet is content to represent some thirty vowel sounds by
five letters, ignoring the fact that a, for example, has really
half a dozen distinct phonetic values. By such slurring of sounds
the syllabary is reduced far below its ideal limits; yet even so
it retains three or four hundred characters.

In point of fact, such a work as Professor Delitzsch's Assyrian
Grammar[6] presents signs for three hundred and thirty-four
syllables, together with sundry alternative signs and
determinatives to tax the memory of the would-be reader of
Assyrian. Let us take for example a few of the b sounds. It has
been explained that the basis of the Assyrian written character
is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously repeated
and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.

To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set,
as an equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in
old Assyria in the long generations when that land was the
culture Centre of the world. Nor was the task confined to the
natives of Babylonia and Assyria alone. About the fifteenth
century B.C., and probably for a long time before and after that