Under these circumstances it is almost impossible to feel any certainty in regard to the phonetic representation of a single line of these old inscriptions.

The meaning of each word may be well known; but the articulate sounds which were in the old times attached to them may be matter almost of conjecture.
The Chaldaean characters are of three kinds-letters proper, monograms, and determinatives.

With regard to the letters proper, there is nothing particular to remark, except that they have almost always a syllabic force.

The monograms represent in a brief way, by a wedge or a group of wedges, an entire word, often of two or three syllables, as Nebo, Babil, Merodach, etc.

The determinatives mark that the word which they accompany is a word of a certain class, as a god, a man, a country, a town, etc.