Assyriology (as the study of the literature and antiquities of the Babylonians and Assyrians is called) being a study still in the course of development, improvements in the renderings of the inscriptions will doubtless from time to time be made, and before many months have passed, things now obscure may have new light thrown upon them, necessitating the revision of such portions as may be affected thereby. It is intended to utilize in future editions any new discoveries which may come to light, and every effort will be made to keep the book up to date.
For shortcomings, whether in the text or in the translations, the author craves the indulgence of the reader, merely pleading the difficult and exacting nature of the study, and the lengthy chronological period to which the book refers.
A little explanation is probably needful upon the question of pronunciation. The vowels in Assyro-Babylonian should be uttered as in Italian or German. _H_ is a strong guttural like the Scotch _ch_ in "loch"; _m_ had sometimes the pronunciation of _w_, as in Tiamtu (= Tiawthu), so that the spelling of some of the words containing that letter may later have to be modified. The pronunciation of _s_ and _s_ is doubtful, but Assyriologists generally (and probably wrongly) give the sound of _s_ to the former and _sh_ to the latter. _T_ was often pronounced as _th_, and probably always had that sound in the feminine endings _-tu_, _-ti_, _-ta_, or _at_, so that Tiamtu, for instance, may be pronounced Tiawthu, Tukulti-âpil-Êsarra (Tiglath-pileser), Tukulthi-âpil-Êsarra, etc., etc., and in such words as _qâtâ_, "the hands," _sumati_, "names," and many others, this was probably always the case. In the names Âbil-Addu-nathanu and Nathanu-yâwa this transcription has been adopted, and may be regarded as correct. _P_ was likewise often aspirated, assuming the sound of _ph_ or _f_, and _k_ assumed, at least in later times, a sound similar to _h (kh)_, whilst _b_ seems sometimes to have been pronounced as _v_. _G_ was, to all appearance, never soft, as in _gem_, but may sometimes have been aspirated. Each member of the group _ph_ is pronounced separately. _T_ is an emphatic _t_, stronger than in the word "time." A terminal _m_ represents the _mimmation_, which, in later times, though written, was not pronounced.