The simultaneous publication of the two essays by Burnouf and Lassen roused considerable interest among those devoted to the obscure problems of cuneiform decipherment. Grotefend, whose attention for the previous twenty years had been chiefly diverted to other pursuits, returned once more to the subject in which he had previously achieved such great success, and in the year following he published ‘Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Persepolitanischen Keilschrift.’ We have already seen that his mind had by that time lost much of its elasticity, and he displayed more tenacity in defending his old errors than aptitude in recognising the truth of the new discoveries. To some of these, however, he is forced to give a qualified assent.[470] He may indeed claim the merit of having now for the first time fixed the true value of one more character. It may be recollected that the two signs 38 (𐏁) and 40 (𐎽) had been long considered to express the same sound. Grotefend first attributed to both the value of sch; but in consequence of the Murgab inscription he afterwards considered that the last (40) must denote sr. This opinion was not, however, generally accepted. St. Martin preferred ch for both, and Lassen s. Burnouf, however, suggested ch for the first and l for the other. But Grotefend was now disposed to drop the s from the last letter (𐎽) and to read r, or some slight modification of that sound, corresponding to the pronunciation adopted on the other side of the Tigris for the letter which is rendered an l on this side. Accordingly in his translation of the Murgab inscription he writes simply Kurusch and elsewhere Kurhush. In his revised alphabet it appears as rh.[471] Grotefend has also the merit in this tract of being the first to indicate that (𐏂), the t of Lassen, might sometimes have the sound of thr, as in ‘puthra,’ and possibly in ‘Artakhshathra.’ In his alphabet, however, he drops the sound of r and makes the value th.[472]

In the following year a more important contribution was made by the appearance of two essays, one by E. F. F. Beer in Germany, the other by Eugène Jacquet in France. The former was published in the ‘Hallische Allgemeine Zeitung,’ the other in four papers inserted in the ‘Journal Asiatique’ (1838).[473] Beer was a native of Bötzen, where he was born in 1805 and received his early education. He went to Leipzig in 1824 and thenceforth he chiefly devoted himself to the study of Semitic Palaeography. He died in 1841, at the age of thirty-six. Both he and Jacquet showed that Lassen was entirely mistaken in supposing that there were different cuneiform signs to indicate the long and short signs of the vowels a, i, u.[474] They simultaneously discovered the correct values of the two letters 27 (𐎹) and 41 (𐏃). The first, the h of Grotefend and Lassen, is ascertained to be y; the other, the a of Grotefend and the ‘a long’ and ng of Lassen, was found to be the aspirate h.[475] The remaining corrections are due to the ingenuity of Jacquet alone. Jacquet was born at Brussels, but the whole of his short life was spent at Paris, where he died in 1838 at the age of only twenty-seven. His extraordinary precocity and the wonderful range of his acquirements place him among the most remarkable men of his generation. He was distinguished at school by the critical accuracy of his classical knowledge, and by the zeal with which he applied himself to the geography, history and literature of ancient times. He had scarcely ceased to be a school-boy when we find him studying Oriental languages under the most distinguished masters. He was the pupil of De Chézy in Sanscrit, of Silvestre de Sacy in Arabic and Persian, of Jaubert in Turkish, and Abel Rémusat in Chinese.[476] His studies travelled far beyond the ordinary course of even these learned professors, and embraced the various languages of India, the Malay Archipelago, Java, and even Ethiopia. At the same time he became familiar with most European languages, including Danish and Portuguese. At the age of eighteen, he began to contribute regularly to the ‘Journal Asiatique.’ It was in its pages that he published his ‘Considerations on the Alphabets of the Philippines,’ which appeared in 1831, when he had just reached the age of twenty. It at once attracted the attention of M. G. von Humboldt, who wrote to compliment the young author, and who farther showed his appreciation by adopting in his own work most of Jacquet’s conjectures.[477] This was followed by Memoirs on the languages and literature of Polynesia, including the cabalistic writings of Madagascar. From these subjects Jacquet passed to those affecting India. At the age of twenty-four we find him in correspondence with Mr. James Prinsep, the Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, and well known as the first decipherer of the Pali alphabet.[478] He has already planned the execution of a ‘Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum,’ and is busily occupied collecting materials from every available source. He is associated with Raoul Rochette in the study of Bactrian and Indo-Scythian medals, and his extraordinary capacity as a numismatist is fully recognised. In the midst of these various occupations he found time to devote himself to cuneiform inscriptions, which his knowledge of Zend and Pehlevi qualified him to investigate. From 1835 he was in constant correspondence with Lassen upon this and kindred subjects; and his singular ability enabled him to overcome many difficulties that had baffled previous inquirers. He not only earned distinction in the somewhat arid fields of philology and ethnology, but he was equally alive to the historical and literary aspects of the subjects he investigated. He was particularly interested in tracing the intellectual relations of the people of China, India, and Upper Asia, and he devoted some interesting papers to the connection between the East and West in ancient and mediaeval times. These were mostly written at the age of nineteen to twenty. At nineteen we also find him translating from the Danish and reviewing a tract by Rask on a Pali and Cingalese manuscript. He amused his leisure moments by translating from Chinese and from Sanscrit, in following the march of Alexander through Bactria, and in studying the history and literature of Buddhism. Jacquet’s life was inspired by two passions, devoted attachment to his widowed mother and a boundless love of knowledge. To the one he was ready to forego his hopes of fame: to the other he sacrificed his health. There can be no doubt that his incessant and feverish labours induced the fatal disease that first showed itself in the autumn of 1835, when he was but twenty-four. The last three years of his life were ennobled by an heroic struggle against increasing weakness. In the face of much suffering, he continued his labours to the end; and he died as a scholar might wish to die, seated at his desk, pen in hand, alone among his books and manuscripts, his mind filled to the last moment of consciousness with the work that had occupied his life. Thus passed away one of the most promising scholars of the age. It is possible that the multitude of his acquirements was incompatible with profound knowledge in each of the many subjects he treated. M. Julien contested the accuracy of his Chinese translations; and De Sacy seemed to doubt some other of his qualifications; but he received the enthusiastic applause of many other scholars—of the two Humboldts, of Ritter, Lassen, Burnouf, and Prinsep, each in their several departments.[479]

His essay on Cuneiform Decipherment was among the works he left incomplete. It was in the form of a review of Lassen’s recent Memoir, and three papers on the subject appeared during his lifetime in the ‘Journal Asiatique,’ and a fourth was published shortly after his death.[480] It can scarcely be said that he has gone beyond the introduction. The first essays are occupied chiefly with an account of what had been already accomplished in the field of cuneiform research, and with a review of the ethnological points raised by Lassen’s treatment of the provinces of Darius. It is only incidentally that he touches upon the language of the inscriptions, and he reserves the discussion of the alphabet to a future paper. Unfortunately, his premature death prevented him from accomplishing his task, and strange to say not a single note could be found among his papers that might be used for the purpose. This is the more remarkable from the frequent references he makes to that portion of his work in which he proposes to explain the points of difference with Lassen, and to the various passages from the inscriptions that he intended to bring forward in support of his views.[481] On other subjects he was in the habit of making the most elaborate notes, and it is scarcely possible to suppose that in a matter of this kind he charged his memory with an accumulation of detached words and phrases collected from the numerous inscriptions then available.

The essays indicate some of the corrections he proposed, but for the reason mentioned we are left very much to conjecture the foundation upon which they were based.

We see, however, that his correction of 27 (𐎹) from h into y was suggested by the words read by Lassen ‘Arbah’ and ‘Huna,’ which he recognised should be more properly read ‘Arabaya’ and ‘Yuna’ (Ionians).[482] Similar etymological considerations led him to the correction of the 𐏃 a into h. This letter occurs at the beginning of the words Lassen reads ‘aryᵃwᵃ,’ ‘arᵃqᵃtis,’ and ‘Aidhus,’ where Jacquet points out that the corresponding Zend forms require an aspirate.[483] In these essays we have only found two other corrections suggested. The first is 10 (𐎺), the e of Grotefend, which Lassen nearly approached in w, but to which Jacquet rightly gives the value of v.[484] The other is 26 (𐎰), the i of Grotefend and z of Lassen, which Jacquet changes into th in consideration of its occurrence in Assyria (Athuria) and Sattagydes—which he reads ‘Thrataghadus’ and also (as Lassen adds) in Mithra.[485]

If Jacquet’s contributions to the study of cuneiform had been limited to the essays in the ‘Journal Asiatique,’ they would have been comparatively unimportant. But he was also in correspondence with Lassen on the subject, and he not only communicated to him the result of his investigations, but also the reasons upon which they were based.[486] In 1837, Lassen took part in the foundation of a journal devoted to Oriental subjects—the ‘Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes.’[487] Grotefend became a contributor from the commencement,[488] and Lassen reported the progress of cuneiform research as occasion required. His first essay on the subject appeared in 1839,[489] and contained a criticism of the recent writings of Beer and Jacquet; with, as regards the latter writer, some important information derived from his correspondence. From this source we learn that Jacquet recognised the correctness of the value of r, already assigned to 𐎽 by Grotefend; and completed it by determining it to be the r before u.[490] He was led to this conclusion not only by the occurrence of the letter in ‘Kurus,’ but also in ‘paru,’ which compares with the Zend for ‘many’—‘the king of many lands.’ He showed also that 16 (𐎨), the o of Grotefend and i of Lassen, is really ch;[491] and finally 28 (𐎩), the ng of Grotefend and n of Lassen, he finds to be z: which, if not correct, is a considerable improvement. He was led to this conclusion by an ingenious conjecture. The letter is found in the province Lassen transliterated u w n, and which, from his theory of the diphthong, he read q’n and supposed to denote Chaona. The word occurs first in the list, and Jacquet inferred that it must refer to the capital province, Susa. He did not altogether reject Lassen’s q, but by changing the n into z, he got near to what he sought, either in ‘uwᵃzᵃ’ or ‘qᵃzᵃ’ for Susa.[492] To sum up: Beer and Jacquet both independently found the correct values for 27 (𐎹) y and 41 (𐏃) h; Jacquet added the correct value of 10 (𐎺) v, of 16 (𐎨) ch or c of 26 (𐎰) th; and he completed the value of 40 (𐎽) r before u.

Beer may thus be credited with having contributed two letters (27 and 41), Jacquet with six (10, 16, 26, 27, 40 and 41). He also suggested that the name of the first province in the I inscription referred to Susa and not to Chaonia, and that Babirus—not Babisus—was the correct reading for Babylon.[493]

The year 1838 was memorable not only for the essays of Beer and Jacquet, but also for the appearance of Major Rawlinson among the number of cuneiform scholars. We have already related how his attention was directed to the subject while he was stationed at Kermanshah during the years 1835-7, and that he succeeded in making a transcript of two hundred lines, or about one half of the great inscription at Behistun. When he first began the study, in 1835, he was aware that Grotefend had previously ‘deciphered some names of the early sovereigns of the house of Achaemenes,’ but he could not obtain a copy of the alphabet, nor ascertain from which inscription it had been formed. Rawlinson began upon the two inscriptions he had copied at Elvend, and ‘when he proceeded to compare them, he found that the characters coincided throughout, except in certain particular groups, and it was only reasonable to suppose that the groups which were thus brought out and individualised must represent proper names. There were but three of these distinct groups in the two inscriptions,’ and they were arranged so as ‘to indicate a genealogical succession,’ no doubt ‘belonging to three consecutive generations of the Persian monarchy; and it so happened that the first three names, of Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes, which I applied at hazard to the three groups proved to answer and were in fact the true identifications.’[494] This ingenious process was precisely the same as that already followed by Grotefend, which we have described in detail. Rawlinson appears, however, to have divined the method independently, though the application of the three names to the three groups was no doubt suggested to him by what he had heard reported by Grotefend’s discovery. He next turned his attention to the first two paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, and by the same means he detected five other proper names, which he identified with Arsames, Ariaramnes, Teispes, Achaemenes and Persia. The recognition of these eight proper names yielded him the values of eighteen cuneiform characters, which later study showed he had correctly identified.[495]

Such was the progress he had made down to the autumn of 1836 by his own independent research. Shortly afterwards he received copies of Heeren and Klaproth’s writings, where at length he found the alphabets of Grotefend and St. Martin explained; but he writes: ‘Far from deriving any assistance from either of these sources, I could not doubt that my knowledge of the character ... was much in advance of their respective and in some measure conflicting systems of interpretation.’[496] He had indeed some cause for congratulation, for he had discovered eighteen correct values, while Grotefend was only successful in twelve, though, with the two from Münter, he had at his disposal fourteen in all. St. Martin only made out two letters by his own ingenuity, and disposed altogether of not more than ten.[497]

Having thus greater means at his disposal, Rawlinson succeeded, in the course of 1837, in arriving at an approximate translation of the first two paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, ‘which,’ he says, ‘would have been wholly inexplicable according to the systems of interpretation adopted either by Grotefend or Saint Martin,’ the only ones with which he was at that time acquainted. By the end of the year his paper was complete, and on January 1, 1838, he forwarded the translation of the two paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society, where it was received on March 14. In April a copy was submitted to the Asiatic Society in Paris, where it excited great interest, and Rawlinson was at once elected an Honorary Member. Steps were at the same time taken to put him in possession of the latest results of European investigation. M. Burnouf sent him his ‘Mémoire’ of 1836. M. Mohl shortly afterwards forwarded him a copy of the Yaçna. Sir Gore Ouseley, the Vice-President of the Asiatic Society, introduced him to the notice of Lassen, who wrote to him from Bonn in August (1838) to acquaint him with his alphabet and with the corrections made since its appearance in 1836 ‘as well by others as by myself.’[498] With the valuable assistance thus placed at his disposal, Rawlinson continued to work at his translations during the remainder of 1838 and till the autumn of 1839. So early as January 1839, we learn from Mrs. Rich that he had already succeeded in deciphering a large part of the two hundred lines.[499] He derived the greatest assistance from Burnouf’s ‘Commentaire sur le Yaçna.’ ‘To this work,’ he says, ‘I owe in great measure the success of my translations.’ During his stay at Bagdad in 1839 he was in correspondence with Lassen and Burnouf, who informed him of the progress recently made by Beer and Jacquet. Rawlinson, on his part, was rapidly completing his alphabet, and he lost no time in making his friends acquainted with the result. He was surprised to find that the European scholars just about kept pace with his own progress, and that he had little to learn from them, though perhaps he might be in a position to add something to their knowledge. He observed that Lassen’s newest version of the alphabet ‘coincided in all essential points with my own,’ but that his labours ‘have been of no farther assistance to me than in adding one new letter to my alphabet and in confirming opinions which were sometimes conjectural.’[500] Rawlinson had indeed succeeded in working out the whole of the alphabet by his own unaided ingenuity, so that he was accustomed to say that there were only two letters he owed to others: k, 𐎣 No. 4, which he learned from Burnouf, and y, 𐎹 No. 27, from Lassen, who got it from Jacquet.[501]

On the other hand, his contributions to the general advance of the study were necessarily limited. By the time he became known to European scholars they had on their part advanced so far that only four letters of Niebuhr’s list remained for which a correct or approximate value had not been found. These were:

The appearance of Rawlinson did not, therefore, take place till after the difficulty of the decipherment had been almost completely surmounted without his assistance. When his correspondence with Burnouf and Lassen began, in the autumn of 1838, he was, however, still in time to rectify two out of the four incorrect values.

He found 32 (𐎪) in the name of Cambyses, where it occurs as the fourth sign, which he transliterated correctly as j; Kₐbujᵢy. Hincks afterwards read the sign zh(i) and Oppert z(j)i; but both these sounds have since yielded to the one proposed by Rawlinson, and it now appears as j before i. But Rawlinson’s most striking success was with the last letter, 33 (𐎸), another g of Lassen. In his letter to Burnouf, he proposed to substitute m.[502] It is the initial letter in the name Lassen read ‘Gudrâha’ and thought indicated the Gordyaei. Rawlinson suggested the name was M’udraya, and should be compared with the Phoenician ‘Mŭdra’ and the Hebrew ‘Mitsraim,’ and signified, in fact, Egypt. Both of these emendations were, however, rejected by Lassen.[503]

There is another sign which came under discussion at this time. It will be recollected that we have assigned 13 (𐎡) to Lassen, who gave it the approximate value of t. Rawlinson, however, suggested to Burnouf that its true value is not t but tr. In this, however, he had been anticipated, as we have seen, by Grotefend in 1837, who suggested thr.[504] It is admitted that it is impossible to distinguish between the comparative merits of tr and thr;[505] and as Rawlinson probably knew nothing of Grotefend’s ‘Beiträge’ at the time, he may be credited with having discerned the correct sound of the sign.[506]

Then, as on subsequent occasions, his great merit lay in the superiority of his translations. He was already in a position to criticise Lassen’s efforts in this department with some severity. He thought that Lassen had ‘in many cases misunderstood both the etymology of the words and the grammatical structure of the language.’[507] When Rawlinson found that he was obliged to renounce the claim to a ‘priority of alphabetical discovery,’ and that he was continually being anticipated in the values he gave to the signs which he had himself just ‘obtained through continued labour,’ he was consoled by the reflection that he was ‘the first to present to the world a literal and, as I believe, a correct grammatical translation of nearly two hundred lines of cuneiform writing.’ Unfortunately, however, he withheld his translation, in the hope of making the accessories more perfect. A host of historical and geographical questions started up in rapid succession, and he was unwilling to limit his task to the series of critical notes which was all he at first contemplated. He accordingly began to recast his Memoir in the autumn of 1839, with the confident hope that it would be ready for publication early in the spring of 1840; but the outbreak of the Afghan War interrupted his literary projects and summoned him to a very different sphere of activity. Before he left, however, he had time to make a second communication to the Asiatic Society, in which he related some of the results of his study. His paper, which was read before a meeting of the Society, contained a ‘précis of the contents of a large part of the Behistun inscription, which differed in no material respect’ from the translation he elaborated at a much later date.[508] Indeed, we are told that, so far as the original materials extended, it was ‘absolutely identical’ with his subsequent work, which, as we shall presently see, was so perfect that later scholarship has found little to correct.[509] This was certainly a great achievement on the part of a young officer of twenty-nine years of age, and it was far in advance of anything that had yet been accomplished.

Meanwhile the number of inscriptions available for study continued to increase. In 1837, Grotefend published four lines of an inscription from the collection of Lord Aberdeen and Sir Gore Ouseley, which had recently been presented to the British Museum by Mountstuart Elphinstone. With the assistance of Lassen’s alphabet he deciphered the name of the king to whom it belonged. It read ‘Artks’t’â,’ which he easily identified with Artaxerxes.[510] The last line contained what appeared to be a new letter (𐏍), which he thought had the value of v.

Two years later (1839) the inscriptions copied by Mr. Rich so far back as 1821 at last saw the light.[511] Several of them were already known by the copies made by Le Bruyn and Niebuhr; but the plates were found to contain the complete text of the Inscription of Artaxerxes, of which Grotefend’s formed the four concluding lines (Pl. 23, Inscr. P). It was taken from the north wall of the palace, now identified as that of Ochus, facing the Palace of Darius. He also was the first to copy the Inscription of Xerxes from the anta of his palace (Pl. 16, Inscr. E). The same inscriptions are frequently repeated, and it was an advantage to have copies of more than one version. Thus Rich gave the celebrated four-line Inscription of Xerxes, copied from the east portal of the palace, which was already so well known from Niebuhr’s copy, taken from the north (Inscr. G, Pl. 18). Rich has also given two versions of the Inscription of Darius—one taken from the anta of the palace and already known from Le Bruyn (131) (Inscr. Cᵃ), the other from the south stairs, which he was himself the first to disinter from the rubbish by which it was hidden (Pl. 20, Cᵇ).[512]

Of greater importance than any of these were the copies taken by the Danish Sanscrit scholar Westergaard. He was commissioned by the Danish Government to visit Persia for the purpose of collecting inscriptions and other matters of archæological interest. He went to Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam in 1843, and not only did he carefully recopy all the inscriptions already known, but some others that had hitherto been neglected. Among the latter are the inscriptions over the animals on the great Eastern Porch at Persepolis, and the long inscription upon the tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam. The first is indeed to be found in Mr. Rich’s collection (Pl. 24, 25, 26); but the copy, as we have seen, was made by his Seyid and was found useless for purposes of study. All previous travellers had recoiled before the difficulties of transcribing the tomb inscription, but these were at length surmounted by Westergaard, and his copy is the greatest prize he secured. It was found to be an inscription of Darius, and it served to identify the rock-hewn sepulchre upon which it is inscribed with the tomb of that king. It contained a more complete enumeration of the provinces than the I inscription, and as it was trilingual, it was hoped that so large a number of proper names would at length afford a clue to the values of the signs in the second and third columns, which had as yet remained unknown. Westergaard was the first of the travellers who possessed a competent knowledge of the cuneiform character, before he undertook the difficult task of transcribing them; and consequently his copies are of exceptional value and accuracy. On his return to Bonn he gave Lassen his copies of the first or Persian column; and reserved to himself the study of the second or Susian column. In the following year (1844) the two scholars published the results of their labours in the ‘Zeitschrift,’ and their Memoirs afterwards appeared together in a separate volume under the title ‘Ueber die Keilinschriften der Ersten und Zweiten Gattung, von Chr. Lassen und N. L. Westergaard’ (Bonn, 1845).

Six years had now elapsed since Lassen published his first Memoir. During the interval Beer and Jacquet had made their contributions to the general knowledge; and although Major Rawlinson had not yet published his Memoir on the Behistun inscription, he had been in correspondence with Lassen since 1838, and had already corrected two letters. It is interesting therefore to inquire how far Lassen profited by these investigations. We have seen that he had nine incorrect values in 1836 for the letters in Niebuhr’s list.[513] These were:

By 1844 he corrected the four following:

(1) 25 𐎤 into q, an approximate value for k.

(2) 26 𐎰 into θ, following Jacquet th.

(3) 27 𐎹 into j for y, following Beer and Jacquet.

(4) 40 𐎽 into r, following Jacquet.[514]

He also accepted the corrected value of 41 (𐏃) as the aspirate h, following Jacquet and Beer; but this value we have already allowed to Grotefend’s a for ha, as approximately correct. One other letter, 22 (𐎬) t, which he made correct in 1836, he now changes into d’h. Thus, in 1844, he still had six wrong values; of these one had been correctly fixed by himself in 1836, 22 (𐎬) t; another, 16 (𐎨) ch, recently by Jacquet, and two by Rawlinson, 32 (𐎪) j, and 33 (𐎸) m before u.

There thus remained only two letters not yet provided with correct values: viz. 19 (𐎮), which was fixed by Holtzmann in 1845 as d before i,[515] and 28 (𐎩), fixed simultaneously by Hincks and Rawlinson in 1846 as j before a.

In addition to the thirty-three signs in Niebuhr’s alphabet that gained final recognition, two others have since been added. One of them was first found at Behistun by Rawlinson, 43 (𐎵) n, and does not appear in Lassen. The other, 44 (𐎦), was admitted in 1836 by both Burnouf and Lassen as gh and g, and is finally accepted as g before u (Spiegel). But in the Memoir of 1836, Lassen farther sanctioned two other signs, ([cuneiform character]) t, and ([cuneiform character]) u, which he now rightly omits as defective signs for 24 (𐎫) t and 36 (𐎢) u.

His new alphabet shows also a great improvement in other respects. In deference to the decisive opinions of both Beer and Jacquet, Lassen has given up his double signs for the long and short vowels. He indeed admits that his a (𐏃) is in fact h; his î (𐎨) is k, and his û ([cuneiform character]) is defective.[516] His diphthongs (𐎹 · 𐎡) ê and (𐎤 · 𐎢) ô, likewise disappear; and, what is even of more consequence, his disastrous (𐎢 · 𐎺) for q is quietly suffered to drop. Strange to say, the unlucky conjunction of these two letters u and w with q excited the unbounded admiration of Jacquet, who regarded it as the most brilliant inspiration of its author.[517]

To compensate for these omissions, Lassen added a sign ([cuneiform character]) which with 44 (𐎦), in addition to the thirty-three signs in Niebuhr’s list, made up the thirty-five letters which constitute his alphabet.[518] This sign ([cuneiform character]) is always found in conjunction with 31 (𐎴) n. Grotefend pointed out long ago that the two signs 𐎴 · [cuneiform character] replace the word for ‘king’ and, whatever might be their pronunciation, there was no doubt as to their signification.[519] It was at first supposed that the last letter was an alternative sign for 27 (𐎹); but this had to be abandoned, and Lassen now gives it the value of rp, and he reads the combined letters ‘narap.’ He was led to this result because Westergaard thought that the word corresponding to it in the second column had the sound of ‘narap.’[520] The two signs are now treated as together forming a monogram for ‘king,’ and in transliteration they are represented by khs to indicate an abbreviated form of the royal title. He adds also the two new signs that occur in the Inscription of Artaxerxes. The one (𐏍) first appeared in the copy published by Grotefend in 1837; the other (𐏏) is dimly discernible in Rich (Pl. 23, line 10), and is no doubt more clearly delineated by Westergaard. The first had evidently the sound of dah, for it precedes the j in the well-known word ‘dahjunam’; the other clearly denotes the complex sound ‘bumi’ in the word ‘bumi-ja.’[521]

The long line of scholars from Münter to Jacquet, whose labours we have now passed in review, had at length succeeded in deciphering the cuneiform alphabet of the first species of writing found at Persepolis, and, with the exception of two, they had attached correct values to each of the thirty-five letters. When, therefore, Lassen wrote his second Memoir, the task he had to perform was concerned much less with the alphabet than with the numerous strange words formed by it, which it was now necessary to assign a meaning to and connect together by grammatical rules. It is clear there was only one method to pursue, and that was to compare them with the words and forms of other languages with which the Old Persian was likely to be connected. It was natural in the first instance to turn to Zend, the sacred language of the country in which the inscriptions were found; and the most superficial comparison, which was all that was then possible, was sufficient to prove that the two languages were closely allied. The early scholars were, however, greatly impeded by the extremely imperfect knowledge of Zend that as yet prevailed; and even if the cuneiform alphabet had been completely deciphered by Grotefend, it may be doubted whether the means were then available to grapple successfully with the difficulties of translation.[522] At that time Zend was known only by the work of Duperron, which, however remarkable for the time at which it appeared, was quite inadequate for the purpose. Indeed some scholars, even long afterwards, had doubts as to the genuineness of the language itself. Since then, however, the edition of the Yaçna published by Burnouf in 1833 placed the study upon an entirely different footing; and the progress made by Bopp and many others in Sanscrit was also of material service. It thus happened that concurrently with the improvement of the cuneiform alphabet the chief obstacles to the translation of the language were removed. When Burnouf and Lassen wrote their Memoirs in 1836, little progress had been made in that direction beyond the identification of the names of the Achaemenian kings, and of a few simple words. The attempt to go beyond rested chiefly upon conjecture and frequently resulted in absurdities of which the constellation of Moro is the typical instance.[523]

Progress was at first considerably retarded by a misapprehension of the relation between the Old Persian of the inscriptions and the language of the Zend-Avesta. Grotefend for a long time thought the two were absolutely identical, an opinion which, however, he subsequently modified.[524] Both Burnouf and Lassen, especially the latter, were at first inclined to suppose too close a resemblance between them. We have already pointed out some of the errors that resulted, especially with regard to the long and short vowels and the diphthongs. But this error was speedily corrected, and Lassen afterwards showed that the relation they bore to each other was that of descent from a common parent; and although Old Persian is historically more modern, it continued to retain some of the primitive forms which Zend had changed. While he recognised that they were two distinct dialects, he admitted that they closely resembled each other, and hence the great assistance he derived from the Zend in the interpretation of the inscriptions.[525] After Zend, he found that Sanscrit afforded him the greatest help. Indeed he was surprised to observe how often it agreed with the Old Persian, and it was particularly useful with respect to the grammatical forms.[526]

It is the natural affectation of the minute scholar to exaggerate the importance of an accurate knowledge of grammatical construction, and to disparage or ridicule even great results that may have been attained in defiance of strict rule. It became the fashion to underrate the very considerable achievements of Lassen as a translator, because it was afterwards found that he fell into several errors which later knowledge has cleared away. Major Rawlinson was unfortunately peculiarly liable to depreciate the work of his competitors, and it is therefore with no surprise that we find him dwell with more emphasis upon their failures than upon their success. But it is certainly remarkable that Hincks, the Irish cuneiform scholar, should have been betrayed into a judgment that must now be regarded as singularly unfair and censorious. Writing in 1847, he gave expression to the opinion that ‘Lassen seems to have been completely destitute of the peculiar talent of a decipherer, and his attempts at translation were consequently as bad as could be made ... the number and grossness of many of his mistakes are such as to create astonishment.’[527] It is quite true that Lassen sometimes mistook verbs for adjectives, and that in some places he had to warn the reader that his translation was purely conjectural. But his services should be estimated by the state of knowledge at the time he wrote. It must be remembered that when he began these studies, in 1836, all that was known were a few proper names, and every attempt to pass beyond had hitherto led to ridiculous misrepresentations of the true meaning of the texts. When, in 1844, he completed his translation of the whole series of inscriptions of the Persian column—with the exception of the Behistun, which was not accessible to him—he had succeeded in making their contents as well known as they are at present in all the essential points of their subject-matter. It must be recollected also that he had to contend with difficulties that have since been in great measure removed. The texts upon which he worked were in many places in need of emendation; and the parallel columns in Susian and Babylonian, which have afforded so much assistance to later translators, were then completely unknown. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that, notwithstanding all the advantages that are now at command, many of the passages over which Lassen stumbled are still the subject of dispute.

His collection included the ten independent inscriptions at Persepolis; the Tomb inscription at Naksh-i-Rustam, so lately recovered by Westergaard; the Cyrus inscription from Murgab; the inscriptions of Elvend and Van that only a few years before had acquired an entire volume to expound. He added a translation of the short inscription on the crystal cylinder brought from Egypt and now in the British Museum. He reads: ‘Ego Darius hominum tutor.’ He also translated the Denon inscription, found in 1800 near Suez, which, according to him, signifies ‘Darius hominum tutor magnus.’ Both these inscriptions write ‘King’ with the abbreviation to which Lassen assigned the value of ‘narpa’ and translates ‘hominum tutor.’ The true meaning of the first is ‘I [am] Darius the King,’ and of the second ‘Darius the great King.’[528] The same abbreviation occurs in the inscription on the Caylus vase, but in this case Lassen translates it simply as ‘rex’—‘Xerxes rex magnus.’[529]

Although Lassen may justly claim great praise for the skill he has displayed in his translations, it must not be supposed that he succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that stood in his way. His task was greatly simplified by the constant recurrence of a set form of words with which the inscriptions usually begin.[530] At Persepolis this form is first met with on the Porch, and it occurs altogether five times in the ten Persepolitan inscriptions. The two Hamadan inscriptions consist of nothing else. A shorter form, which begins at the second paragraph of the one just mentioned, is repeated three times at Persepolis. The longer form sometimes reaches over twenty lines, and as the whole series of these inscriptions only amount to three hundred lines, it is evident how considerably the task of the translator was reduced. Most of the inscriptions are, as we have seen, repeated in several places: the window inscription in the Palace of Darius no less than eighteen times. But the very limitation thus imposed upon him was one of the chief obstacles to his progress. Indeed, until the Behistun inscription became available it was impossible to acquire any extensive knowledge of the language. To this circumstance must be partly ascribed the inferiority of Lassen’s rendering of difficult passages, when compared with the facility we observe in Rawlinson from the first.

Between the publication of the First Memoir and the one we are now considering, Lassen made considerable progress. In the I inscription the names of the twenty-five provinces are now given correctly with the exception of two: ‘Gordyaei,’ which Rawlinson had shown should read ‘M’udraya,’ Egypt; and ‘Parutia,’ which is not a proper name at all, but means ‘east.’ Neither Lassen nor Rawlinson had much success in their treatment of the new names of provinces found at Naksh-i-Rustam, and no general agreement has even yet been reached with regard to some of them. A careful collation of the difficult passages in the subject-matter of the inscriptions is, however, sufficient to prove the great superiority of Rawlinson over Lassen, both in the actual work of translation and in the necessary emendation of a disputed text. An instance of the comparative ingenuity of the two scholars is afforded by a passage in the Naksh-i-Rustam inscription, where the last letter of the thirteenth line is obliterated and the passage runs thus (Lassen’s transliteration):

The omission of the letter led Lassen into one of the greatest blunders in his revised translation. His ‘progenies Arçis’ commits him to a definite historical error, while the rendering of the following words ‘ârija ârija’ is merely an instance of aberration to which the greatest scholars are occasionally subject. Rawlinson, who greatly excelled him in ‘intuition,’ had no difficulty in supplying the missing letter as p, and he translated the passage correctly: ‘son of a Persian, an Arian, of Arian descent,’ in the place of ‘Progenies Arçis, a venerabilibus stirpis auctoribus oriundi’! Lassen’s knowledge now enabled him to point out several instances in the Inscription of Artaxerxes Ochus that served to illustrate the decay of the language, though the interval from the classical age of Darius was not more than a hundred and ninety years. It is here that the two new signs—or rather contractions—for the syllables ‘dah’ and ‘bumi’ first occur. Of more interest is the evidence this inscription affords of the degeneration of the Persian religion by the admittance of Mithra into its worship. Artaxerxes the Third traces his genealogy through Artaxerxes the Second (Mnemon), Darius the Second (Nothus), Artaxerxes the First (Longimanus), Xerxes, Darius the First, and Hystaspes, to Arsames the Achaemenian; and neither of the two last are distinguished by the royal title.

The most important publication after Lassen’s essay in 1844 was a criticism that appeared upon it by Adolf Holtzmann in the following year.[531] It was written with much personal animosity to Lassen, and this enlivens in an amusing fashion the extreme aridity of the subject-matter.

Only two letters now remained to be correctly determined: 19 (𐎮), the k’h of Lassen, and this Holtzmann successfully accomplished. The letter occurs in the words Lassen transliterated ‘jak’hija’ and ‘hak’hi(s).’[532] Holtzmann substituted d and read the first word ‘jadij,’ which he compared with the Sanscrit ‘jadi,’ Zend ‘jedhi’—‘when’—instead of Lassen’s ‘venerandus,’ a meaning that turned out to be correct.[533] Finally, he reviewed all the words in which the letter occurs, and he found that the substitution of d for k enabled him to assign satisfactory meanings to the whole of them.[534]

Holtzmann is also credited[535] with having slightly improved the value of 28 (𐎩), the z of Jacquet, by giving it the sound of g—presumably g soft, but as it always precedes a the reader would naturally assume it to be hard, as in ‘gadija,’ ‘aga’mija,’ etc. It is in fact j before a.

Holtzmann has the merit also of rectifying several of Lassen’s verbal errors. For example, he showed that ‘hadâ,’ which Lassen thought signified ‘continually,’ in reality means ‘with.’[536] Of more importance was his treatment of the word then read ‘Paru-ja’ (‘parauvaiy’). Rawlinson had already annihilated two of Lassen’s provinces—Uscangha (the Uxii) and Drangha (the Drangii)[537]—and Holtzmann now disposes of the third—Paru-ja—which Lassen still cherished in 1845. Lassen derived the word from the Sanscrit ‘parvata,’ ‘hill,’ and thought it was a mountain district called Parutia, near the Persian frontier. Holtzmann had recourse to the Sanscrit ‘purva’ (easterly), and translated the sentence ‘the land of the east,’ meaning the eastern provinces whose names followed.[538] When Holtzmann attempted the correction of longer sentences he was not always so successful. For example, he rendered the words that were then transliterated ‘jak’hija âwamâ (ma)nijâhja hak’â ânijanâ mâ rçam imam Pârçam,’ ‘When one goes—from Anijana to the ocean, this land they call Persia’!—the real meaning being ‘Wenn Du so denkst vor Niemanden möchte ich zittern—so schütze dieses Persische Heer.’[539] Another instance of ingenuity is the rendering of the line ‘hak’â ânijanâ nija tᵃrçᵃtija,’ ‘ab Anjana usque ad Tarsatia’ (sic). It will enable the reader to see how uncertain was the progress yet made when these same words were rendered by Lassen, in 1844, ‘adoratio consecrata contingit,’ and by Rawlinson, in 1846, ‘From the enemy feareth not’—which closely approached the true translation: ‘fürchtet sich ... vor keinem Anderen.’[540]

Sometimes, however, Holtzmann showed a marked improvement upon Lassen. Thus the latter scholar translated the fiftieth line of the Naksh-i-Rustam inscription ‘Auramuzdi adorationem attulere, quae [regiones] illae palatium exstruxere.’ Holtzmann substitutes ‘Auromazdas enim opem tulit dum opus feci,’ and Rawlinson, in 1846, correctly renders the sentence ‘Aurmazd brought help to me so that I accomplished the work.’[541]

When Rawlinson was writing his Memoir in 1846 he remarked upon the singular fact that no Englishman except himself had yet taken part in the work of decipherment. Many had indeed occupied themselves in the more adventurous task of collecting the materials—among whom were Morier, Ouseley, Ker Porter, and Rich—but so far Rawlinson was alone among his countrymen as a decipherer. This special study arose first in northern Europe, and it is remarkable how large a share was borne by Denmark. Niebuhr, upon whose foundation all later scholars built, was born at Ludwigsworth in North Hanover; but he served under the king of Denmark, and his Travels were first published at Copenhagen. Münter, though a German by descent and birth, was brought up at Copenhagen, and passed his whole life in Denmark, where he died as Bishop of Seeland. Rask was a Dane, and he laboured throughout his life as a Professor at the University of Copenhagen. Westergaard belonged to the same nationality and, as in the case of Niebuhr, his journey to the East was due to the liberality of the Danish Government. Lassen was born and educated at Bergen, though, it is true, he left Norway at the age of twenty-two and passed the greater portion of his life at Bonn. Tychsen was also of Norwegian descent, but born at Tondern, in Schleswig. Grotefend was a Hanoverian, born at Münden. Beer, on the other hand, was an Austrian from Bötzen. France was as yet represented only by two scholars, St. Martin and Burnouf; Belgium by one, Jacquet; and England also by one, Rawlinson. But the latter was soon joined by two others, Hincks and Norris, both of whom, especially the former, were soon to acquire a brilliant reputation in cuneiform studies. The Rev. Edward Hincks belonged to a Chester family settled in Ireland since 1767. His father was a Presbyterian minister who for a time kept a school at Cork, and afterwards became classical master at the Belfast Academy (1821-36). He was a man of the most varied learning, who lectured with equal success on two such different subjects as Chemistry and Hebrew. He wrote a Greek Grammar, and was a frequent contributor to the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. He married a Chester lady, by whom he had a numerous family, many of whose members rose to distinction. One son became Archdeacon of Connor, another Professor of Natural Science at Toronto, a third was well known in Canadian politics. He became Premier in 1851, and was called the ‘Colbert of Canada.’ He was afterwards appointed to a Colonial Governorship, and was made a K.C.B. in 1862. His brother Edward, the cuneiform scholar, was born in 1792, and after a distinguished career at the University of Dublin, he settled down in a remote country parish as Rector of Killyleagh in the county Down. In that inhospitable region he spent forty-one years, till his death in 1866. He first attracted attention by his papers on Egyptian hieroglyphics, contributed to the Irish Academy. His contributions to cuneiform literature began in June 1846, when he read a paper ‘On the First and Second Kinds of Persepolitan Writing.’[542] This was followed by another in November ‘On the Three Kinds of Persepolitan Writing and on the Babylonian Lapidary Character.’ In January of the following year a farther essay appeared, ‘On the Third Persepolitan,’ and in the December after he published a long paper in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ on the Inscriptions of Van.[543]

When he entered upon the study of the first column but little remained to be done to complete the decipherment of the Persian alphabet. His attention was therefore chiefly directed to the writing in the Susian and Babylonian columns. In a postscript to his first essay he insisted on the substantial resemblance of the language of the third column to those of the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions. He supported the opinion which had been even then suggested, that both of these ‘have much in common with the Semitic languages’ and he announced that he had read the names of Babylon and Nineveh on the bricks.[544] He devoted his ingenuity in the first instance to prove the identity of the cursive mode of writing found in the third column and in some Babylonian inscriptions with the character seen on Babylonian bricks and in the East India House Inscription. He published two elaborate tables in illustration of this theme, and offered a few suggestions as to the meaning of the signs.[545] His later contributions deal chiefly with the Assyrian inscriptions, which, since the excavations made by Botta, began to attract the largest share of public attention. In 1850, he wrote on Khorsabad, on the Assyrio-Babylonian phonetic system, and on Assyrian mythology. Among his more important contributions to Assyriology are his treatise on the Assyrian Verb (1855-6) and his Assyrian Grammar, begun in 1866.[546] The last was left unfinished, and, strange to say, no notes were found among his papers to assist in its completion. Like Jacquet, he seems to have charged his memory with the whole burden of the complicated task he had set himself to accomplish. Few scholars enjoyed a higher reputation for extraordinary acumen in unravelling the difficulties of this intricate subject. The ‘intuition’ he displayed was specially remarkable, and often led him to anticipate conclusions that other scholars only reached by a slow and arduous course of inquiry. Even Rawlinson, who shared to a high degree in this rare gift, often found himself anticipated by the Irish scholar. Hincks, for example, was the first to decipher the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar in the India House Inscription and in many other places, where Grotefend thought he had found ‘forms of prayer.’[547] This was, however, after he had received the Behistun Inscription, where ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ was found by Rawlinson in the Persian column.[548]

Hincks’s paper ‘On the First and Second Kinds of Persepolitan Writing’ was read to the Royal Irish Academy on June 9, 1846, and he communicated its contents to Mr. Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who sent a detailed account of it to Major Rawlinson at Bagdad. This letter was despatched from London on August 20, and five days afterwards, on the twenty-fifth of the same month,[549] Major Rawlinson sent off a Supplementary Note in which, by a very singular coincidence, he introduced some important modifications in his system of transliteration that brought it into substantial agreement with that just then proposed by Hincks. Thus the two documents crossed each other on the way, a circumstance that affords conclusive proof of their independent production.[550] But as Hincks’s paper was read in June and Rawlinson’s note not despatched till August, the priority must be awarded to the former. This was the first occasion on which Hincks had contributed to cuneiform research, and, as we have said, he had the good fortune to forestall Rawlinson in one of his most useful discoveries. When he wrote, Lassen’s Second Memoir of 1844 was still the chief authority on the subject, and it is to it that he directs his criticism. In looking over Lassen’s alphabet, nothing was more remarkable than the number of signs allotted to certain supposed modifications of the same sound. Thus k, for example, was represented by no less than four different signs expressing k (No. 4), k’ (16), k’h (19), and kh (42): d by three different signs, d (11), d’h (22), and dh (34). At the same time it was beginning to be remarked that certain of these signs to which modifications of the same sound were ascribed were only to be found in combination with particular vowels. Lassen himself had pointed out in his First Memoir of 1836 that m (29) always preceded an i. Jacquet added that r (40) always occurred before u. Holtzmann also remarked that 28 (𐎩), to which he gave the value of g, is always followed by a, and 19 d by i.[551]

The merit of Hincks consists in this: that he was the first to point out that the various signs allotted to the same letter did not differ from each other by any modification of sound as Lassen supposed, and also that their employment was regulated according to the vowel that succeeded them. He accordingly divided the signs for these consonants into two classes, according as they were followed by a, inherent or expressed, and by i or u; and he added r: the former he called primary, and the latter secondary, consonants. Lassen, as we have said, was of opinion that the secondary letters must have a somewhat different value, and in particular that they were all aspirated. He also thought they might be used indifferently before any vowel. Thus, for example, he supposed that the two signs for m (𐎶 and 𐎷) might both be used before i, and that they expressed a slightly different sound. Hincks, on the contrary, maintained that 𐎶 could never really open upon i; and when it appears to do so, as in the group 𐎶·𐎡, a is always understood. Thus 𐎷·𐎡 is ‘mi,’ but 𐎶·𐎡 is ‘mai’ or ‘mê,’ the secondary form of m being equivalent to its primary form; and he ascribed the existence in the alphabet of this peculiarity to a survival from a syllabic mode of writing. Its utility is, however, obvious, for with only three vowels—a, i and u—it would otherwise be impossible to render the sounds ê and ô (ai—au). As, however, the consonants themselves were of the same value, Hincks writes them with the same sign, and discards the h which had till then been added to mark an imaginary difference in the sound of the secondary consonants. This is precisely what Rawlinson did in his Supplementary Note, and for the same reason. Hincks lays down the general rule that when a primary consonant replaces a secondary consonant before i or u ‘an a must be interposed either as a distinct syllable or as a guṇa to the vowel.’[552] This alteration led to a considerable modification in the method of transliteration, but its importance arose from the altered translation of which the words became susceptible. Thus, in the instance already given, ‘miy’ is the termination of the first person singular present tense of the verb; while ‘mey’ (properly ‘maiy’) is the enclitic pronoun used for my. So also the words Lassen transliterates ‘utamija khsathram’ and renders ‘tum hoc regnum,’ when properly transliterated ‘utamê’ (‘utamaiy’) signify ‘meumque regnum.’[553]

Hincks had also the merit of calling attention to the indiscriminate addition of a by Lassen to words ending in iy and uw. This lengthening of the syllable sometimes entirely obscured the sense—as in ‘thatija’ which Lassen supposed to signify ‘generosus,’ and which is in fact the verb ‘he says.’[554]

When we compare Hincks’s alphabet with Lassen’s (passing over the mere omission of the aspirates) we find that Hincks had only four incorrect values, as opposed to the six of Lassen. These were:

Two of these were already correctly given by Lassen (Nos. 26 and 39). On the other hand, Hincks corrected three out of Lassen’s six wrong values:

It may be observed also that Hincks has correctly indicated all of what he termed the secondary consonants and distinguished between those followed by i and those followed by u. The others not so distinguished are the primary consonants preceding a inherent or expressed.

When Hincks read his paper in June, Rawlinson’s Memoir on the Behistun Inscription had been already received by the Asiatic Society and was in the printer’s hands. It was no easy task at that time to carry it through the press. Cuneiform type had to be cast, and the expense and trouble it caused were very great. The work was, however, looked forward to with the greatest interest. After the appearance of Professor Lassen’s essay, in 1844, all the cuneiform inscriptions of the Persian column then known had, as we have said, with one notable exception, been translated. There remained the great inscription at Behistun, which it was known Major Rawlinson had copied and was at work upon. We have already narrated the succession of untoward circumstances that had delayed its publication for seven years, from the time when two hundred lines had been prepared for the press in 1839 down to the late autumn of 1846, when the completed work was first made public. Meanwhile no other traveller appeared at all disposed to anticipate him. There were indeed few who cared to undergo the personal risk Rawlinson had so cheerfully faced, nor willing to expend a thousand pounds upon the dangerous task, as he had so generously done. Indeed down to 1884 only one other traveller subsequently accomplished the ascent.[555] In February 1846, Rawlinson forwarded a complete translation of the entire text to the Royal Asiatic Society. The remainder, with the cuneiform original and notes, followed at intervals in the course of the year. The editorial note, dated September 7, tells us that the text and the first five chapters of the Memoir had been already received. The work appeared in four parts, of which the first three form the tenth volume of the Society’s Journal. The first was published in 1846, and contained eight plates, two representing the rock of Behistun and the figures sculptured upon it, executed by Lieutenant Jones of the Indian Navy;[556] the others are devoted to the five columns and appendices which form the text. Then follow the transliteration and two translations, one in Latin and the other in English, with notes on the state of the text. This was followed by the first two chapters of his ‘Memoir on the Inscription’ to page 53. This portion of the work was reviewed by Hincks, in the January number of the ‘Dublin University Magazine,’ 1847, and by Benfey in a pamphlet published at Leipzig in January 1847. Part II. was published before the meeting of the Society in May 1847, and included the third chapter of the Memoir, treating of the cuneiform alphabet and the important Supplementary Note on the pronunciation, pages 55 to 186.[557]