The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

In the following year (1836) Rawlinson moved to Teheran, and there received from Edwin Norris, the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Memoirs of Grotefend and Saint-Martin. In 1837 he finished his copy of the Behistun inscription, and sent a translation of its opening paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, his Paper could be published, the works of Lassen and Burnouf reached him, necessitating a revision of his Paper and the postponement of its publication. Then came other causes of delay. He was called away to Afghanistan to perform the onerous and responsible duties of British Agent at Kandahar, and it was not until 1843 that he was once more free to resume his cuneiform studies. A year later he was visited by the Danish Professor, Westergaard, who placed at his disposal the copies he had just made of the inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam and of some shorter inscriptions from Persepolis, and Rawlinson’s Memoir was accordingly finished at last and sent to England. Here Norris subjected it to a careful revision, and at his suggestion Rawlinson once more visited Behistun, where he took squeezes and re-examined doubtful characters. In 1847 the first part of the Memoir was published, though the second part, containing the analysis and commentary on the text, did not appear till 1849.[8] The work, however, was well worthy of the time and care that had been bestowed upon it. The task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform texts was virtually accomplished, and the guesses of Grotefend had developed into the discovery of a new alphabet and a new language. The capstone was put to the work by the discovery of Hincks, an Irish clergyman, that the alphabet was not a true one in the modern sense of the word, a vowel-sound being attached in pronunciation to each of the consonants represented in it.

The mystery of the Persian cuneiform texts was thus solved after nearly fifty years of endeavour. A harder task still remained. The Persian texts were accompanied by two other cuneiform transcripts, which, as Grotefend had perceived, must have represented the other two principal languages that were spoken in the Persian Empire. That the third transcript was Babylonian seemed evident from the resemblance of the characters contained in it to those on the bricks and seal-cylinders of Babylonia. Grotefend had already written upon the subject, and had even divined the name of Nebuchadrezzar on certain Babylonian bricks.

But this third species of writing, which we must henceforth term Babylonian or Assyrian, presented extraordinary difficulties. Instead of an alphabet of forty-two letters, the decipherer was confronted by an enormous number of different characters, while no indication was given of the separation of one word from another. Moreover the forms of the characters as found on the Persepolitan monuments differed considerably from those found on the Babylonian monuments, which again differed greatly from each other. On the seal-cylinders, more especially, they assumed the most complicated shapes, between which and the Persepolitan forms it was often impossible to trace any likeness whatever.

Suddenly a discovery was made which furnished an abundance of new material and incited the decipherer to fresh efforts. In 1842 Botta was sent to Mossul as French Consul, and at Mohl’s instigation began to excavate on the site of Nineveh. His first essays there not proving very successful, he transferred his workmen further north, to the mound of Khorsabad, and there laid bare the ruins of a large and splendid palace which subsequently turned out to be that of Sargon. In the autumn of 1845 the excavations of Botta were succeeded by those of Layard, first at Nimrûd (the ancient Calah), and then at Kûyunjik or Nineveh, the result being to fill the British Museum with bas-reliefs covered with cuneiform writing and with other relics of Assyrian civilization.

The inscriptions brought to light by Botta were copied and published by him in 1846–50.[9] The sumptuous work which was dedicated to them was followed by a smaller and cheaper edition, and the author gave further help to the student by classifying the characters, which amounted to as many as 642.[10] His work proved conclusively the identity of the script used at Nineveh with that of the third transcripts on the Persian monuments, as well as the substantial agreement of the groups of characters occurring in each.

The Irish scholar Dr. Hincks—one of the most remarkable and acute decipherers that have ever lived—was already at work on the newly-found texts. In 1847 he published a long article on “The Three Kinds of Persepolitan Writing,”[11] and, two years later, another “On the Khorsabad Inscriptions.”[12] In 1850 he read a Paper before the British Association,[13] summing up his conclusions and announcing the important discovery that the Assyrian characters were syllabic and not alphabetic, as had hitherto been supposed. With this discovery the scientific decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions actually begins.

The proper names contained in the Persian texts furnished the clue to the reading of the Babylonian transcripts. The values thus obtained for the Babylonian characters made it possible to read many of the words, the meaning of which was fixed by a comparison with the Persian original. It then became clear that Assyrian was a Semitic language, standing in much the same relation to Hebrew that the Old Persian stood to Zend.

Its Semitic origin was proved to demonstration by the French scholar de Saulcy in 1849. Another French scholar, de Longpérier, had already discovered the name of Sargon in the Khorsabad inscriptions[14]—the first royal Assyrian name that had yet been read. De Saulcy himself subjected the Babylonian transcript of the trilingual inscription of Elwend to a minute analysis, and so carefully was the work performed, and so secure were the foundations upon which it rested, that the translation needs but little revision even to-day.[15] The old belief in the alphabetic nature of the characters, however, still possessed the mind of the decipherer, although in one passage he goes so far as to say, “I am tempted to believe” that the signs are syllabic. But he did not go beyond the temptation to believe, and the discovery was reserved for Hincks.

Rawlinson was now at Bagdad. De Saulcy sent him his Memoirs, and the British scholar had the immense advantage of having in his hands the Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription, of knowing the country in which the monuments were found, and of possessing copies of inscriptions which had not yet made their way to Europe.

Nevertheless, it is amazing with what rapidity and perspicacity he forced his way through the thick jungle of cuneiform script. In his Memoir on the Persian texts, published in 1847, he already maps out with marvellous fulness and exactitude the different varieties of cuneiform writing. It is his second Memoir, however, which excites in the Assyriologist of to-day the profoundest feelings of surprise and admiration. This consists of notes on the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, and was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society at the beginning of the year 1850.[16]