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:

26z for th;
32zh(i) for j(i);
33kh(u) for m(u);
39p(r) for f(a).