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:
| 16 | ch instead of Lassen’s k’; |
| 19 | d(i) instead of Lassen’s k’h (due to Holtzmann); |
| 28 | j instead of Lassen’s z’. |
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]
Part III. was at the same time in the hands of the printer, and appeared later in the year (1847). It contains Chapters IV. and V. of the Memoir. The former gives a revised transliteration and translation of the text with an Analysis; and the other a complete revised edition of all the inscriptions previously published by Lassen. Mr. Norris, the Assistant Secretary of the Asiatic Society, saw the whole of this complicated work through the press, and he undertook to alter the transliteration given in Chapter IV. in accordance with the principles laid down in the Supplementary Note. For his services in this matter, he received a vote of thanks from the Society. ‘He unites,’ said the proposer, ‘more varied learning and more rare and extensive research and intelligence than I have ever seen combined in the same individual’;[558] and he subsequently attained an independent position in the first rank of cuneiform scholars.
Part IV. was not published till 1849. It included the sixth chapter of the Memoir and treated of the Vocabulary, but the dissertation was never completed. It breaks off in the middle of a sentence, when the writer had not proceeded further than the words commencing with vowels and with consonants of the first three classes. It purports to give a few brief etymological explanations, but in reality it is admirable as a display of learning in many fields of knowledge, and it is especially interesting for the explanation it affords of the reasons that led to the determination of words of doubtful meaning. While he was engaged in this work, he received Lassen’s Second Memoir. It did not reach him till August 1845, when his own translations were completed and already beyond the reach of alteration. He had little cause, however, to regret the delay that arose from the difficulty in those times of ‘communicating between Bonn and Bagdad,’ for he could have derived small benefit from the very inferior translations of his predecessor. In the philological branch of the subject, however, he found the Memoir ‘of the greatest convenience as a manual of reference,’ and his marginal notes show how carefully he consulted it.[559]
By the publication of this work Major Rawlinson at length took his place among the cuneiform scholars of Europe. We have shown that the study was by that time far advanced, and most of the difficulties of the Persian column were already surmounted. Rawlinson did not, therefore, put forward any pretension to original discovery in that department, but was, he said, ‘content to rest my present claims on the novelty and interest of my translations.’[560] He hoped eventually to earn the higher distinction of an original discoverer, ‘according to the success that may attend my efforts to decipher the Median [Susian] and Babylonian inscriptions.’ It was not, however, without an effort that he presented himself in so modest a garb upon this occasion. He was convinced that he had made each step in the tedious process of decipherment by his own unaided effort; and in whatever light he might appear to the public, he was certainly an original discoverer to himself. He had no doubt that if Grotefend and Lassen had never lived the world would have been indebted wholly to him for the discovery, and, although we think he may have been influenced more than he suspected by other scholars, there is no great improbability in supposing that his own ingenuity would have been quite equal to grapple singly with the task.
Notwithstanding his avowed disclaimer, he still cherished the opinion that he had really made some important contributions to the determination of the alphabet. On one occasion indeed he went so far as to claim the paternity, directly or indirectly, of at least ten characters, and he referred to his correspondence with Burnouf and Lassen as the medium through which he had made his influence felt. It is clear, however, that in this he was entirely mistaken. According to his own admission, he knew as little of the Continental scholars as they did of him until his first communication to the Asiatic Society, which was received in March 1838. It will be recollected that Burnouf and Lassen had published their Memoirs two years before; so neither of these could have been influenced by Rawlinson. It only remains to inquire whether he could have suggested any of the six values ascribed to Jacquet, whose essay appeared in the course of 1838. Here a comparison of dates is not sufficient in itself to determine the question. Rawlinson’s communication was known in London on March 14, and was submitted to the French Society on April 20. Jacquet began that very month to publish his criticism of Lassen, and his active mind was full of the subject. He was no doubt present at the meeting when Rawlinson’s copy of the inscription was submitted to the Society, and there was ample time for him to profit by any suggestions it contained in his future papers on the subject. We have, however, conclusive proof from Rawlinson’s own admission that the values of these six letters were not then known to him. Nor could they have been communicated to Jacquet through his subsequent correspondence with Burnouf. Jacquet died in July 1838, and Rawlinson’s correspondence with Burnouf and Lassen did not begin till the summer of that year.[561] From that period Rawlinson himself accounts for all the letters in question. Writing after Jacquet’s death, he tells us in a letter to Burnouf that he had just found the value of 16 (𐎨) ch. Two other values, 26 (𐎰) th and 41 (𐏃) h, he fixed still later in the winter 1838-9; another, 27 (𐎹) y, he acknowledges he received from Lassen.[562] The sign 10 (𐎺) he also fixed in 1838-9; but he gave it the same value as Lassen had done in 1836, viz. w. In Germany w was no doubt equivalent to its correct value v, but scarcely so to an English-speaking man, especially as he distinguishes it from his v (𐎻) No. 15. The other letter, 40 (𐎽) r, was known correctly to Grotefend in 1837. With reference, therefore, to the six letters attributed to Jacquet, it is seen that none of them were due to the influence of Rawlinson, either through his Memoir or subsequently by correspondence. One letter (r) was fixed before Rawlinson was known. Three others were first announced after Jacquet was dead (16, 26, 41). One was wrong (10), and the other (27) he acknowledged to have borrowed from Lassen. It is impossible, therefore, to admit the pretension put forward by Rawlinson, that he could ‘fairly claim the paternity, either directly or indirectly, of at least ten characters’ on the ground that ‘it was impossible to say by whom each individual letter became identified.’ On the contrary, the history of the identification is plain enough, and there is no difficulty in assigning the proportion of merit due to each discoverer. It was not till after the essays of Jacquet that Rawlinson bore any share in the general progress of the study; and then not more than four characters remained to be correctly identified.
We have already seen with what conspicuous success Rawlinson had found the true values of two of these, so far back as 1838. One still gave Lassen a great deal of trouble, and he had variously valued it as k (1836), ich (1839), k’h (1844). In his letter to Rawlinson he preferred to leave it undetermined (1839).[563] Rawlinson suggested that it had the sound of t before i, which is so nearly correct and so great an improvement upon all previous attempts that it might almost be conceded to him as an approximate value if he had announced it earlier. He acknowledges that he remained long in doubt concerning it, and there is no evidence, as in the case of the other two letters, that he suggested the emendation to Burnouf.[564] Before his alphabet appeared, in 1846, the true value had been already fixed by Holtzmann in 1845 as d before i.
It thus appears that Rawlinson had a real aptitude for unravelling this kind of puzzle. Only four letters were left to him by his predecessors; and of these he determined two correctly and one nearly correctly. The fourth, 28 (𐎩) the z of Jacquet, he improves to an approximate correct value j’h in his first alphabet; and in his second he gives it correctly as j before a: a correction made simultaneously by Hincks. He may also claim the merit of having restored the sound of k (he writes kh) to 25 (𐎤). The value of this letter had long before been fixed by Grotefend, but since then it had passed through many vicissitudes. St. Martin thought it was h; Burnouf made it q; and Lassen thought, in 1836, it stood for the a in the diphthong au, ô, till at length, in 1844, he reluctantly adopted Burnouf’s q.