The discovery and decipherment of the trilingual cuneiform inscriptions

by Arthur John Booth

The result of his investigations was to show that the language was partly alphabetical and partly syllabic. Down to 1837, Grotefend had recognised about sixty different signs.[622] Westergaard rightly calculated, from the relation of the vowels to the consonants, that they must exceed a hundred, but his actual identification only reached eighty-two. He noticed two other probable groups, but he was unable to decide whether they formed one sign or two. One of them has now gained admission.[623] In consequence of the great care he exercised in the collation of his copies only four defective signs found their way into his list.[624] He noticed the recurrence of twelve other signs, which he ascribed to the error of the copyist, though he thought three of them might be genuine. It turned out that three were genuine, but only one of those that seemed to him likely to be so.[625] In addition to the determinative sign before proper names, which Grotefend had pointed out, he recognised another, the horizontal wedge, which is sometimes interchangeable with it. It will remain a curiosity in the history of decipherment that Westergaard should have gone out of his way to declare that the words for God, Ormuzd and Heaven were not preceded by a determinative—‘their importance being, no doubt, thought too great to need any such distinction.’[626] He, in fact, mistook the determinative sign itself for the vowel which happens to precede his rendering of these three names.

He thought he had discovered signs for six vowels (a, â, i, e, u and o), and eighteen consonants.[627] Of the former only one (u) turned out to be correct. His a and i have both syllabic values (an and in). His long â is a defective sign (No. 10). His e should be i and his o an a. Only four of his consonants were ultimately found to be used as alphabetical signs, and for these his values are correct (t, kh, s and m). A few of the others represented correct consonantal values, though used syllabically. For example, his p is ap, his r is ra, his s is as, his n is na. He was more fortunate in his syllabic values, sixteen of which have been accepted as strictly correct, if we include two where w is substituted for the more usual m; and eight others may be passed as approximately correct (Nos. 5, 11, 12, 22, 23, 60, 69, 81). The values he attached to about fifteen other signs were, however, highly inaccurate and misleading; and he was unable to assign any value whatever to twenty-two out of his eighty-two signs.[628]

He could not identify the sign for l; no doubt because there was no corresponding sound in the Persian by which he was guided, and he thought that no syllable began with m. He considers all the syllables begin with a consonant, though he detected two possible exceptions, where the syllables appear to be as (Nos. 8 and 82). Neither of these are in reality exceptions, but there are numerous other instances where the vowel is the initial. None of his syllables exceed two letters, though later investigation has shown that there are several cases where a vowel separates two consonants. He noticed that the syllabic sign was frequently replaced by two signs to express the simple consonant and the vowel. He observed the peculiarity that the language knows of no difference between the sounds of m and w, both being written with the same letter; and he also showed that the sonants are generally absent, for while k, p, t are represented, he could not find g, b, or d. He saw that the consonants are sometimes doubled in the middle of a word; and he conjectured that this form was adopted to indicate the distinction. Thus, he thought the syllabic sign for pi might express either pi or bi; but if preceded by the alphabetical sign for p, the two together denoted the surd.

At a time when the affinities of the language were entirely unknown St. Martin had given it the name of Median, no doubt under the supposition that it was allied to Persian and spoken by the Median branch of the common Aryan race.[629] The investigations now concluded by Westergaard showed for the first time that its affinities were with the Scythic or Turanian family of languages, and the inconvenience of retaining the name of Median first became apparent.[630] There could be no doubt that the Median conquerors were Aryans, as may be shown from the names of their leaders, and their close relationship to the Persians in race and language was accepted by all the early historians as self-evident. It is clear, therefore, that the language of the second column is not theirs, yet Westergaard determined to adhere to the name of Median as its most appropriate designation. He was led to adopt this course chiefly because there appeared to be no other district except Media where it could have been spoken, and also because its graphic system seems to indicate contact with Assyria. There can be little doubt that his decision was fully justified at the time, and, to avoid unnecessary confusion, in referring to the earlier writers we have in this chapter generally followed their description of the language of the second column as Median. On the other hand, modern discovery has tended to increase the importance of Susa, by showing that at least a portion of its territory had become the hereditary dominions of Cyrus, before his accession to the Persian throne. At the same time the connection between the language of the second column and that of the ancient inscriptions found in the district has been more completely recognised. There appears good ground to believe that the Aryan race had been established throughout Media long before they rose into historical importance. The inconvenience of calling a Scythian language after the Aryan Medians has therefore manifestly increased, while the name of ‘Susian,’ though not free from objection, has become more appropriate, and is the one now generally adopted. How far the language was spoken beyond the limits of Susiana, among the subject tribes of Media, may still be open to conjecture. There is, as we shall see, some evidence in favour of its extension.

It will be recollected that early in 1846 Rawlinson had been able to translate the whole of the last paragraph of the second column of the Behistun inscription from the Median or Susian text, the Persian version of that passage having been found illegible.[631] Several years later Mr. Norris, with all his special knowledge, was obliged to confess that he was ‘unable to give a better translation than Colonel Rawlinson has prepared’ of that very paragraph.[632] In the same year Rawlinson announced the opinion his studies had led him to adopt upon this subject. It does not appear that he was as yet acquainted with Westergaard’s essay; but he had arrived at the same conclusion with reference to the Scythic affinities of the language. He likewise estimated the number of the signs at about a hundred, ‘the vowels, unless they commence a syllable, being for the most part inherent.’ He does not appear to have noticed the absence of sonants, but he saw that there must be considerable interchangeability in letters of the same class, and perhaps even between n and l. He added that the language evinced a repugnance to r. He held that ‘it resembles the Scythic in the employment of post-positions and pronominal possessive suffixes.’ In the declension of nouns it uses post-fixed particles that are frequently the same as in modern Turkish, and he notified the existence of a Tartarian gerund. The pronouns are, he says, Semitic; the adverbs Aryan; the vocabulary a strange agglomeration of Turkish and Semitic. Although its construction is more akin to Aryan than Scythic, yet upon the whole he decides that its affinity is with the Scythic, and suggests that that would be a more appropriate name for it than Median.[633] He thought some of its peculiarities might be explained by comparison with the Georgian, which, when time permitted, he proposed to undertake.[634] He suggested that it was the language of the aboriginal race whom the Aryan Medes had conquered, and whose settlements reached at least to Behistun, where an inscription had been found without the Persian translation, apparently indicating that it was locally comprehensible.[635]

When Rawlinson had finished his Persian Memoir he devoted himself to a more elaborate study of the Median, and he appears to have nearly completed an essay upon the subject. Meanwhile, however, he was drawn from this branch of inquiry to the more attractive and useful study of the Babylonian column: and his work on Median was never published.[636] He did not, however, lose his interest in the subject. He handed over his copies and other materials to Mr. Norris, who undertook the investigation of the subject and to whom he continued to give valuable assistance as occasion arose.

The study of Median was taken up in the meantime by Dr. Hincks from the point where it was left by Westergaard and Rawlinson. Hincks’s contribution is contained in three papers read before the Irish Academy between June 1846 and January 1847; and the last two appeared after he had seen the opinions of Rawlinson to which we have referred.[637] These papers were communicated without delay to the Asiatic Society in London, as we learn from a note by the Secretary, who says he had just received (June 1846) a communication on the Median cuneiform from ‘a learned clergyman in a remote part of Ireland.’[638]

Hincks differed in some material points from Westergaard. He would not admit the long vowels, and limited them to a, i and u, adding, however, er to their number. He restricted the simple consonants to m, p, t, k, s, and n; and from these he thought all the other signs were combined. He rightly admitted the compound syllabic form, consisting of two consonants joined by a vowel, which Westergaard had overlooked, and he even allows the occasional use of a double syllable, such as ‘ersa’ and ‘washa.’ He showed that the vowel is never omitted, though not always necessarily pronounced. Thus the group ‘an-na-ap’ reads simply ‘anap’; and he did not consider that the simple consonants preceding its syllabic form altered the sound as Westergaard had suggested.[639] Hincks adopted the eighty-two signs distinguished by Westergaard, and attempted the identification of sixty-seven, or seven more than Westergaard. His identification of the three vowels, a, i and u, was correct: and his limited number of consonants were also correct so far as they went, with the exception of p, which is the syllable ‘pir’ (No. 40). He, however, allotted more than one sign to some of his consonants: thus k is represented by three signs, t by two; and conversely he allowed that several characters might express the same value. He accepted fifteen of Westergaard’s correct syllabic values and added nine of his own, to which we may add fifteen others nearly correct, or thirty-nine in all; thus, including his three vowels and five consonants, he had forty-seven signs available for transliteration, as opposed to the twenty-nine of Westergaard. Singularly enough he made little improvement in the misleading syllabic signs of his predecessor. Some of them, indeed, he made considerably worse, and added others of his own, so that, notwithstanding a few corrections, their number rose to seventeen. He, however, pointed out that there was a determinative before the words for ‘god,’ ‘Ormuzd’ and ‘heaven,’ contrary to the opinion of Westergaard; and that the group the latter had mistaken for the vowel a was precisely that sign. He was less successful in his classification of the language, which he could not accept as Scythic. He considered its affinity was with the Aryan family, but he could not find that any of the Indo-European languages had similar inflections.[640]

A few years later De Saulcy wrote two articles in the ‘Journal Asiatique’ on the Median, without, however, making any important contribution to the subject.[641] His papers deserve notice chiefly on account of his eminence in other departments of study, and because he was the only Continental writer whose attention was directed at that time to this special branch of inquiry.[642] He thought he could recognise that it bore a close relationship to Persian, sufficient to justify the opinion of Strabo that the two languages were the same. Both Westergaard and Rawlinson had already observed that some of its grammatical forms and vocabulary could be best explained by reference to the modern Georgian and Turkish; and De Saulcy, notwithstanding his opinion of its affinity with Aryan, fully recognised that it had left traces in other quarters, including Kurd, Mongol, Armenian and the Gipsy tongue, but nowhere to a greater degree than in Turkish. He supports his opinion with a wealth of illustration drawn from these sources that must have fairly distracted his printer, and the indiscriminate use of the mechanism of philological dictionaries has in fact led the writer into many serious errors. He does not refer to Hincks, and notwithstanding all the resources at his command, he has fallen far short of the Irish writer whose country rectory was ill provided with these artificial appliances. De Saulcy has not, in fact, added a single correct value to those already known, and has failed to recognise several already established as correct. The utmost generosity cannot concede to him the possession of more than twenty-one correct values and nine nearly correct, all previously known; so that he had not more than thirty available for transliteration, as opposed to the twenty-nine of Westergaard and the forty-seven of Hincks. But he introduced a host of errors that are wholly his own. He assigned no less that thirty values that are absolutely wrong, although he only attempted sixty-two out of the eighty-two in Westergaard’s list. But it is not only in the details of decipherment that he went astray; his error covers the whole conception of the structure of the language. He has no less than fifteen different signs for vowels representing many fantastic gradations of sound. Different modifications of a and ou monopolise each three signs, besides the concession of one each for hou and ô. A simple u is not suffered to appear; but ha, he or e?, ya, aï?, and oui are classified among the vowels. Some difference still exists as to the treatment of the vowels. The latest authority limits them to a, e, i and u, and excludes o.[643] M. Oppert ranks a or ha among the consonants; and in addition to e, i and u he admits o and such sounds as yi, ya, ah among vowels.[644]

But it is in the treatment of the consonants that De Saulcy has most departed from the earliest and the latest scholars. He fully admits the syllabic character of the language, but he has done the utmost under the circumstances to conceal this peculiarity.[645] In his list the only sign that appears in syllabic form is the semi-vowel ar attributed to a defective sign (No. 10), and the eye already accustomed to the appearance of syllabic combinations is struck by the singular bareness produced by purely alphabetical letters. He admits altogether twenty-one distinct consonantal sounds, of which fourteen are ‘quiescent’ or simple consonants, and each is represented by one sign only, except m, w, to which three are allotted. He allows six gutturals to a language that has at most but two, and fills the other classes with scarcely less profusion. He recognises that the signs for m and w are interchangeable, and that d and t, as well as b and p, have several signs common to both; but he gives both p and t the exclusive use of others; and dè and dh have each a sign reserved to themselves. His consonantal sounds are given different signs according as they are supposed to be followed by a, by e or i, and by o or ou, an idea no doubt suggested by the restricted use of the same principle in Old Persian. These letters may be said to be practically syllabic signs, as they are only used in conjunction with a vowel; but in reality the classification involves serious error. It is now admitted that, with few exceptions, the same sign never conveys the sound of more than one vowel, and in the isolated cases where it occurs it is generally at the end of a word. In the whole Syllabarium of Weisbach there is only one instance where the same sign is given an optional sound of pe, pat, and in that of Oppert there are only three where a can be exchanged for i.[646] In neither authority is there a single instance where e and i are interchangeable. It is therefore a fundamental error of the gravest character to represent the same sign as systematically employed to express either of two vowel sounds, even if the two selected were ever interchangeable. It is, moreover, doubtful whether there was any difference allowed between the sounds of o and u, except in the attempt to express foreign words. De Saulcy’s system also excluded the compound syllables when two consonants are divided by a vowel. While Hincks did good service in adding a third determinative to the two acknowledged by Westergaard, De Saulcy actually refused to admit the determinative character of the horizontal wedge, and thereby reduced the number to one. On the other hand, he thought he had detected a sign to indicate the plural, which is in fact nothing but the syllable sin.