Perhaps the most useful contribution he made was the remark that, while a few of the Median signs bore a certain resemblance to those of the same value in Persian, the larger number of them were actually ‘identical’ with the Assyrian.[647] It must be confessed that it was long before this identity was detected, and even such a practised copyist as Westergaard declared that the five different species of cuneiform writing then known ‘differed from one another in the shape of nearly every letter or group,’[648] and considerable practice is still required before their identity can be brought home to the eye. The similarity—to employ a less emphatic expression—proved, however, of great assistance in enabling future inquirers to fix the value of the signs. Some time had yet to elapse before they could take advantage of this discovery, for when De Saulcy wrote, the Assyrian characters were themselves still undeciphered.
De Saulcy’s work was criticised by Löwenstern in the ‘Revue Archéologique’ (1850), where he sought to trace the affinity of Median to the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family, while he admitted that some of the endings might be traced in Pehlevi and New Persian. He did not consider it to be the Median language, which, he maintained, is properly represented by Zend; and he suggested, as Mr. Rich had done before, that it might have been the dialect of Susa.[649] Holtzmann fully recognised that it contained Semitic elements, but still he considered that it should be regarded as the mother of Pehlevi; and he subsequently added that it was probably the language of the court at Susa.[650] Still the opinion of its Scythic origin, first suggested by Westergaard and Rawlinson, continued to gain ground, supported, no doubt, by the numerous similarities to this linguistic stock that were pointed out in the learned Memoirs of De Saulcy. In 1852, M. Oppert, writing on the Persian column, went so far as to propose to drop the designation Median altogether, and, following the suggestion of Rawlinson, to substitute ‘Scythic.’ At that time he considered it to be the language of the hordes who overran Western Asia, and who, after twenty-eight years of domination in Media, were finally expelled by Cyaxares. It must be admitted that they were fortunate to leave such a permanent memorial of their passage.[651]
A more important contribution than any of these was made by Luzzato, who showed with sufficient clearness that twenty-four of the Median signs corresponded to the Babylonian (1850).
Down to the time we have now reached the progress made was disappointing. We have seen that much speculation was indulged as to the affinity of the language and the people to whom it should properly be attributed; but very little knowledge of the language itself had been acquired. Dr. Hincks had read forty-eight signs with sufficient correctness, and De Saulcy thirty-one, out of the one hundred and eleven with which the language is written; but both scholars were encumbered by the multitude of unknown or erroneous values. In 1852, however, a considerable step was made in advance. On July 3 of that year, Mr. Norris read a paper to the Asiatic Society on the result of his study of the Median column of the Behistun inscription with which Colonel Rawlinson had entrusted him; but the essay did not appear in the Journal in its completed form till 1855. The much greater diversity of material at his command enabled him to dispose of many difficulties that had obstructed earlier scholars. In the first place, he was able to increase the number of signs from the eighty-two that had puzzled his predecessors to one hundred and three, and to all of these he endeavoured to assign values. He was successful with fifty-seven, and twenty-one others were sufficiently correct for purposes of transliteration, making a total of seventy-eight in addition to two determinatives. One other sign has not even yet been satisfactorily settled,[652] and he still had twenty-four incorrect values. Unlike many decipherers, however, he was able to distinguish the gradations of certainty attaching to the values he assigned. Those that appear in his list allied to any vowel other than a, i or u are to be regarded as questionable. He estimated their number with tolerable accuracy at about twenty. He fully recognised the true syllabic character of the language. ‘Each character,’ he says, ‘represents a syllable which may be either a single vowel or a consonant and vowel, or two consonants with a vowel between them.’[653] He has, however, given six signs in his list a purely consonantal value, m, r, s and t, the two latter being each represented by two signs.[654] Four of these are correct, but the second signs for s and t are both wrong. He limited the vowels to a, i and u, but he has also allowed e to appear in his list, because he found a sign in Median that corresponds exactly to the Babylonian for that letter, and it is now admitted as correct. He reckoned eleven initial consonantal sounds: they include the consonants already named with the exception of m, together with th, ch, p, k, v, l, n and y. With these united to one of the three vowels all the syllables in the language are formed. The double syllables are composed of the same consonantal sounds (excluding th and y), separated by a. He did not consider that any of the signs represented the union of two consonants separated by i or u, an opinion that has been since over-ruled. He recognised that there was no difference between the surd and sonant consonants at the beginning of a word, and he agreed with Westergaard that the double letter in the middle emphasised the hard sound. He saw also that the same sign was used equally to express the Persian m and w; and that ‘the aspirate, which is quite uncertain, must also be disregarded.’ He accepted the two determinative signs already admitted by Westergaard, and also the determinative before the words for ‘god’ and ‘heaven’ which had been pointed out by Hincks.[655] He also recognised the ideogram for ‘month.’ The gradual recognition of the similarity of a large number of the Median and Babylonian signs was at length beginning to bear fruit. Norris indicates a resemblance between nearly fifty in his list of one hundred and three signs.[656] Twenty of these are indeed ‘identical’ in form, and independent investigation proved that they conveyed the same sound in both languages. In the others the similarity was sufficiently striking to afford an important confirmation of the values arrived at by the study of the text. Indeed in a few cases—such, for example, as the e already mentioned, the similarity to the form of a Babylonian character was the only clue to the value of the Median sign.[657] If he had allowed himself to be more influenced by the Babylonian script he would have slightly increased the number of his correct values;[658] though, on the other hand, a too rigorous adherence to this rule might have landed him in some errors. He hazarded the important statement, subsequently so remarkably confirmed, that there are evident signs that the syllabarium had been originally devised to express a Scythic tongue,[659] for, he said, ‘the unchangeable roots, the agglutinative structure and the simple syllabisation of such tongues are perfectly suited to such a mode of writing, while the Semitic and Indo-Germanic cannot without the most awkward and unsystematic arrangements be represented by it.’ He considered that the language of the second column must have been that of the pastoral tribes of Persia; and he pointed out that the omission from the Median text of the names of the districts in which Otiara and Rhages are placed showed that those towns were well known where the language was spoken, and it also afforded some evidence of the area it covered. On the other hand, the discovery of Scythic inscriptions at Susa seemed to point no less emphatically to its southern range, and the possibility presented itself that that was the source from which it spread. De Saulcy farther showed that a close analogy might be traced to Turkish; but Norris was the first to point out that its nearest modern relationship is with the Volga-Finnish branch of the Scythic family, and that it bears a close resemblance to the language now spoken by the Finns.[660]
He was the first to treat the grammar systematically. He pointed out with sufficient accuracy the case-endings of nouns,[661] and explained that, in common with Finnish, they distinguished more cases than the Indo-European languages, such as the allative and the locative. He showed that there was no distinction of gender, and that the adjectives had the same case-endings as the nouns. He explained that the plural was formed by the addition of pa (which, however, ought to have been p, pe, or ip), and that the case-ending was suffixed to it. He distinguished the pronouns with tolerable correctness, and showed their relationship to the Tartar languages. He also proved that the analogies with these languages are more obvious in the verb than in the other parts of speech.
He has given an admirable transcript of the Median text of the Behistun inscription in eight plates, accompanied by a transliteration that shows a remarkable improvement on all previous efforts, though of course it has since undergone considerable alteration. His translation follows the rendering of the Persian column made by Rawlinson, and has received little alteration from later scholars. He brought his essay to a close by giving the Median transliteration and translation of the remaining inscriptions, including two that were lately found by Mr. Loftus at Susa, and which now appear for the first time. The unilingual at Persepolis was at length intelligibly rendered. Westergaard had made out its general purport; but even this imperfect result escaped the efforts of De Saulcy.[662] The last paragraph was, however, found one of unusual difficulty, and Norris suggested two alternative versions:
1. ‘Ormuzd, protect me, with all the gods, and also this fortress. Moreover, do not doubt that those confined in this place are wicked men;’
or
2. ‘Ormuzd, protect me, with all the gods, and also this fortress and what is enclosed therein. This do not doubt that the wicked men will be punished.’
In 1879, Oppert reads the same passage: