Raw. ‘[Ego Darius, rex magnus, rex regum, Hystaspis filius Arsamis nepos] Achaemenis rex gentium Persicarum; rex Persidis. Darius rex [ ] dicit: mihi pater meus Hystaspes: pater qui Hystaspis [Arsames: pater qui Arsamis] Ariaramnes: pater qui Ariaramnis Teispes: pater qui Teispis Achaemenes. Darius rex [ ] dicit: ob hanc [rationem nos Achaemenses appellamur ab antiquo oriundi (?)] sumus; ab antiquo stirps noster reges fuere(?) Darius rex [ ] dicit: octo e genere meo ante me regnum egere.’
De S. ‘[Lacune] Akhéménès roi des rois, homme perse, roi du pays de Perse, Darius roi grand, dit: Mes pères, Hystaspe; le père de Hystaspe [lacune] Ariaramnès; le père de Ariaramnàh Chispis: le père de Chispis, Akhéménès Darius, roi grand dit: Pour raison cette [lacune] au temps de nos pères nous avons régné, au temps des pères notre race [furent] leurs rois. Darius roi grand dit: Huit dans l’état de ma race, mes pères dans mon visage [avant moi] la royauté ont pris elle (?) [lacune].’
Bez. ‘[Ich, Darius, der grosse König, der König der Könige, der König der Länder (?)] der Achämenide: König der Schar (?) der Menschen, ein Perser, König von Persien. So spricht Darius der König: Mein Vater [ist] Uštazpi; der Vater des Uštazpi [war Arshâma, der Vater des Arshâma] Ariaramna, der Vater des Ariaramna Šišpiš, der Vater des Šišpiš, [war] Aḫamanis. So spricht Darius der König: Darum [werden wir Achämeniden genannt; von Alters her sind wir erprobt], von Alters her (?) waren unsere Sprossen Könige. So spricht Darius der König: Acht in mitten meiner Familie übten vor mir die Königsherrschaft aus.’
In the August of this year (1851) Rawlinson was able to announce that he had met with an inscription that satisfactorily fixed the date of the Lower Assyrian dynasty. We have said that this was in reality done long before by Longpérier when he identified the Khorsabad king with the Sargon of Isaiah (1847); and by Hincks, who was satisfied that the builders of the later palaces were Sennacherib and Esarhaddon (1849). But we have seen that Rawlinson long refused to recognise these identifications as satisfactorily established. At length, however, he found in a tablet from Khorsabad (Pl. 70 Botta) an account which he acknowledged referred to the capture of Samaria by Sargon in the first year of his reign; and he also succeeded in identifying ‘Omri.’[840] He thought that Sargon, whose identification he acknowledged in his Analysis of the Behistun inscription,[841] was the same personage as Shalmaneser, who figures in the same inscription as the conqueror of Ashdod; and he made out the names of other cities that fell before the arms of that king: ‘Hamath, Beroea, Damascus, Bambyce, Carchemish.’
But the inscription to which he now more particularly drew attention was recently found by Mr. Layard on a colossal bull at the great entrance of the Kouyunjik Palace; and Rawlinson speedily recognised that it contained the Annals of Sennacherib, its founder, and son of Sargon. The annals extend only to the seventh year of the king, but they recount the subjugation of Babylon in the beginning of his reign, and the defeat of Hezekiah and the capture of Jerusalem in his third year. The narrative agrees with what was already known from the Hebrew writings and from Polyhistor. The discovery, in a cuneiform inscription, of the three names Hezekiah, Jerusalem and Judah, and an account of events related in the Book of Kings, naturally stimulated the interest of a wider public than is generally occupied with archæology.[842] From this period dates the great popularity these studies enjoyed for a time, a popularity that culminated more than twenty-five years later by the despatch of George Smith on a mission to the East by the ‘Daily Telegraph.’
A year after the publication of the third column of the Behistun inscription, Hincks read a paper ‘On the Assyrio-Babylonian Phonetic Characters’ (1852), which may be regarded as having closed the early stage of inquiry into the subject.[843] In this essay he contributes no less than a hundred and eighteen new values, of which sixty-eight certainly, and possibly more, are correct. When these are added to the Syllabarium of Rawlinson, upwards of two hundred correct signs, in addition to those for the vowels and diphthongs, were now at the disposal of the decipherer. It had also been proved conclusively that ‘the characters all represent syllables and were originally intended to represent a non-Semitic language.’ In opposition to the system that still found an advocate in De Saulcy, it was shown that ‘instead of the vowels being unrepresented, or only represented by points, as in all Semitic writing that was first applied to a Semitic language, we have in the cuneatic inscriptions every vowel definitely expressed.’ This new Syllabarium demonstrates for the first time how extensively polyphony prevailed. Indeed one of its chief merits consists in the enumeration of the different values expressed by the same sign. This had been done to a slight extent by Rawlinson, who puts the polyphones in an apologetic manner in a separate column, under the heading ‘Phonetic Powers arising from Ideographic Values.’ This excited the contemptuous criticism of De Saulcy, who was still so far from appreciating the true nature of the language that he declared: ‘Either this language was for the Assyrian an inextricable gâchis, or one or other of these values must be chosen.’[844] The present Memoir of Hincks, which must soon after have fallen into his hands, ought to have convinced him that the former alternative is the only one available. Indeed the number of polyphones is so great that the two hundred and fifty-four characters which Hincks now deals with express no less than three hundred and forty-four different values. In the Appendix to the Khorsabad inscription (January 19, 1850) it will be recollected that he gave seventy-one simple syllabic values, of which we found fifty-seven correct. In a lithographed paper, presented to a meeting of the British Association in the course of the same year, he added to their number, so that, with the vowels, his contribution amounted to a hundred. These apparently include the twenty-five (correct) compound syllables already mentioned. In the present Memoir he added a hundred and eighteen new values (sixty-eight correct), so that he claims to have discovered by his own unassisted ingenuity no less than two hundred and eighteen values. He acknowledges that he is indebted to Rawlinson for seventy-seven in addition to these, and he states that they were substantially agreed as to the signification of one hundred and seventy-seven signs.[845] They disagree as to forty-nine; but the disagreement, generally speaking, does not extend to the consonantal value; it arises from the doubt as to whether the sign conveys the value of e or o, as Hincks thought, or of i or u, as Rawlinson maintained. Hincks frankly confesses he received seventy-seven values from Rawlinson after 1850; but Rawlinson has not told us how many values he borrowed from Hincks during that year. The probability is they were extremely few, if any; the transliteration and translation of the inscriptions taken at Behistun and from the Black Obelisk were made before the Appendix was sent to press, and neither could have been accomplished unless Rawlinson had previously drawn up a very comprehensive list for his own use. No doubt he took full advantage of Hincks’s paper to introduce occasional corrections and emendations, and it is to be regretted that he has not gratified our curiosity as to the extent of his obligations.
In the present Memoir Hincks modified in some respects his original mode of writing. Following Rawlinson’s example, he has discarded the use of c in favour of k for the Koph series; and he adopts s to express the three Hebrew sounds of s, s̱ and š̱ (s, ts, and sh). He also follows Rawlinson in substituting z for j, and kh for g. All these modifications have been accepted except the last, which is now written ḫ. On one other point, however, he was less conciliatory. In deference to Rawlinson, he drops his two sounds for a: his long ā becomes now simply a; but he insists on the distinct recognition of the union of the consonant with e or o. ‘We must,’ he says, ‘consider the seven forms which might belong to each.’ These forms, therefore, are now a, e or o, i and u; and one of the chief points of disagreement with Rawlinson is that the latter ignores the sounds of e or o and substitutes either i or u. Hincks was quite right in maintaining that Rawlinson unduly neglected the vowel e; for his ‘Indiscriminate List’ only contains one syllable formed with e, viz. ep. Hincks was, however, wrong in supposing that there is any regular syllabic combinations so framed. The regular syllabic combinations are six, not seven, and they are formed with a, i and u only—as Rawlinson rightly saw. The combinations with e are exceptions to the rule, and have been ascribed to local or dialectic changes.[846] They amount to about twelve and, strange to say, only one was correctly identified by Hincks (te). The o sound seems to be practically unknown.
In the passages we selected to illustrate Rawlinson’s transliteration of the Behistun inscription, we placed that given by De Saulcy two years later side by side with it, not on account of its intrinsic merit, but because of the claims put forward on his behalf by some of his countrymen. It seems to be generally admitted that the honour attaching to the first decipherment of the Babylonian inscriptions cannot be justly claimed by more than three scholars—Hincks, Rawlinson and De Saulcy. We have endeavoured to lay before the reader the contributions made by the first two. There can be no doubt that Hincks displayed remarkable insight into the formation of the language, and that his ingenuity in detecting the value of the signs, and in recognising their relation to one another was very great. Whether he would have been able to go farther and acquire equal distinction as a translator is another question. His genius seems to have been more adapted to elucidate matters of grammar and philology. Rawlinson had a rare ability of assimilating the suggestions of other scholars so quickly as to be almost oblivious that they were not original, and of carrying them rapidly to a perfection that was all his own. Thus Hincks’s elementary Syllabarium of 1850 appears in Rawlinson’s Memoir of 1851, so vastly improved as to be practically an independent work. But the translation of the inscriptions was entirely his own, and in this department Hincks never entered into competition with him. Here, according to M. Menant, his rival was De Saulcy. It is unfortunate that De Saulcy’s early contributions should have become almost inaccessible, and we have not found any detailed account of their contents.[847] They date from 1847, but his earliest efforts, even according to M. Menant, only deserve mention because the author himself was disposed to treat them too severely.[848] On June 20, 1847, in a letter to Burnouf, he attempted to identify some of the kings mentioned in a genealogical fragment found at Van. Ten days later he endeavoured to solve the riddle of the second name in the Khorsabad inscription. In the following July he suggested that the name on the Michaux stone should be read ‘Saosdoukin’; and in December he imagined that he had found the sense of the Van inscriptions. He, however, honestly confesses that in the light of subsequent knowledge all these efforts were vain. ‘He has,’ he says, ‘passed the sponge over all he has hitherto done, and has recommenced the study of Assyrian ab ovo.’[849]