In 1849, however, he contributed two pamphlets which it is admitted were of greater importance. In the first, which appeared on September 14, he undertook a transcription of the Babylonian column of the Elvend inscription with translation and analysis. He succeeded, we are told, in separating the Babylonian signs correctly, so that each group could be compared word for word with the Persian. In his analysis he is said to have justified the values he attributed to each sign, and the meaning he attached to each word. He regarded the signs as purely consonantal, and sought to bring them all into relation with the twenty-two Hebrew letters. He seems to have thought that some of the signs are capable of division: one portion fixed, representing the consonant, and the other a variable appendix indicating the vowel. In the second pamphlet, dated November 27, he treated the Persepolitan inscriptions in the same manner, but with a growing suspicion that the Assyrian letters might after all turn out to be syllabic.[850] By this means he arrived at the consonantal sound of a hundred and twenty signs which M. Menant says were generally correct. When Rawlinson published his Syllabarium, in 1851 (two years later) De Saulcy observed that sixty-eight of these one hundred and twenty signs received the same values. Not satisfied with this success, he seems actually to have thought that Rawlinson had borrowed them without acknowledgment from him: ‘J’avais donc lu et publié avant M. Rawlinson soixante-huit des valeurs exactes publiées par lui; il eût été de bon goût, peut-être, de prendre, ne fût-ce qu’une seule fois, la peine de citer mon nom.’[851] It is, of course, quite impossible to admit the claims made on his behalf. We have not been able to see the signs to which reference is made, but it is quite certain that, in September 1849, there were not sixty-eight signs in the Persepolitan inscription still remaining unknown either to Hincks or Rawlinson. It must be recollected that De Saulcy’s pamphlets appeared more than two years after Hincks had already accomplished a somewhat similar classification with a considerable measure of success; and therefore after the consonantal values of a large number of signs had long been correctly ascertained. On the other hand, the earlier papers of Hincks were quite accessible to De Saulcy, and we learn from Mohl that they were well known in France a year before the appearance of his two pamphlets.[852] ‘What,’ asks M. Menant, ‘did Rawlinson owe to De Saulcy’s labours on the Assyrian text? It is impossible to say,’ he answers, ‘for Rawlinson has not given an account of his preliminary studies.’[853] The answer is, however, much simpler than this. Rawlinson owes nothing to De Saulcy, for the reason that his transliteration of the Behistun inscription was accomplished before he left Bagdad in October 1849,[854] and therefore before it was possible for him to receive even the earliest of De Saulcy’s pamphlets. Menant afterwards concedes that Rawlinson’s work on the Obelisk proves preliminary labours which he graciously admits may justly claim to be independent.[855] Nor is it true, as Menant says, that ‘it was by following De Saulcy’s steps that all later progress has been accomplished.’[856] The precise opposite approaches more nearly to the truth. It was by abandoning the alphabetical system, to which De Saulcy clung with strange pertinacity to the last, that all later progress was in reality accomplished; and two months after these pamphlets were written this was precisely what was done by Hincks with unmistakable perspicuity in the Appendix to his Khorsabad Essay.
The two tracts of De Saulcy, written in 1849, gave the transliteration according to his peculiar system of the whole of the Achaemenian inscriptions accessible to him. The text of the Behistun inscription had not, of course, escaped as yet from the jealous hands of the English Major. The translation of these inscriptions was comparatively easy, for it was only necessary to follow the Persian version, which was already known. De Saulcy may therefore claim to be the first who accomplished this task, which neither Hincks nor Rawlinson thought necessary to attempt. But De Saulcy did not rest satisfied with this achievement. On February 3, 1850, he published a transliteration of ninety-six lines of the inscription engraved upon the bulls at the entrance to Khorsabad; and he accompanied it by a translation, which two years later he still considered was sufficiently accurate. On February 12, he also contributed a Memoir on the Royal Names at Nimrud.[857] These two publications appeared between Major Rawlinson’s lectures of January 19 and February 16. In the first lecture, Rawlinson gave the earliest translation of a purely Assyrian inscription that had ever appeared, with the exception of the few lines rendered by Longpérier and Hincks. It was taken from the Black Obelisk, and he promised to read at the next sitting a précis of the Khorsabad inscription.[858] It was clear, therefore, that he had already prepared it. Meanwhile, after this announcement was made, and thirteen days before it was carried into execution, De Saulcy’s translation appeared. This forms the second long Assyrian inscription to be translated, and it can scarcely be denied that De Saulcy and Rawlinson had worked upon it independently of each other. The report of Rawlinson’s second lecture was given in the ‘Athenæum’ on March 2. It is, as we have said, impossible to estimate the comparative merits of the two works, because we have not seen De Saulcy’s pamphlet. It can only be judged by what we know of that writer’s later acquirements.
The transliteration from which we have quoted made its appearance in February 1854, having apparently been sent to press in June 1853, or some three years after Rawlinson’s version of the same text.[859] It cannot, therefore, claim the indulgence so willingly accorded to a first effort; on the contrary, it is distinctly put forward as a rival Essay, intended to prove ‘the essential error of Rawlinson’s method of reading.’ It was designed at the same time to show that not one of the general results reached in the two Memoirs of 1849 had now to be abandoned, and also to establish his legitimate right to a large share of priority of discovery to which De Saulcy says he attached great value. We have already disposed of his claims to priority so far as regards the consonantal values of the Babylonian signs found in the trilingual inscriptions, and we are at a loss to imagine in what other direction he fancied that he had achieved priority. So far indeed from his studies having ever been in advance of his contemporaries, they uniformly lagged far behind, and he evinces a singular inability even to follow the results obtained by their genius. A remarkable instance of this is seen in his rejection of Longpérier’s reading of ‘Sargon’ in the Khorsabad inscription. ‘The kh, k or g,’ he writes in 1852, ‘is in reality a d’; and in the Table he published in 1854 it is actually found under that heading. He regrets that he is obliged to renounce all hope of finding the ‘Sargon of the Bible’ at Khorsabad; and he reads ‘Sardon’ instead.
De Saulcy still adheres to his alphabetical interpretation, and it is no doubt the syllabarium of Rawlinson that is ‘the essential error’ he sets himself to remove. His transliteration accordingly consists, as the reader will have observed, of an immense agglomeration of consonants which the student is left to bring within the possibilities of human utterance as best he may. It is clearly a comparatively easy task to arrange a number of signs according to the simple consonantal sounds they contain. Hincks reached this point in 1847, and De Saulcy’s latest effort seems to carry us back to that rudimentary stage of the inquiry. Here we find the signs distributed among the various classes of gutturals, dentals and so on, exactly as in Hincks’s Table seven years before. It is possible that the later writer is more complete and accurate; it could scarcely have been otherwise, considering the large amount of data now available and the impossibility of not being guided, to some extent at least, by the Syllabarium of Rawlinson and Hincks. Yet in this elementary work of simple classification there are numerous errors he might have escaped if he had condescended to place more dependence upon their authority. Thus, for example, among his gutturals we find (of course bare and stripped of their vocalic garments) the signs for ip, up, al and zi. His dentals include two gutturals, the signs for ga and gi. Among his labials he gives us the signs for as and ku. Among his linguals are those for ki and su and they include the signs for the syllables tar, kur and rit; while the sign for ul is found among the sibilants. Notwithstanding all his efforts to escape syllabic values, he was forced to enumerate a few—kam, ak, akh, at, bar, far, in or an, ar, as, is. Some of these are correct; but not even here would he submit to authority, and he has accordingly blundered. His ak should be uk, his akh al, his far par, and of the two signs he gives for as, one should be si and the other sur, while his is should be us. With few exceptions all these might have been found correctly given by Rawlinson three years before. Hincks had long ago pointed out in his Khorsabad Essay (June 1849) that a clear distinction is maintained between the vowels, and between the surd and sonant consonants. Yet here we find the signs for m, w, ou and b, and those for l and r all classed indifferently together. His treatment of the vowels is not less behind the knowledge of the time. The single vowel a is represented by no less than seven signs that really express an, a, ap, i, ruh, man, it. Two of these signs, according to De Saulcy, also express ha, and one either e or i. Ha has four signs, none correct. They are really the signs for a, it, i and il. He was correct in supposing the language contained two diphthongs, ai and ia; but neither of his signs for ai is correct: one has, in fact, the value of tir.
It may be said in conclusion that on all points of difference between Rawlinson and De Saulcy, both as regards the theory of the language and the details of its expression, Rawlinson was right and De Saulcy hopelessly wrong. De Saulcy was not only unable to teach Rawlinson anything, but, as we have already observed, he was incapable to a very remarkable degree of apprehending the truth from others. He lived for many years afterwards, but his Essay on the Behistun inscription seems to have been the last occasion on which he meddled with cuneiform studies. He probably recognised more clearly than some of his admirers how incompetent he was to make any useful contribution to the subject. It is impossible to refrain from sympathy with him. He tells us he spent a whole year in ‘comparing sign by sign and transcribing all the Achaemenian texts without exception.’[860] Nothing is more calculated to overwhelm the mind with despondency than to pass years of fruitless toil amid such arid wastes as these and to discover in the end that the natural ability to make useful application of the knowledge acquired is wholly wanting. For the true genius of a decipherer is a rare gift, and no amount of industry or learning can compensate for its absence. Hincks and Rawlinson possessed it with exceptional intensity. Many of the other scholars whose labours we have reviewed were endowed to a less degree—Grotefend, Jacquet and Lassen. Even Longpérier, in the few lines he contributed to the subject evinced no little aptitude in this direction; but De Saulcy was singularly deficient in the special qualifications it required. It would have been more worthy of the position he occupied in other departments of study if he could have restrained the irritation that the consciousness of the waste of so much effort could not fail to produce. It was lamentable that he should fretfully pretend to have anticipated the discoveries of Rawlinson, or that he should have presented his own crude performance as a possible rival to his. It would almost seem, from the extreme rarity of his pamphlets, that he endeavoured to suppress the evidence of his failure, and it would be well if his countrymen were to allow his work in this department to pass out of the reach of farther controversy.
The translation of the Babylonian Column of the Behistun inscription was apparently thought at the time to dispense with the necessity of any special publication of the Semitic columns of the other Achaemenian inscriptions at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam. De Saulcy had indeed devoted himself to this portion of the subject in 1849, and Menant informs us that ‘all the trilingual inscriptions then known were already translated.’[861] But they do not appear to have attracted the attention of any more competent scholar till 1859, when M. Oppert published a portion of them in the second volume of his ‘Expédition en Mésopotamie.’ He gave the text, with transliteration and translation of the Window inscription L and B (Darius); D and E (Xerxes), and the unilingual H (Darius) from Persepolis; the long inscription and the three short ones at Naksh-i-Rustam, the K of Xerxes at Van, and the S of Artaxerxes Mnemon at Susa. He also gave a new translation of the Behistun inscription without text or transliteration. A peculiar feature of his book is that he has made a transcription of the inscription into Hebrew characters. A complete edition of the Babylonian columns of the Achaemenian inscriptions was published by Dr. Bezold in 1882, with text, transliteration, translation and commentary, and is now the standard edition.
We have now brought to a close this tedious history of the various steps that led up to the decipherment of the Achaemenian inscriptions; and we have described the share taken in its accomplishment by a long succession of scholars, from Tychsen to Oppert. The whole of these inscriptions were now interpreted and their contents made known to the world. The difficulties of the cuneiform character, which at first appeared insuperable, were at length surmounted.
The subject for a long time seemed to yield no results at all commensurate to the labour and ability lavished upon it. Its interest seemed to be limited to the arid domains of philology, or at best to throw a sidelight upon a few matters of no great importance in ancient history. Some scholars were gratified to find that their old and greatly maligned friend Herodotus was ascertained to be much more trustworthy than was long supposed; but these were matters that could only affect a small and comparatively worthless class of dilettanti. At length, however, there came the great Assyrian discoveries and the apparition in the cuneiform records of ‘Jehu, the son of Omri,’ and a host of other notabilities of sacred history. The study was raised at once, especially in England, to an entirely different plane of interest. Lectures began to be delivered upon it throughout the provinces; books were written by Vaux, Bonomi, Fergusson, and many others, to explain the subject to the public. The great work of Layard was quickly followed by a popular edition, and was translated into German. Curiosity was stimulated by the appearance, in 1853, of an account of the results of farther explorations. Whether the new learning would tend to confirm the ancient records or whether it would compel a revision of cherished beliefs began to be debated in many quarters, far beyond the circle of learned societies.
An account of the progress subsequently made in the knowledge of the Assyrian language lies beyond the scope of our present work. It was indeed a happy accident that the power of reading Assyrian should have been acquired just as a countless number of inscriptions in that language were brought to light. Excavations continued at Nineveh and elsewhere under the direction of Mr. Layard during the winters of 1849 and 1850; and in the autumn of 1851, Colonel Rawlinson returned to Bagdad. He was charged with the general supervision of the work, while Mr. Hormuzd Rassam assumed the practical direction in the field. Parliament sanctioned a grant of three thousand pounds, and many large sums were contributed by private individuals, including five hundred pounds from Lord John Russell.[862] Soon after, Rassam discovered the famous inscription of Tiglath Peleser, which afforded the earliest glimpse into a long-forgotten history. In it the genealogy of the Assyrian kings was traced back to the fourteenth century B.C., and the names of no less than twenty-five sovereigns were recorded.[863] The inscription itself was written at a time when Assur was still the capital of the kingdom and Nineveh was too unimportant to be mentioned. Rawlinson was surprised to find that the language was more polished then than at a later time, and he was obliged to admit that the discovery ‘annihilates all my theories about the modernicity of Assyrian civilisation.’[864] Shortly after, he was able to announce that ‘all the Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible have now been identified,’[865] and many others who occur in profane history, so, that almost a perfect list has now been obtained. Two French expeditions were engaged at the same time on the work of exploration. M. Place, from 1851 to 1854, devoted himself chiefly to Khorsabad, though with scarcely the success his perseverance merited. But the chief effort was made by the Commission headed by M. Fresnal, 1852-4, which included M. Oppert among its members, and which concerned itself principally with the exploration of the ruins of Babylon. Meanwhile Southern Babylonia was explored by Mr. Loftus, whom we have already mentioned in connection with Susa; and by Mr. Taylor, the Vice-Consul at Bussorah. It is to their labours during the winters of 1853 and 1854 that we owe the recovery of the history of the Early Babylonian Empire that long preceded even the foundation of Assyria. The forgotten cities of Nippur, Erech, Larsa, Ur and Eridu were once more summoned to surrender the records of a civilisation reaching back many thousand years before the Christian era. In 1854, Rawlinson was able to send home a list of eighteen of the primitive kings of the ancient Babylonia and of twenty other personages of less exalted station; and he records his surprise at the discovery of ‘monarchs who must have reigned before the establishment of the Assyrian Empire.’[866] Till then it was generally held that Babylon owed its foundation to the late period of the great Nebuchadnezzar.[867] Early in 1854, a fruitful discovery was made in the Lion Room of the North Palace of Assurbanipal at Kouyunjik.[868] Here large numbers of tablets were found, which subsequent investigation showed to consist of lexicons and phrase-books to enable the student to acquire the primitive language of Babylonia, from which it afterwards became apparent the larger portion of the Assyrian literature had been derived. Rawlinson was the first to detect the existence of this language in a tablet sent to him from Larsa by Mr. Loftus.[869] He announced the discovery in a valuable paper, contributed to the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ in 1855, on the Early History of Babylonia. At that time, however, he had made but little progress in this new study, for he says: ‘I have no hesitation in pronouncing the language to be Semitic.’[870] In the following year he found out his mistake, and, having carefully studied the vocabularies from Kouyunjik, he speaks of it more guardedly as ‘the Chaldean or Hamitic language of Babylonia.’[871] Six years later, we still hear of the ‘Hamitian language, of which not much is yet understood.’[872] For a time it was known also as the Proto-Chaldean;[873] Hincks seems to have been the first to call it by its later name of Akkadian,[874] but Rawlinson was the earliest to make any considerable progress in its study. In 1866, he endeavoured to translate the tablets bearing on astronomy and other scientific subjects; but he found ‘the primitive Babylonian language’ was so extensively employed in these documents that it was ‘advisable to undertake a thorough examination of this ancient and most difficult language.’ The result was that he thought it was intermediate between the African languages and the Proto-Turanian or Finno-Ugrian, which he proposed to classify under the name of the ‘Erythean Group.’ He considered it came from the uplands of Central Africa, and was the speech of the Akkads or Highlanders. From that circumstance it gradually acquired the name of Akkadian, suggested by Hincks.[875]
The recovery of this ancient language is among the most interesting results of cuneiform discovery. The most ancient records in the world are written in it, and it opens a page of history hitherto entirely unknown. It shows that a Turanian race led the van of civilisation, and was the founder of both the religion and literature of the Semitic people of Irak.