The first period of discovery was now drawing to a close. The French retired in 1854, and Colonel Rawlinson in March 1855. Nearly twenty years were to elapse before the excavations were renewed by George Smith, in 1873.
Meanwhile the number of scholars interested in these subjects began to increase. Dr. Samuel Birch did good service in assisting the publication of Layard’s inscriptions.[876] Mr. Bosanquet contributed a large number of articles on the questions of chronology raised by these new discoveries,[877] a matter that also occupied Rawlinson.[878] Hincks also turned his attention to translation, and it is to him we owe the translations in Mr. Layard’s ‘Nineveh and Babylon,’ published in 1853, and also a version of the Bavian inscription.[879] In 1854 he wrote an essay on Assyrian mythology, but he still continued to be chiefly engaged with the grammar. His dissertation on the Pronoun appeared in 1853; on the Verb in 1855 to 1856, a work that has been characterised as his most valuable contribution;[880] on Akkadian, 1855; on Tiglath Peleser, 1857; on Polyphony, 1863; and finally a treatise on Assyrian Grammar, begun in 1866 in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society,’ which was interrupted by his death. Mr. Fox Talbot was also added to the number of translators. In 1856 he rendered a portion of the East India House inscription, and for a number of years he applied himself to the translation of the most important inscriptions.[881] Mr. Norris, relieved from the burden of the Susian Column, turned his attention to Assyrian weights (1856), and subsequently became known as the author of the first Assyrian dictionary (1866).[882] In France, M. Oppert acquired an interest in Assyrian during his recent journey to the East, and he earned a reputation in this department of study by the appearance of his ‘Etudes Assyriennes’ in the ‘Journal Asiatique,’ February 1857. From that period he has continued to be one of the most prolific and the most useful of the cuneiform scholars of France. The number of these was farther increased by the appearance of M. Menant, in 1858, as the writer of a ‘Notice sur les Inscriptions cunéiformes de la Collection de M. L. de Laval.’[883] Soon afterwards (1860) he published the ‘Ecritures cunéiformes,’ an ‘Exposé des Travaux qui ont préparé la Lecture des Inscriptions,’ which is still a useful apology for the science.[884] For, notwithstanding all the magnificent results already obtained, the science was still in need of an apologist.[885] In 1852, Professor Wilson, the President of the Royal Asiatic Society, went so far as to regard the Assyrian Inscriptions as still ‘merely dumb memorials of antiquity.’[886] Very great discrepancies were indeed yet to be found in translations of the same passages by different scholars, and the true meaning of a large number of words continued to be warmly disputed. It was found, in fact, that M. Stern of Göttingen still maintained that the language was entirely alphabetical; that there were no ideographs; and he read every syllable of one inscription differently from De Saulcy, except the proper names.[887] Mr. Fox Talbot attributed the prevailing incredulity ‘to the fact that each cuneiform group represents not always the same syllables, but sometimes one and sometimes another’: in other words, to the existence of polyphones. Hence it was inferred that the system adopted ‘cannot be true, and the interpretations based upon it must be fallacious.’[888] He proposed, therefore, to submit the whole matter to a practical test. He accordingly translated the inscription of Tiglath Peleser, recently found at Kaleh Sherghat, and forwarded it in a sealed envelope to the President of the Asiatic Society. Three other scholars—Rawlinson, Hincks, and Oppert—were then invited to make independent versions of the same inscription, and to communicate them under cover to the Society. Carefully lithographed copies had been executed for this purpose, so that there might be no variation in the text. A competent jury of examiners were selected, among whom were Professor Wilson (the President), Mr. Grote, Dean Milman, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and Whewell; and on the day appointed the sealed packets were opened in their presence. It was found that Dr. Hincks had not had time to translate the whole, and that Oppert had committed the double blunder of working from a copy executed by himself, and of making his translation in English, a language with which he was imperfectly acquainted. A careful comparison was, however, undertaken, and the Jury issued their report on May 29, 1857. Grote and Milman were of opinion ‘that the coincidences between the translations, both as to the sense and the verbal rendering, were very remarkable.’ Wilkinson made a separate report, and stated that ‘the similarity is quite equal to what it would be in the translation of an ordinary historical inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics.’ ‘Indeed,’ he adds, ‘the resemblance is so great (very often exactly the same, word for word) that the interpretation could not be arbitrary’; but while ‘there is a remarkable concurrence as to the general meaning of each paragraph ... very many words were differently translated.’ The closest resemblance was found to exist between the versions of Rawlinson and Hincks. Talbot was ‘less positive and precise,’ and Oppert showed the greatest divergence. The examiners farther noted their opinion passage by passage, and as we look down the pages, among many verdicts of ‘very near,’ ‘much alike,’ and so on, we find other judgments much less satisfactory, such as ‘many coincidences and many variations’; ‘some coincidences and great variations’; and even ‘totally different.’
Much indeed yet remained to be done before accuracy could be achieved, and the voice of the doubter was not yet stilled. In France especially, the greatest scepticism prevailed as to the genuineness of the translations, and those of Oppert, in the ‘Journal Asiatique’ were received with general incredulity.[889] Neither De Saulcy nor Longpérier took any farther share in the work, and their silence increased the discouragement. A very eminent Frenchman, Count de Gobineau, had just written on the ‘Ecritures des Textes cunéiformes’ and attacked the whole system pursued by Rawlinson and Oppert.[890] The one he proposed to substitute is too grotesque to merit description, but the defection of a scholar so well known in Oriental studies intensified the growing unbelief.[891] It was at this conjuncture that Menant published his book on Cuneiform Writing, in which he related the successive steps that had led up to the decipherment of the inscriptions (1860): an undertaking which he describes four years later, in his second edition, as having slowly produced a beneficial effect. Some people may have been more influenced by the striking reward conferred upon M. Oppert by the Institut in 1860, which awarded him the prize of twenty thousand francs, founded by the Emperor for the ‘work or the discovery most calculated to the honour of France,’ and this, we learn with surprise, afforded ‘une sanction qui devrait dissiper toutes les susceptibilités.’ These susceptibilities were, however, by no means dispelled by any such Imperial mandate. Mohl writes with evident sympathy that ‘people decry a language in which one can never know if a syllable is ideographic or phonetic, and, when phonetic, which of two or three different values it may have in that place.’[892] Gobineau still remained recalcitrant (1864), and Sir George Cornewall Lewis contended in the ‘Astronomy of the Ancients’ that neither Egyptian nor Assyrian could ever be restored.[893] Lord Macaulay also rejected the interpretation with undisguised contempt.[894] It was only by slow degrees that these doubts were finally extinguished, and that the cuneiform languages have conquered the universal recognition of all competent inquirers.
When Rawlinson returned from Bagdad in 1855, he was appointed a Director of the East India Company, and he entered Parliament as Member for Reigate. In 1859 he went to Persia as British envoy, a position from which he retired in the following year.
After his resignation, he devoted himself for some years almost exclusively to his old cuneiform pursuits. He undertook to supervise the publication of the ‘Inscriptions of Western Asia,’ and he might be found at work upon them daily at the British Museum. Mr. George Smith was appointed his working assistant, and in that position he gained the intimate knowledge of the Assyrian language which he afterwards turned to such excellent account. The first volume of the Inscriptions appeared in 1859, and the last, or fifth, in 1884.[895] Rawlinson entered Parliament once more in 1865, as Member for Frome, but retired on his re-appointment to the India Office in 1868. He fell a victim to influenza in 1895, at the age of eighty-five. During his life he was gradually overwhelmed with honours bestowed upon him by learned Societies in various quarters of the globe;[896] but a grateful country was long reluctant to confer its seal of recognition. Military authorities are naturally unwilling to acknowledge the merits of distinguished officers who descend to civil employments; and in 1851, after the publication of the Behistun inscription, he had to sue in somewhat humble terms for promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On his return from Bagdad in 1855, when the walls of the Museum were lined with the trophies he had accumulated and the country was enraptured with the new arcana of knowledge his genius had unveiled, Lord Clarendon thought a knighthood worthy of his acceptance. This he hastened to decline, and shortly afterwards he received the more appropriate honour of K.C.B. (1856).
The dignities to which he subsequently rose were due to political services and social position, and seem to have been entirely unconnected with the achievements we have recounted.
As for Dr. Hincks, he appears never to have obtained any reward whatever, unless the Gold Medal of a provincial academy can be regarded as such.[897] He had the misfortune to be born an Irishman, and to fill the obscure position of a country clergyman, so that he was, no doubt, reconciled from the first to the inevitable sequence of disparagement and neglect. After all, hieroglyphic figures and cuneiform signs are inconvenient subjects for pulpit oratory, and not likely to edify a rustic congregation or to lead to preferment in the Church. The estimate in which he was held, even in learned circles, may be gathered from the short paragraph allotted to him in the ‘Athenæum,’[898] where he explained one of the most far-reaching discoveries in Assyrian, as compared to the three long columns that follow, devoted to a few unimportant observations made by Rawlinson. But notwithstanding his apparent failure to obtain the recognition that was his due, when the evening of life approached and the time for departure came, he could dwell with satisfaction on the work of his life; and though in the years to come few might remember his name, he could not fail to enjoy the conviction that the rich fields of knowledge he had opened to view would remain the assured possession of man for all generations to come.
APPENDICES
A.—TABLE SHOWING VALUES ASSIGNED TO THE LETTERS OF THE OLD PERSIAN ALPHABET.