CHAPTER V.
THE path of our alphabet seems to be taking us far afield when we turn to Chinese systems of writing and to the origin and development of cuneiform. Nevertheless, it is in this course that some of the richest developments have appeared and the greatest rewards have been obtained by scholars in this special direction of research.
In the narrative given of the decipherment of cuneiform writing reference was made to the three distinct combinations of the arrow-headed or wedge-shaped characters in the trilingual inscriptions at first deciphered.
It was found that these three distinct combinations of cuneiform signs represented three languages of three distinct races of men, the Persian, an Aryan people speaking an inflectional language; the Assyro-Babylonians, Semitic people who spoke a language related to the Hebrew, and the third a Turanian people who spoke an agglutinative language, allied to that of the modern Turks or Finns.
It was some time after the decipherment of the Persian version of the cuneiform texts before these facts became fully understood. The Semitic text presented unusual difficulties, while the language of the other version remained for a time unknown.
The discoveries of Mr. Layard, shortly after, on the site of ancient Nineveh, were to throw more light upon the subject.
With the unearthing of the royal palace of Assur-bani-pal, at Keyunji, the remains of the great library founded by this monarch were discovered beneath the ruins.
These remains consisted of more than twenty thousand bricks, tablets and cylinders, some of which were in fragments, but a greater part entire, and the inscriptions thereon as distinct as when first impressed in the soft clay.
This was a fine, tenacious clay of the region which had been moulded into bricks and cylinders of various sizes, upon which when moist the cuneiform letters had been impressed by a wooden or metal stylus. They had then, for the greater part, been hardened by a slow fire, and were thus made practically indestructible. These cuneiform books were soon distributed in the great libraries and museums of Europe, and thus became accessible to scholars.