These were the questions puzzling the scholars of Europe as they looked on the inscriptions placed before them. More puzzling questions, one would think, could scarcely be devised. How much or how little was already known about this style of inscriptions, these strange arrow-headed, nail-formed, wedge-shaped, claviform, or cuneiform letters, as men styled them?
They were evidently the “Assyrian letters” mentioned by Herodotus. But neither he nor any other
ancient writer gave any aid whatever towards their interpretation.
The moderns could tell little of them. In 1620 Figueroa, the Spanish traveller and diplomatist, published some account of the inscriptions he had seen in Persepolis, and gave a fac-simile of one line of this arrow-headed writing. A year or two later Pietro Della Valle, who spent years travelling in Asia, published another specimen, and, from a general consideration of its appearance, decided that the writing, be it in what language it may, was to be read from left to right, as European languages are read, and not from right to left, as the Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and other Semitic languages are to be read, nor from top to bottom, as the Chinese read their inscriptions. But beyond this he could not go.
Fifty years later a French traveller, M. Chardin, published drawings of the inscriptions he had copied in Persepolis. Other travellers gave further accounts of such inscriptions at Persepolis, Hamadan, and elsewhere in Western Persia. They spoke especially of the magnificent inscription of Bisutun or Behistun. Following the grand caravan route from Bagdad to Ispahan, the traveller finds himself in the beautiful valley of the Kerkha River. On his left rise rugged limestone cliffs. At one spot the road runs at the base of a gigantic perpendicular cliff, fully 1,700 feet high. In some ancient time workmen made their way up, by scaffolding, three hundred feet and more above the road, where they smoothed a large space of the face of the rock, cutting out weak and soft portions, and carefully plugging the cavities with firmer and stronger pieces of the same stone. On this smoothed surface they cut their figures of majestic
stature. A monarch, armed and triumphant, stands erect, one foot pressing on a prostrate foe. Above his head floats the winged form of a heathen deity. Before him stands a line of nine other captives, united together by a cord passing from neck to neck. For the king and for each captive there is a short inscription. Below, on the face of the rock there are hundreds of lines of inscriptions, every letter, over an inch in length, being cut neatly and carefully into the smoothed and perpendicular face of the cliff. The whole was then floated, as the plasterers would say, with a wash of fluid glass, which in drying left a transparent, silicious crust or film, saving the work from the ravages of wind and rain and time. Much of this coating is still in place, more of it has flaked off, and fragments of it may be gathered from the debris at the foot of the cliff.
In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr visited those regions, and, after long study, came to the opinion that there were here three different styles of inscription, probably in three different languages. In this case one of them was probably the Persian. From that date on Niebuhr, Münter, Grotefend, De Sacy, Saint-Martin, Rask, and others pored over these strange letters, studied out the Sanscrit and the Zend or ancient Persian, and, devoting themselves laboriously to the simpler and presumed Persian portions of the inscriptions, finally succeeded in making out one letter after another, and discovered that this part, at least, was of course to be read alphabetically. They began to guess at the sense of some oft-recurring word or phrase, or of what were apparently royal names or titles. Great was their exultation when they were sure at last that a
certain oft-recurring group of characters (which we have no type to print) was to be read “Khsháyathíya Khsháyathíyánám,” and meant “King of kings.” By 1836 Lassen, Burnouf, and Sir Henry Rawlinson claimed to be able to make out, at least in a general way, the sense of those Persian portions. Other scholars followed them, making still further advances. Those Persian inscriptions were found to commemorate the deeds of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and other Persian monarchs of their epoch.
The inscriptions were, as Niebuhr had conjectured, in three languages. The second, called the Scythic or Turanian, was in characters more difficult and more complex than the Persian writing. The third, and still more difficult, portions were supposed to be in some ancient Assyrian language—perhaps even in several distinct forms or dialects of it. They had not yet been read when Botta and Layard made their discoveries in the mounds, and filled the museums of Europe with thousands of inscriptions, whole or fragmentary, all evidently of this third class. The task was taken up by the scholars of Europe with renewed ardor. If the difficulties were great, they had at least a fair starting point in the Persian portions already deciphered; but the difficulty was still great. Those groups of arrow-headed characters seemed to shift their meaning in a bewildering fashion. Sometimes they represented letters, sometimes syllables, sometimes words or monograms. Again, the same group sometimes seemed to represent one letter, and at another quite a different letter; while, as if to compensate this multiplicity of values of a single sign, it was evident that frequently several signs
had the same identical value, and might be interchanged one for another. Add to all this the fact that they were not yet sure in what language or what dialect these inscriptions of Ninive were written, nor, even in a general way, what they treated of, and it will be clear that the task of deciphering them was in truth a puzzling one. The more clearly men saw what was to be done, the more difficult it appeared to do it. Progress could be made only by a series of tentative guesses. When one proclaimed that he had attained some result, however small, that result was attacked by others, and sometimes proved to be illusory. However, despite of thousands of failures, despite of ridicule and disbelief, progress was gradually made. In March, 1857, Mr. Fox Talbot selected the first cuneiform inscription which had been lithographed by the trustees of the British Museum, and proposed it as a test. Four of the chief students of this new literature were to make, each apart, and without consultation with the others, his own translation of it, to be sent under seal to the Royal Asiatic Society. When all had come in, the seals were to be broken and the several translations compared. In May, 1857, this was done. The following translations of one passage of the inscription will serve as a sample of how they agreed: